Bug’s Life and Antz. Armageddon and Deep Impact. And the four films Pinocchio, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, Pinocchio: A True Story, and Pinocchio and the Water Of Life. Sometimes, very similar media products get released at the same time. While this phenomenon is well recognized in cinema, as per the label “twin films“, it can happen elsewhere too. Case in point, between August 2020 and April 2021, the card games Hearthstone and Magic the Gathering respectively released their “Scholomance Academy” and “Strixhaven” expansions, each centered around the concept of a magical school.
As I’ve mentioned before, I like card games, and I like puns. Indeed, I’ve written serious research articles on Hearthstone puns, and written posts about both Hearthstone and Magic translation on this blog. But the overlap between these two expansions gives me an opportunity to do something I’ve long wanted to do: compare how the two games approach the translation of wordplay and humor.
Obviously humor is not the key purpose of either of these games. I think we can say unquestionably that gameplay comes first. But there’s a clear effort by their English language teams to include jokes and create lighthearted atmosphere. There are plenty of articles about the best jokes and puns from Hearthstone and Magic, and my work so far has evidenced that there is no question both games’ translation teams consider wordplay part of their job. But does the translation of jokes occur to the same extent? And what can we learn about humor translation through examining how the two games approach it? More importantly, can my readership put up with one more rhetorical question? Through looking at how the two games translate humor against a similar thematic background, I hope to answer these kinds of questions throughout this blog post. So let’s dive in with the first of the two sets to be released, and enter the Japanese jokes and wordplay found at Hearthstone’s Scholomance Academy.
Wordplay Romance at Scholomance
Before analyzing wordplay in translation, we need to establish what kind of wordplay exists in a base text. Now, I haven’t analyzed every Hearthstone set, nor have I played the game continuously across all its expansions. But it seems that Scholomance takes its card names a bit more seriously than some other expansions. Perhaps the school’s principal is a bit of a stick in the mud? Regardless of the reason why, the number of English cards which have explicit jokes in their names is quite low. I believe it’s just six: (1) Transfer Student is a gameplay joke, as it’s effect “transfers” depending on the board; (2) Goody Two-Shields puns of “two-shoes”; (3) School Spirits plays with “school spirit” to evoke actual ghosts; (4) a Teacher’s Pet is usually a student rather than a beast of burden; (5) attending Cutting Class ironically means, of course, that you are not cutting class; and (6) a brain freeze is usually something you get, rather than something you inflict on a minion (after you’ve played another card, to get that sweet combo damage).
So let’s start our investigation with the simplest of questions: do these six cards get “joke” names in their Japanese translations? For “Transfer Student”, the answer is “kinda?”. It’s just literally translated into the Japanese word for a “transfer student”. Which is fine, the joke in the English is more “gameplay based” than a traditional pun, and the card’s ability does “transfer”.
How about “two shields”? Here, the answer is a resounding “yes”. The Japanese name 盾情可憐 (junjoukaren) is a pun of 純情可憐, a phrase with the same pronunciation which means “pure of heart and beautiful”. By changing 純 (jun, pure) to 盾 (jun, shield), the Japanese version creates a “shield” joke in a manner that mirrors the English one quite well. The Japanese version of “School Spirits” then does the same thing, but double. The new name 全校懲霊 (zenkou chourei) is a pun off the homophonous 全校朝礼 (zenkou chourei). The first part of both sequences just means “all school”. The original 全校朝礼 though is a “all-school-morning-greeting”, which refers to a kind of morning meeting or assembly. The 全校懲霊 version replaces 朝 (chou, morning) with 懲 (chou, punish) and 礼 (rei, gratitude) with 霊 (rei, spirits), creating an “all school spirit punishment”.
For the next three cards, we start off with a case of non-translation. The card “Teacher’s Pet” just literally becomes a “teacher’s pet”. As in, a pet owned by the teacher. The use of “pet” to mean “favorite person” doesn’t transfer in Japanese, so the literal translation doesn’t recreate the joke. The “Cutting Class” card, however, features a pretty incredible localization. Like like 全校懲霊, the new title 斧刀講 is a “fake” word which sounds the same as a “real” word. But the level of intricacy is a step above what we saw earlier: first, the “fake” word 斧刀講 is created by combining the respective kanji for “axe”, “sword”, and “lecture/course”. So a 斧刀講 is an “axe & sword class”. The pronunciation of this hypothetical class is futoukou which is homophonous with a word that doesn’t use any of those three kanji. Instead, the “real” futoukou is written as 不登校, and means “to be truant” or “to not attend school”. That’s right, the translation has done something incredibly difficult: the joke “Cutting Class” becomes, with little modification, a joke about cutting a cutting class, creating an almost literal joke translation across extremely different languages.
The translation of “Brain Freeze” isn’t as complex, but does also show humor localization. Japanese people don’t have a term like “brain freeze” they use regularly after eating ice cream and the like (they just say their head hurts), so the card’s name is switched to “atama o hiyase! (cool your head!)”. Not bad, especially considering the art.
In terms of total pun translations then, we get 4/6 or 5/6 then, depending on how generous we want to be. Really solid! But unfortunately for our poor translators, their job doesn’t end there. While Scholomance Academy is on the low side for pun titles, it does have a word play theme throughout: lots of cards have alliterations for their titles. How many? Well… this many.
That’s 21/135 cards, which has to be more than you get by chance. So what is a Japanese translator to do? Alliteration isn’t a big tradition in Japanese writing. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but it’s not as historically discussed or valued as in Egnlish language wordplay. And we didn’t see any alliteration with the School Spirits or Cutting Class translations earlier… although maybe there is some kind of extra wordplay hidden in the wordplay? For instance, in 全校懲霊 (zenkou chourei) we have a kou/chou pairing right? That kind of middle-rhyme is something I saw in Magic back when I last wrote about it. And with 斧刀講 (futoukou), there’s a bit of a rhyme with tou and kou… maybe? But this could all just be chance too. Alright, there’s no way to find out if or how the translators tackled this alliteration theme without looking at all the cards, so it’s time to pull out the big guns. We need a table. A table in alphabetical order! A table where, while you read it, you keep in mind that a lot of the Japanese words are completely made up and that’s why their literal translations feel a bit odd.
| Card Name (E) | Card Name (J) | Literal J Translation | Wordplay? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cutting Class | 斧刀講 (futoukou) | Axe-sword lecture | Kanji Pun 斧刀講 is not a word, but is homophonous with 不登校 (school absence) |
| Educated Elekk | 英才エレク (eisai ereku) | Talented elekk | Alliteration! |
| Fishy Flier | 空を翔けるトビウオ (sora o kakeru tobiou) | Sky-flying flying fish | Yes… on death (see below) |
| Frazzled Freshmen | しんどい新入生 (shindoi shinnyuusei) | Frazzled new student | Alliteration! |
| High Abbess Alura | 大修道院長アルーラ (daishudouinchou aruura) | Archimandrite Alura | No |
| Intrepid Initiate | 図太い徒弟 (zubutoi totei) | Brash apprentice | Maybe? toi and to(te)i? |
| Judicious Junior | 燦然たる三年生 (sanzentaru sannensei) | Radiant third-year | Rhyme sanzen/sannen |
| Plagued Protodrake | 疫病始祖ドレイク (ekibyoushiso doraiku) | Disease origin drake | No |
| School Spirits | 全校懲霊 (zenkou chourei) | All-school ghost punishment | Rhyme kou/chou |
| Self-Sharpening Sword | 自己研鑽の剣 (jikokensan no ken) | Self-improving sword | Maybe? Pretty sure ken/ken pair is intentional |
| Shadowlight Scholar | 影光の探求者 (eikou no tankyuusha) | Shadowlight pursuer | Kanji Pun 影光 (shadowlight) is not a word, but is homophonous with 栄光 (honor) |
| Shifty Sophomore | 偽善系の二年生 (gizenkei no ninensei) | Hypocrite-type second year | Rhyme zenkei/nensei |
| Smug Senior | イキってる四年生 (ikitteru yonensei) | Smug fourth-year | Yes… on death (see below) |
| Soul Shear | 魂剪断 (tamashii zendan) | Soul sever | No |
| Sorcerous Substitute | 代理鏡師 (dairi kyoushi) | Replacement mirror-expert | Kanji Pun 代理鏡師 is not a word, but is homophonous with 代理教師 (a substitute teacher) |
| Sphere of Sapience | 智慧の宝珠 (chie no houju) | Wishing stone of wisdom | No |
| Star Student Stelina | 最優秀生徒ステリーナ (saiyuushuu seito suteriina) | Start student Stelina | Alliteration! |
| Steward of Scrolls | 筆記の執精 (hikki no shissei) | Note-taking persistence spirit | Kanji Pun 執精 (persistence spirit) is not a word, but is homophonous with 執政 (steward) |
| Trick Totem | 魔術のトーテム (majutsu no tootemu) | Magic totem | No |
| Turalyon, the Tenured | 終身教授テュラリオン (shuushin kyoujuu tyurarion) | Tenured professor Turalyon | No |
| Wyrm Weaver | ワーム・ウィーヴァー (waamu wiivaa) | Wyrm weaver | No |
There you have it. Do we have a joke or bit of wordplay in every card? No. But including our prior two kanji puns from Cutting Class and School Spirits we have a total of four kanji puns, three cases of straight-up alliteration, three cases of rhyme, and two places where some kind of wordplay might be present. Putting that all together, that’s 14/21 successful localizations! Not bad at all! Especially given the fact that the translators have added jokes in where none were before to make up for where translations of humor were a bit too difficult.
For instance, in English there’s a card called “Carrion Studies”. You might be saying “hey, that’s not funny!”, in which case, you’re right. I regret to inform you that some Hearthstone cards don’t have jokes in their titles. But the Japanese team has fixed this no-joke problem by translating the card as 歴死学の予習 (rekishigaku no yoshuu). Once again, 歴死学 is one of those kanji compounds that isn’t a real word. But it means “old-death-study” literally, which is pretty equivalent to “carrion” meaning wise, and 歴死学 is homophonous with 歴史学 (rekishigaku), which is just the study of history. What’s really impressive about this, as well as all the jokes in the table above, is that they aren’t just jokes. They are academia jokes. The translators are doing both humor translation and theme translation at once, clearly molding their jokes to fit in with the card set’s theme.
Here’s another addition: the card name Brittlebone Destroyer is not a joke in English. The Japanese name of 粉骨の砕身者 (funkotsu no saishinsha) is literally a “Bone-dust Body-smasher” which seems odd… until you realize that 粉骨砕身 (funkotsusaishin) is a Japanese idiom which means “to do one’s best”. More literally, it means to make efforts until one’s body and self are pulverized into dust. By splitting apart this idiom, the translation works in a bit of wordplay into the character’s name, while clearly signaling the key information that its a skeleton who grinds bodies and bones into dust.
Our third added joke does something similar. There is a phrase in Japanese written as 電光石火 (denkou sekka), or literally “electric light rock fire”, which references the second lightning hits a rock to stand as a metaphor for something that is very fast or very sudden. The Japanese translation of the (again, unfunny in English) title “Lightning Bloom” plays with this saying by labeling the card 電光刹花. This kanji compound is also read as denkou sekka, but the sekka changes from “rock fire” to “momentary flower”, which does a great job evoking the card’s art and function. Interestingly, Pokemon made a similar joke too a long time ago. The pokemon attack known in English as “quick attack” is also denkou sekka in Japanese. We don’t know the kanji though, because Pokemon games use hiragana mostly (so the children can play).
Here’s an interesting case where a joke is made more on theme: in English, the name “Crimson Hothead” is not a joke, really. I mean, the card is a dragon, and like, dragons spit fire I guess? Sometimes? Not frost dragons. And I know Warcraft has some frost dragons. Okay, the dragon is holding fire though so… let’s call this one a half joke in English. The Japanese translation abandons any links to fire though, and instead emphasizes the larger theme of school jokes, translating the card as a kurimuzon (crimson, obviously) ryuugakusei. Now ryuugakusei is normally written as 留学生 and means “study abroad student”. But they’ve written it as 竜学生 instead, replacing the first kanji in “study abroad” with the homophonous kanji for “dragon”. Even if we concede that “hothead” is a dragon pun, I’d say this version is even better, as it keeps with the whole “school” theme.
There are then two cards which aren’t puns on paper, but turn into puns when they die. The “Fishy Flier” card isn’t much of a joke, but when it dies it creates a card called ten ni noboru tobiou. The phrase literally means “flying fish climbing to the heavens”, but “climb to the heavens” is often used to refer to peoples’ deaths. So kind of literal, but there is a metaphor/literal play on both cards. More humorous is then the card イキってる四年生. This reads as ikitteru yonensei, or “Smug Fourth-Year”. Not too funny? Well, when it dies, it creates the card 生きていない四年生, which reads as ikitenai yonensei, or “Not Living Fourth Year”. The wordplay puns off the fact that イキってる almost sounds like 生きている, which means “to be alive”. When it dies though, it is no longer smug or alive.
The final wordplay addition is then quite unique out of what we’ve seen so far. The card Ogremancer in English again has no real pun. In Japanese, the card puns on itself a bit through the name 往餓術師 (oogajutsushi). The 術師 (jutsushi) ending is unremarkable, as it is common in “-mancer” translations in Japanese fantasy games. The first two characters 往餓 though are quite interesting. They literally mean “go to” and “starve”, but together are pronounced ooga. Not OOOOOga like a 1950s cartoon character oogling some one, but like “OH-Gah”. That’s right, “ogre”. And, hey, the skeletons the card summons are kind of… going to… starve? That’s 往餓, right? It’s a bit of a reach, but it’s certainly quite fun, and using four kanji instead of a katakana-kanji pair makes the “ogremancy” look more fantastical and arcane.
What about the other jokes though? Hearthstone doesn’t just use jokes in card titles, but also in flavor text and sometimes even the lines cards say when they enter the battlefield. I’ll be honest, I don’t have the time to listen to every card’s vocal lines. And I imagine you don’t want to see every joke (non-)translation. So let’s keep it simple: the Hearthstone Japanese translators do make an effort to translate puns in the flavor text, and here are some examples of great jobs that all do really clever/interesting things that involve ideas/techniques its worth being aware of:
- The card Desk Imp in English has the flavor text “I feel inky”. This references the voice line of a different card from the game’s first set. The Japanese doesn’t keep this reference, but instead continues Hearthstone’s love of “imp” puns, writing:
インプがインクでインゴウインコの絵を描いた
This line is filled with rhyme and alliteration, read as inpu ga inku de ingouinko no e o kaita or “The imp drew a picture of the cruel parrot with ink”. Why “cruel parrot”? Well, beyond the rhyme/alliteration, that’s the Japanese name of the English card Monstrous Macaw. So they actually did keep a reference to an extant card in the translation too. Additionally, this phrase links to a Japanese tongue twister: bouzu ga byoubu ni jouzu ni bouzu no e o kaita (a monk skillfully drew a picture of a monk on a folding screen), creating a bit of extra humor for Japanese fans.
- The flavor text for the aforementioned alliterative Intrepid Initiate in English exclaims “how do you like them apples?”. The Japanese instead uses the first person perspective to note that the Initiate “added a pain spell to this apple”, and then asserts “eat it, my peinappuru“, which is a clever little combination of “pain” and “apple”. I have a pain, I have an apple, uh, painapple.
- The earlier Crimson Hothead has English flavor text that puns “he has a passion for spelling”. Get it, spell-ing? Like magic? Anyway, the Japanese goes all out and stretches the “study abroad” pun in the translated title, noting that the dragon came to Scholomance because it thought it was short for “School-of-romance”, and is a “hot young maiden”. So, yeah, they got the “hot” joke in after all, just ended up moving it from the title to the flavor text.
- The card Divine Rager has a “when you need to rage against the dying light” joke in it’s English flavor text. The Japanese name for this card is sei-reijaa, or “Holy Rager”. This isn’t a joke in and of itself, put pays off in the flavor text wherein the card becomes a bit biblical, noting that “when it comes to the father, the son, and the holy rager’s true names, this one is the spirit”. Where’s the joke? Well, the word they use for spirit in Japanese is seirei… and then there’s this little –ja ending thing you can slap onto a Japanese sentence which makes it sound like a professor from a manga is talking. So “this one is the spirit” comes out as “koitsu wa seirei-jaa” (the final sound is drawn out). So actually, the flavor text changes the title of the card into a pun.
- The card Shardshatter Mystic destroys “soul shards” in your deck, so it’s English flavor text jokes that it “enjoys a good soul-crushing defeat”. In Japanese, the text instead notes that “so that it can break soul shards without error” it is always “wracking its brains”. The joke comes from both phrases using forms of the same verb kudaku, which means “to shatter”. The “can break” is kudakeru, and “wracking your brains” in Japanese is written as “breaking your heart”, or kokoro o kudaku, creating a 砕ける・砕く pair that links to the Japanese name of 魂石砕きのミスティック.
- The card Bloated Python makes a programing joke in English, noting that Scholomance students prefer C++. In Japanese, we snake along with “this one will have a hebii impact on grades”, punning the Japanese word hebi (snake) against the borrowed hebii (heavy) to reproduce the snake pun in a form that still fits an academic context.
- The card Partner Assignment makes a joke referencing it’s art in English (below, left), noting how in group work someone ends up doing all the “legwork”. In Japanese, the phrase ashi o tsukau shigoto, or “a job that uses legs”, exists to refer to jobs that require a lot of running about, so this is used instead to keep the picture-based joke alive more or less as-is. A few other cards “luck out” on between-language equivalents in this way. In English, Draconic Studies warns of “burnout”, and the Japanese version of this, moetsukishoukougun, also involves a term (moeru) meaning “burn”. The Cabal Acolyte card then mentions that the minion found success through “pulling strings”, again punning off the art. Fortunately for our Japanese translators, the phrase “ito o hiku“, which literally means “to pull string”, has the same metaphorical meaning.
- In English, “Runic Carvings” notes that by carving runes into a totem, you RUNED (ruined) it. In Japanese, they take the verb 掘る (horu, to carve) and make a joke with it by explaining “that’s how you carve” via the construction 掘ルーンだ (horuunda). In Japanese, adding ~んだ (nda) to the end of a verb gives it an explanatory feel. While the explanatory form of “that’s how you carve” would therefore normally be 掘るんだ (horunda), by extending the middle vowel and changing everything before だ into katakana they jam the loan word “rune” into the phrase as well. There’s no “fail” pun, but there’s absolutely a “rune” pun and a reference to teaching and/or instruction.
- The minion Steeldancer calls itself “pretty powerful if you blade your cards right” in English, as it has a stronger effect if your weapon is powerful. The verb “played” and noun “blade” don’t rhyme in Japanese, so they instead compare a 舞踏会 and a 武闘会. Both are pronounced butoukai. The first is a “dance meet/event”, and the second is not actually a word, but jams the words “armed struggle” and “meeting” together to make a “armed struggle event”. The text then goes on to note that at a 舞踏会 you ダンス (dansu, dance) with your partner, but at a 武闘会 you 断す (dansu, cut off) them. So two puns in one!
- Last one: High Abbess Alura is, in English, all about “literally hitting the books”. The Japanese translation states that Alura instead gained “real” power through intensive study… “literally”. The word “real” is emphasized in the text via brackets as 「本当」 (hontou). Now, normally this word just means “really”. But the bracketed text draws attention to the actual kanji that are used to write “really” in Japanese: 本 is a book, and 当 is used in a verb meaning “to hit”. So Alura acquired “real [book hitting]” power. A quite impressive job reproducing the English, as it requires people to reflect on the characters they otherwise mostly unthinkingly use every day.
This is, obviously, an incomplete list. There are many non-translations, places where literal translation works fine (one joke for a frost spell notes that a student “froze” when called on, which you can also say in Japanese), and extremely intricate jokes based on Japanese memes or famous anime phrases that would take paragraphs to unpack. But I think I’ve analyzed enough of these to make a very simple point: the Japanese Hearthstone version makes a huge effort to recreate a sense of whimsy and humor. Not all jokes make it through, but that’s an impossible ask. Many more do than I expected, and there are also jokes added in where none existed before to help make up for what’s lost. There is therefore no question that players of both the English and Japanese Hearthstone games view the game as one which embraces humor and jokes, which is quite a successful outcome. I believe I wrote in my last post on Hearthstone that I think Blizzard Entertainment should give the translators a raise; if they haven’t, I restress this opinion, and if they have, I think they should give them another. They’re really going all out.
But what about Magic? Will we see the same level of success? Let’s move on to the second half of our analysis then, going from Scholomance to Strixhaven… hey, what is it with schools that start with “S”?
Is Strixhaven Pun-hav-in’?
In Strixhaven, 13 of the 280 cards in the set have what I would call a clear pun in the title. It’s debatable, I suppose. I left out a card called “Snow Day” that freezes creatures because “a snow day is cold” isn’t a pun to me, but included “Academic Probation” because in my mind it puns “being in trouble” with “an academic forbidding something”, the latter being what the card does in the game. Some people might disagree on where I drew the line. But rounded up or down, 13/280 isn’t a huge amount. It’s less than 10%. That said, it’s not 0 either. There’s definitely some effort to put jokes throughout the card names in the set.
The clearly school/academia related ones, such as Honor Troll, Magma Opus, Bookwurm, or, my favorite, a lizard called a Hall Monitor are stand outs in my opinion, but certainly all of these cards’ names involve some kind of joke. For instance, a “big play” is a successful sports move normally, as shown in the card’s art, but as per the card’s effect in this case it is also something that makes you literally big. Likewise, when we say something “blots out the sky”, that usually isn’t creatures made of literal ink blots, a “heated debate” normally involves no fire, and when you “square up” with someone that means “get ready to fight” not “become a square”. A “pop quiz” also doesn’t involve anything “popping”, a “body of research” doesn’t literally have a body, and when someone is “buried in books” they usually aren’t, you know, literally buried in books. But how do the Japanese titles do in translating these jokes? Well, let’s whip out another table and have a look!
| Card Name (E) | Card Name (J) | Literal J | Translation Wordplay? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Academic Probation | 謹慎補講 (kinshinhokou) | Supplemental discipline course | No |
| Bookwurm | 本のワーム (hon no waamu) | Book wurm | No |
| Big Play | 大技 (oowaza) | Big trick | Yes |
| Blot out the Sky | 空の覆い隠し (sora no ooi kakushi) | Sky coverage | No |
| Body of Research | 研究体 (kenkyuutai) | Body of research | No |
| Bury in Books | 本への没頭 (hon he no bottou) | Immersing in books | Kinda |
| Double Major | 二科目専攻 (nikamoku senkou) | Two subject major | Kinda |
| Hall Monitor | 講堂の監視者 (koudou no kanshisha) | Hall monitor | No |
| Heated Debate | 白熱する議論 (hakunetsu suru giron) | Incandescent debate | Yes |
| Honor Troll | 優等生のトロール (yuutousei no torooru) | Excellent student troll | No |
| Magma Opus | マグマ・オパス (maguma opasu) | Magma opus | Kinda |
| Pop Quiz | 抜き打ち試験 (nukiuchi shiken) | Sudden quiz | No |
| Square Up | 四角の構え (shikaku no kamae) | Square stance | No |
Five out of thirteen isn’t the worst score, but if we look carefully at the places where there is translation, we notice quite quickly that it mostly occurs for jokes that have a direct Japanese equivalent. Let’s start with the two absolute instances of wordplay in the Japanese card titles. The card “Big Play” becomes 大技, which indicates a “bold move” in Japanese and contains a kanji meaning “big”. About as good as a translation gets, as it maintains the sports reference and the basic premise of the joke! The “Heated Debate” joke works well too, as Japanese people also say things become “hot” when they are, well, fiery in a metaphorical sense. So calling the debate 白熱, a word that can mean both “incandescent” and “passionate” made up of a set of characters meaning “white heat”, works fine. All in all, good, straightforward stuff so far.
The three translations I labeled “maybe” then kind of work, but they have issues or might be a bit accidental. The use of 本への没頭 for “Buried in Books” is somewhat inspired, as the phrase 没頭 (bottou) figuratively means “to be immersed in” or “obsessed with”, but is written with kanji meaning “sink/drown head”. Now, the card art clearly shows the books hitting the creature’s body, but, hey, it’s not exactly completely buried in them is it? So let’s give this one a soft pass at worst.
Things are a bit more dicey with the next two though. The “Double Major” translation uses “two” in its name, which is certainly in line with the card’s art (below), effect, and the original pun. But “two” is not “double”. And this is also just how you would translate “double major” into Japanese if you weren’t trying to make a joke in many cases. So the translation kind of gets something across, but the translation would probably be the same even in the least funny game of all time.
Finally, rendering Magma Opus as the transliteration maguma opasu kind of works… the Japanese rendering of Magnum Opus certainly is magunamu opasu, and maguma is a loan word too. The issue is that Japanese people don’t use magunamu opasu that much to talk about someone’s great work. For instance, if you search the online resource eow.alc.co.jo, you’ll see they don’t even use the phrase マグナム・オパス (magunamu opasu) even once in their definition of “Magnum Opus”, which I think is fair to presume means that providing the transliteration wouldn’t help many Japanese people understand what a “Magnum Opus” is. The same is true of the dictionaries searched by Weblio. Now, this might be because if someone is looking up “Magnum Opus” they probably don’t know what a magunamu opasu is either. If you Google マグナム・オパス, you will find over 20 million results, including a Wikipedia page of that name. But many of these results are in English, and many are just product names. All in all, the phrase magunamu opasu is just not a super common way of saying “great work” in Japanese, at the end of the day. The joke still kinda works, yes. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to work for most people.
The rest of the jokes then are just dropped. Three might look like they are kept alive because their Japanese translation matches the English, but “book wurm”, “body of research”, and “hall monitor” don’t transfer as jokes. Japan doesn’t call voracious readers “book worms”, they don’t call someone’s research output a “body”, and their word for “monitor” is not homophonous with the names of lizard. Phrases like “sky coverage” likewise don’t mention ink, the Japanese word for “sudden quiz” doesn’t refer to “popping” anything, and a 優等生のトロール is just a troll with good grades. It doesn’t rhyme with “honors student” or anything like that.
But hey, that’s just some titles! Surely there’s jokes elsewhere to make up for what was missed, right? Well, no. Not as far as I can tell. This isn’t to say there isn’t a lot of effort in the translations of the cards as a whole. There certainly is a huge amount of energy being put into finding obscure words to create a sort of archaic, fantasy feel. For instance, “Pilgrim of the Ages” could have been a lot of things, but the translators used the word “星霜” for “ages”. Don’t know this term? Neither did I: it’s an obscure phrase that references how within a year both a star (星) passes around the earth (opposite, of course, but remember it’s an old phrase) and a frost (霜) occurs, making 星霜 a metaphor for the passage of time. Are there other words homophonous with 星霜? Oh yes. Are any of them related to schools, or funny if you swap them with 星霜? No. It’s not a joke, just a ye-olde feeling word that works well for an ancient spirit.
Additionally, lots of innovative kanji compounds are used for the names of spells, and the names of magic styles unique to the Strixhaven setting are given consistent, evocative translations. What’s an “ink caster” in Japanese? According to Magic, it’s a 書唱師 (see below), or a “write-cast-specialist”. Pretty good! It’s evocative, sounds like most Japanese words for “-mancy” style magic use, and looks all kanji-heavy and intimidating. But its not a pun. There’s even a translation of the odd phrasing “meeping organ” that appears in one English flavor text: the word becomes 鳴臓 (meizou, I’m guessing, which literally means “(animal) cry organ”) in Japanese. This must have been a miserable amount of work, but, no, it’s also not a pun.
Okay, so jokes aren’t really added to card’s titles. But what about flavor text? There’s lots of jokes in Magic’s flavor text! Some have to make it through in translation, right? Well… yes, but again only if the joke works via a pretty literal translation:
- The card “Arcane Subtraction” jokes that students learn “little”. Japanese does translate the joke here, albeit in the inverse, stating that students “learned a little thing” in on the day.
- A card depicting a “Frost Trickster” notes that you need to “keep cool”. Japanese instead says “don’t get hot”. This again inverts the joke, but works well in keeping temperature related humor present, as being “heated” is (as mentioned earlier) an extant turn of phrase in Japan(ese).
- A card called “Resculpt” which summons a powerful creature notes that critics were “struck first by its beauty, and then by its fists”. In Japanese, the verb uchinomesu can similarly be used to mean “punch out” and “overwhelm emotionally”, so a straightforward translation is applied and works perfectly.
- Another “fire” card references a “burning need”, which is rendered quite simply and effectively as “desire to the extent of burning (moeru hodo no yokkyuu)” in Japanese.
- A statue that notes “a giant statue of a dwarf is still a giant statue” survives with a small tweak: it just becomes “a big statue of a dwarf is still big” since the Japanese adjective kyodai means “giant (big)” but not “giant (the fantasy creature)”. So the flavor text no longer has a double pun, but it’s still humorous.
- The aforementioned “Book Wurm” has a joke about “devouring a book” in English that becomes 本を貪る (hon o musaboru) in Japanese, which means… “devour a book”. The phrase works in both languages just fine, so the joke, unlike the book, survived. A latter joke about “double edged swords being double edged swords” works too, because Japanese has also adopted this idiom, as does a joke about “aiming higher” (as in, both literal aim and having ambition) for the same reason.
While much more straight forward than we saw with a lot of Hearthstone cards, these aren’t bad translations by any means! And it’s nice to see that some of the humor certainly transfers through. The translators also have done a really solid job making sure everything reads really smoothly, which is hard to convey via my descriptions. Still, we certainly don’t see that extra level of effort that we noted back in Scholomance Academy’s translation. Most of what I listed above are puns that, with some adjustment for phrasing, work more or less as-is when you switch the text from English to Japanese. When the puns would require a bit more work to function in Japanese, they are dropped, as in…
- The card “Divide by Zero” notes that the common denominator of misery, inadequacy, and failure is “you”. In Japanese, “you”, or more accurately omae, is just the 共通項 (kyoutsuukou), or “common item”. No division or fraction reference here.
- A card called a “Lumimancer” notes that the opponent is “too dim” to realize they lost in English. The Japanese instead calls the opponent “slow” via 鈍い, literally “dull”, which doesn’t relate to light at all.
- The card “Serpentine Curve” notes that “math bites”. You know, like a snake. In Japanese, the math is just “troublesome”. Which is fine, I suppose, as while the art still shows a snake the Japanese title doesn’t mention a serpent at all, just that the curve is “winding”.
- “Eyetwitch”, a floating bat-eye-thing, has English flavor text noting that mages see it as a perfect ingredient but it doesn’t see itself that way. No similar word play or even use of the kanji for eye (目) appears in the Japanese version.
- A bear that is “a bit overbearing” in English is just “overwhelming” in Japanese. There’s no bear reference at all in the new flavor text.
- A joke about “making a splash” before “showing a torrent” just becomes “I’ve seen bubbles, now show me a torrent”.
- The aforementioned card Square Up notes in English that “the most radical thing you can do is think inside the box“. As in, when you square a number, you write a radical, and a square is, of course, a box. The Japanese translation doesn’t even mention boxes, just noting that “thinking within the mold” can be the “most extreme method”.
We are obviously starting to see a trend in the Magic data. When the wordplay on a Magic card doesn’t work more-or-less “as is” in Japanese, jokes are abandoned for a fairly literal translation. But is this always the case? Well, let’s look at this link about the “Top 20 Best Puns in Magic”. How many remain in translation? I’m sorry to say it’s 0. For instance, the translation of Werebear’s “right to bear arms” just says “a right to hold weapons”; there is no use of the Japanese kuma (bear) or other related terms in the translation of “bear arms”. In Japanese the card Syncopate doesn’t combine references to the cards Power Sink and Dissipate. And the card Late to Dinner doesn’t have any death puns like in English, it’s new name just literally references being late to a meal.
Two of the most unfortunate, in my opinion at least, non-translations from cards on that list of 20 puns are then for Charming Prince and Urza’s Saga. Charming Prince puns on an actual game mechanic: “charms” are cards which give you three options. In Japanese, these “charms” are all called 魔除け (mayoke). But “Charming Prince” doesn’t reproduce this link, just becoming a literal “Charming (miryokuteki) Prince”. Similarly, the card “Urza’s Saga” in English is both the “types” Urza’s and Saga. It’s confusing, yes, but it’s a clever bit of word play. In Japanese, the word “Saga” in the card’s title and the word “Saga” in the card’s type are not the same, so the link is broken.
Am I being too nit-picky here? Yes, absolutely. Some of the cards listed in the top 20 puns article aren’t even translated into Japanese. In other cases, you can hardly blame the Japanese translators for choosing words like 魔除け for “charm” or 英雄譚 (eiyuutan) for “saga” years and years before other cards would joke about these words. And, more than everything, it’s so much easier to point out translation “misses” and provide no solutions, which is what I’m doing, then to actually translate. Do I know a way to translate “charming” into Japanese so that the sound mayoke somehow appears? No. No I don’t. So let me be clear: none of what I have written here is a critique.
Concluding the Class (Punning it all Together)
So what is my point in all of this? Again, it’s certainly not to say that any translation team are doing a bad job. The most important work for both the translator teams of Hearthstone and Magic is to make the cards playable in a new language, so that people who cannot speak to each other are playing what is ultimately the same game. Both teams unquestionably have done this with aplomb. But, as we have seen, there is a key difference between the ultimate outcomes of the localization of Hearthstone and Magic. Hearthstone players in both English and Japanese clearly each understand Hearthstone as a card game which embraces jokes, puns, and language play as part of the key experience. In contrast, for Magic players, those using English probably view Magic as a game which embraces humor to an extent beyond that of the Japanese player base.
Why does this difference exist though? Is one team of translators just better? I highly doubt that this kind of conclusion is correct or remotely useful. Certainly, there are bad translations and translators out there, but that’s not what we are seeing here. There’s no question that both teams are spending a lot of time on localizing these games. Complex rule interactions, English speakers inventing new words that don’t exist, references to prior cards, a need to keep the entire language use feeling “fantasy”… both teams are completing all these difficult tasks while turning the original English into Japanese. So I know I’m harping on a single point over and over here, but I want to make it absolutely clear that the point of this comparison was not to critique any translation team or practice that I studied. I literally don’t have a critique. Both teams did a great job.
Rather, the finding of the current study is just one simple fact: there is a difference between how much effort is placed into translating wordplay between the two card games. The next question, of course, is “why does this difference exist?”. Well, I can’t answer that with any 100% confidence, but I’m guessing that these factors all play a part:
- The Hearthstone Team has less cards to translate: There are about three Hearthstone sets a year, and they contain less than 150 cards each. In contrast, Magic releases four main sets a year (give or take) plus supplemental sets aimed at other formats, and these can each have over 300 cards plus cards. On top of this, there are often handfuls of cards designed here and there for special products. Simply put, I’m guessing that the turn-around on getting a Magic set translated is shorter, and there’s a bit more to do. This then links to the next issue, as…
- The Hearthstone Team probably has more time overall: Not only does Magic produce more cards than Hearthstone, the game text is often much more complex. Which means that the average card probably takes longer to render in Japanese. Now, certainly, Hearthstone translation involves something Magic doesn’t, as Hearthstone’s minions say things when they are summoned, attack, or die. But this means that voice actors are involved, and therefore co-ordinations between various teams, which slows everything down a bit. Indeed, even if a Hearthstone and Magic translator are handed the same number of minutes per card for translation time, the Hearthstone translator probably has more time to let ideas gestate in their brain, as the amount of text due in a given month is unquestionably less.
- Finally, Hearthstone probably views humor as more key to their game: I’m going out on a limb with this one, but I also imagine there’s also just a difference between the translation briefs (instructions) that are given to each localization team. I’m guessing that Hearthstone made “keep it funny” as part of their instructions, and resourced their team to do accomplish this. In contrast, I doubt the same instruction is given by Magic, or at least not to the same extent. Something like “keep it fantasy” probably took precedence. For instance, every once and a while Magic releases an entire joke set, filled with cards that are puns, wordplay, or just silly. Even now, these sets aren’t translated into other languages. This is understandable, certainly. It would be a huge amount of work for a non-core product. But it does reflect an idea that humor is for the English Magic player primarily. That is, humor is something that is great to translate when it can be rendered in another language within the time limits, but not core to the experience. In contrast, I bet Hearthstone sees puns as a larger key part of what the game itself is.
I’ve long railed against the idea of “untranslatable language”, but there’s no question that jokes are really hard to translate. Through looking at both games though, we can see that really hard does not mean can’t be done. Both teams have come up with a lot of strategies here for reproducing humor which we, as learners, translators, and hobbyists of Japanese can learn (because it’s a school setting, get it? hahaha I’m not good at this) from. And, yes, “just skip this joke” is absolutely a key strategy, as is “add a new joke elsewhere”. At the end of the day, what I hope any reader takes away from this post is that joke translation is possible, with the work of professionals from both of these games really giving us a great lesson in what can be done (and, indeed, what people do).
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Scripting Japan 
