Amitie and the Mysterious Egg - Translation Notes

Wondered what happened behind the scenes of the Amitie and the Mysterious Egg translation? That’s where this page comes in! I can explain the Japanese puns, wordplays, and other nonsensical things that were in the book that had to be changed around to keep the tone in English. And caused me much table flips.

The narration - Amitie is narrating the story, so I tried to use sentences that are expected to come out of her mouth. Amitie isn’t the brightest person in the world though, so a good chunk of the narration sounds a bit childish. At least I don’t have to use big words, right?

“Ringo-isms” - A bit of leftovers from a Puyo 7 fan translation. The translations made her use some math-y euphemisms, being that her chain spells are math terms (Sine, Cosine, etc.). I decided to roll with it, but I took care not to use it too much. She is described to be clear-minded, but a bit weird.

Tama’s name - I was rather torn on localizing it to “Eggie” to retain the “It came from an egg so I named it Eggie” explanation. The Japanese word for egg is “tamago” and Amitie just derived a name from that word. Real creative. I thought “Tama” sounded cuter than “Eggie” so I retained the original name at the cost of changing around the original sentence.

Carbuncle’s Nickname - Arle calls him ‘Kaa-kun’ but most translations change it to ‘Carby’. Seeing that Arle’s on First Name Basis with almost everyone, it seems...out of place. So I rolled with Carby too.

“What’s...Ihm-prihn-teeng?” - In the original text, Amitie and Ringo say it in different ways. Ringo says it in Kanji, while Amitie says it in Katakana. To note, Katakana is very simple and angular in writing, and Kanji has upwards 2000+ and is just about the most complex shit to memorize. Oftentimes in media, someone that speaks in 90% Katakana has some strange nonstandard accent. In this case, Amitie is being a Book Dumb derp and pronounced it like a five-year-old.

The usage of “mystery” and its derivatives - So uh...synonyms. ふしぎ and なぞ can be both read as “mystery”. The former word is more akin to things that leave you in awe, wonders. The latter is more about riddles and puzzles. And I accidentally settled with mystery with both words. My head hurts.

Ringo’s Songs - A sub-set of Ringo-isms, Ringo has a habit of breaking out into song (and has nothing to do with the fact Ringo’s VA also voiced Chihaya Kisaragi from IM@S). Basically I had to translate lyrics. It usually goes “WORD! WORD! WO~RD!” W-O-R-D!” and I had to find a 7-letter word that can translate from “fushigi”. Yeeah, you can imagine how many thesauruses I flipped.

Rider Politeness - Not so much a translation but more of a note on how Rider refers to her peers. Throughout the story, Rider is the only one to use honorifics. Everyone else just refers everyone by a name-only basis. Honorifics are more or less referring to someone with Mr.,Ms., and the like. Rider also has a bit of an innocent feel, so I felt that having her go “Mister” or “Miss” sounds polite and cute at the same time. Plus, in one lone cutscene in Puyo Fever 1, she referred Amitie as “Miss Amitie”. Rider eventually adopted an affectionate nickname for Amitie in later games.

“Oh la-ti-da!” - This is actually a localization of Raffine’s Noblewoman’s Laugh. The fan translations rolled with it and I decided to roll with it too. Perhaps to differentiate from her Madou counterpart Rulue (who doesn’t appear in this story)? Dunno.

“Arle’s eyebrows...” - Okay, this sentence was translated from something rather ridiculous if I did it straight-up. The sentence literally reads “Arle’s eyebrows looked like the ハ character while she talked.” Yeah uh, I’ll leave it to you on how nonsensical it sounds outside Japan.

Manju - It’s a type of Japanese confection with a red bean (anko) filling. That is its name, though I don’t think a good lot of you know what Manju is, so I left it in here anyway despite not being a localization.

“Thanks for the food!” - "itadakimasu!” is an expression of gratitude before you eat, like saying grace before meals. This is as straight as it can get, though some translations go for "Time to eat!”.

“...100-something-percent good-willed face...” - The number itself was written as “一○○％”, in the context of the circles being placeholders. Who knows what numbers were going to be in those placeholders?

“...grist to the mill.” - This is actually a straight translation of the idiom, in which basically means “something useful”.

“dangerolossal” - I THINK だいぶない is a portmanteau of Big and Dangerous, so I came up with a smoother portmanteau with Danger and Colossal.

"Whoa...whoopsie, upsy-daisy...whoah-ho-hoh!" - This is translated from exactly what Maguro shouts in the Puyo games. I didn’t find any established translations from them so I made up some sounds you’d expect to keep yourself in balance.

Takaoni - Takaoni is a Japanese variation of tag, so I couldn’t simply translate it as “tag”. Basically, to avoid getting tagged, you have to be in a place higher than the person that’s “it”.

The White Bird’s Speech - Remember the entry about Amitie mutilating “imprinting”? This one is an example of using Katakan for a foreign accent of some kind. Amitie doesn’t understand worth a damn thing from the bird, so I translated it into something a little tricky to interpret in English: Old English. Or Shakespearean. Whatever isn’t Modern English.

Thine? What time is it? -  WORDPLAYSSSSS. Okay, in actually, I managed to get to this conclusion on accident. The bird uses an archaic “you” pronoun to address Amitie, which phonetically sounds identical to “What time is it?” I would have to find a word that sounds CLOSE to time to retain the wordplay. Thine is the closest I could find, so I stuck with that.