Alice mare Translation Notes
Good old translation notes. Gotta XXXX translation notes.
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The title is primarily just a combination of Alice and nightmare. (The original title was Nightmare Syndrome, but that's so generic and even overlaps with the song Revenge Syndrome which Miwashiba made the PV for.)
However, Miwashiba also claims it can be read as "Alice's sea," as in the "sea of their hearts." They admit this was an afterthought, but I think it's kinda clever.
All the children's names were originally written in English (and Japanese in conversation), so yeah.
Chelsy is called "Chelsea" in the files, but Chelsy absolutely everywhere else, so I went with that. "Teacher" is the name given by the sign outside his door and on the website, too.
The Worlds are "sekai," written in katakana to distinguish them from the real world. Since there would be a negligible audible difference if any, I just... capitalized it.
It's pretty clearly an intentional distinction, as numerous characters simply say "sekai" in katakana to refer to the "dream" world, and in kanji to mean the real world.
The key the White Rabbit gives you after Stella's World is "sekai" in kanji, so it's different from the capital-W World keys you collect. But... item names are capitalized, so it's a little misleading when you see it in the menu.
There's the same distinction for "yume," Dream. Though that one's less clear; I mean, the children say it even when they seem to think it's just a normal dream. Oh well. There are a few times it was said the normal way, so I went with it.
While not quite the same as the above, there are some other uses of katakana which are varying levels of notable.
Most instances of "person" are "hito" in katakana. Same for "heart," "kokoro" in katakana. It felt like it would be weird and/or pointless to capitalize those.
In the scene at the end of Joshua's World, all appearances of the character "me" (primarily, it means "eye") become katakana. I couldn't do much beyond throwing in a "what eye said."
The God of the Worlds, mentioned in Allen's journal in the final area and by the Cheshire Cat in his ending, is "kamisama" in katakana to match. But I sorta had to capitalize the regular God too, so for the diary I did "GOD," and for the Cheshire Cat I made sure he was specific it was "their" god.
And lastly, the "love" in Recipient of Love is in katakana.
The joke with the squirrel who lets you play Tetris is that squirrel is "risu," so... "Teto-risu."
Originally, the best I could think of was "Acorny Pajitnut" (from Alexey Pajitnov), but later I changed it to The NuTetris. Oh yes.
Oh, and... no, playing Tetris doesn't actually do anything. You just get compliments from the squirrel/your partner if you game over at certain levels (30+ for the best one). It's just a distraction from the main game, I guess.
"One rock two birds" was almost a direct translation. "Wan rokku tsuu baado." Yeah.
The blurred parts at the end of each World's notebook are... a little ambiguous. But I think I got them right. Rick's is the one I'm least sure about. (EDIT: The novel provides the complete text of each notebook, so they're all correct now.)
One dash equates to one letter, just like a dot meant one character in the Japanese version. Had it not been that way, it would be a lot harder to guess.
The first riddle from Chelsy's grandma was originally "Sora wa niji. Oyatsu wa sanji. Ima wa nanji? A. Futa-moji."
One way of reading the question is "There's a rainbow in the sky. Snack time is at three o' clock. What time is it now?" However, because it's in ambiguous hiragana, the answer reads it as "so-ra is two characters, o-ya-tsu is three characters," and thus "i-ma" is two characters.
My replacement goes for the same idea of counting letters, but is probably trickier than the original. Oh well, you're not the one solving it. (There's also a joke to be had about how it's written in a "letter"...)
The second riddle was unchanged, but works a bit better in Japanese because of the lack of subject: the Japanese can be read as "when it stands, it gets shorter, when it sits, it gets taller."
There's probably meant to be a link between Joshua's dice thing and his eye thing, because the word for "eye" is also used for the "pips" on a die. In fact, there's one more Joshua-related "me"...
...in the metric sheep riddle, which was pretty weird to begin with.
It went "mee, mee, cen, mee, mee, kilo, mee, M M ? M M K M" ("mee" being the Japanese equivalanet of "baa"), and... all you had to do was know that "cen(timeter)" starts with C and not A/V/Z, I guess?
I changed it to K H D M D C M for kilometer, hectometer, decameter, meter, decimeter, centimeter, millimeter. I left the choices the same since whatever.
The puzzle to figure out Teacher's name was designed to make sense in English, yet used Japanese equivalents for the words. Thus, the original read more like "I'm in beverage, but not in skating-place."
I decided this would be too hard (granted, the original seems pretty tricky for the average Japanese player), but didn't want to make it as straightforward as "I'm in drink, but not in rink," so I went for a compromise.
Originally, the third one was "vex" and "ex," written in Japanese as "to torment" and "outer," so even knowing the answer it took me a while to get. Miwashiba recognized the difficulty and later changed it to "seven" and "seen."
XXXX was just "XX" originally, but I extended it to four because yeah it's clearly "love" and the two X's stand for "a-i." This way, it can also be seen as "hate" or "kill" or a few other things.
The Shards of XXXX that help Allen remember his parents at the end and lead to Recipient of Love are a big hint, but with everything else put together it's not too hard to figure out. White carnations meaning "pure XXXX" is the dead giveaway.
I was a little inconsistent and unsure about "XXXXd" versus "XXXXed" for "loved," but, uh... Let's say that was partly intentional? Maybe?