SSAP - Translation Notes

What goes on when trying to translate Satan’s Space Amusement Park? Well, here’s some of the notes of whatever confusing joke passed by.

Ekoro/Ecolo/Ecoro - Just about the most egregious case of “Spell my Name With an S” I’ve experienced ever. So I’ve been working with [Ekoro] for the longest time, fan translations rolled with [Ecolo], and the 25th Anniversary Book spells it as [Ecoro]. I rolled with the third option, mainly because the files use ECO for his data, and because it sounds like a hybrid of both spellings. And it makes the whole “corocoro” derivative theory more sensible. AND IT TOOK THE OFFICIAL ENGLISH RELEASE OF PUYO TETRIS TO CONFIRM IT’S “ECOLO.”

On an unrelated note, Ecolo doesn’t register as either Boys or Girls in the mobile game “Puyo Puyo!! Quest,” implying that Ecolo is a genderless being. Yes, even if Ecolo uses “boku” as the I-pronoun of choice and has a vaguely masculine human form. Though with Puyo Tetris being a thing, all intents and purposes, male pronouns are used. At least, when I go back to fix everything.

Satan - Okay, I know he’s called “Dark Prince” over here. However, he’s called Satan over in Japan, and it’s even noted in 3D Puyo Tsu. I am going to keep his name intact, as that is what I am used to. It’s fine that he’s named Dark Prince for the sake of “Oh, we called him that before so we’ll keep it that way for consistency.”

The sudden change in translation direction - So during Procrastination Time, Puyo Tetris happened between chapters 8 and 9. You might notice that the writing has taken a sudden swerve in style, in an attempt to capture the charm of Puyo Tetris. I cannot fully emulate it due to my own style taking precedence in some cases, but it's there in places.

Chapter 1

Ecolo Nicknames - This was a carry-over from the Puyo game translations, when he just called them (name)-chan, which is used to refer to girls, or to sound nickname-y. Ecolo has a strong attachment for Ringo, so I wouldn’t put it above him to have him use a cutesy nickname. Ecolo acts incredibly childish to not use nicknames. As for referring to Satan as “pops,” the word in question is 「おじさん」 which is akin to “uncle” or “old man.” And yes, that includes “Old Man Stan.” It’s too hard to NOT have him call him “Stan.”

Spasstime - I dunno, How would you make Amitie derp on “Space-time”?

“She just curled up her brows...” - It’s our good friend “brows look like the ハ character” sentence from the first book. I cannot do a straight translation of this.

“...we've been conditioned to suspect anything they do is sorta shady business.” - Arle uses the expression 「 疑心暗鬼 」 which means “ Suspicion will raise bogies.” or “Once you suspect something, everything else will look suspicious.” Yeah, this is from Arle’s mouth. I thought it’d be something from Ringo, but nope. The sentence had Arle’s pronoun. I kinda had to slang it up a bit because Amitie was being a derp and asked what the expression meant. Amitie seems like the type to be slow on what slang is.

Chapter 4

Draco’s official spelling - So Draco has the “centaur or centauros” debate going on for her. The Charagumin spelling is the former, but she was spelled out the latter in the first game AND Puyo Tetris. For the sake of current-day consistency, I went with the latter.

Chapter 5

You're killing me here~! - The phrase here is「 ツボに入る」, an expression of laughter that roughly equates to “laughing my head off,” “cracking up,” or something similar.

Chapter 6

"S-...Seh WAAAAAAAHT!?" (and the rest of the garbled shouting) - Exactly what you expect. Ringo ended up corrupting actual words into shout-y sounding ones, so I gotta fit the bill!

"Force yourself to!" - Line changing time! Schezo told Ringo to “huff your chest”, in the context of “SUCK IT UP!” Schezo’s blunt, but I had to find a way for him to say that line in a Schezo-y way, because he talks a bit more old-fashioned. It was kinda hard.

IT'S A NOPPERA-BO~~~! - It’s an actual yokai. Who knew? They’re basically faceless humans.

Basically everything Yu & Rei says - PUNS. EVERY TRANSLATOR’S NIGHTMARE. I had to pretty much rewrite every pun, wordplay, and riddle they threw into something else while retaining the basic spirit geddit? of each question. THERE’S A REASON WHY THEY HAVE THEIR OWN SECTION OF TL NOTES!

"You many not know what you're getting into, but we're going to commemorate this 'hullabaloo' with a quiz 'rendezvous,' which you're in 'aren't you'~?" - Basically reiterating 「出会い」「であい」「でない」 like a rhyme of some kind.

"Before you’ll even notice, we’ll stamp you up and seal the deal for you~!" - They used「押して」writing, but if written like 
「押し手」it means “stamp” or “seal.” Geez this one is pretty next level wordplay.

These are the ones for the Quiz segment:

1. Tori means bird, but what kind of tori doesn’t fly?
   Answer: Sumotori (those sumo wrestlers)
2. Name a pan (bread) that you can’t eat!
   Answer: Frying pan
3. Pai is pie, but what’s a pai you can drink?
   Answer: Kanpai! (As in ”Cheers!” and then you take a drink.)
4. What’s up top a table when it breaks?
   Answer: a breakdown (this reading is used: 故障. The other phonetically identical one, 胡椒, is “pepper”)
5. What is the biggest kai ever to exist?
   Answer: Sekai (world)
6. Which is the particularly bright Puyo?
   Answer: The Red Puyo, because it has “aka,” particularly in the word akarui (明るい) meaning “bright.”

3 was actually a happy accident while I took an initial skim-through of the book. It just went “DING!” and I immediately wrote it down somewhere so I don’t lose it.

"Ah, that was fun! It's only right to thank you for making this a spirit-ed night!" - Yu said “thanks” with「アリが十匹」which reads “ten ants” but sounds near phonetically identical to ありがとう. HOW DO YOU TRANSLATE THAT!?

That /DEDD Ringo at the end of the chapter? THAT’S ME. THAT’S ME AFTER TRYING TO MAKE NEW PUNS. Though I have to give some credit to a couple of friends for helping me bust my butt over these puns.