<![CDATA[FE Fates Localization: Is Hinata the only potential father who can die? (Error? Minor)]]>Hinata

This is another post in my ongoing Fire Emblem Fates localization comparison posts! I discuss anything from major to minor changes here as I play through the game.

Today, I look at Hinata’s death quote in English and Japanese. It is a minor change (or perhaps an oversight) that makes it seem like he dies in English while retreating in Japanese.

Please note that this post is purely informative and may share some opinion, but this does not mean the change is necessarily good or bad. A change is just a change that is being looked into, and you can be the judge of whether you like it or not!

It is all just for fun and curiosity for me. : )

Let’s take a look at his death quote in English:

Hinata: I’ll never turn my back…to an enemy…I will fight…’til the en—

He just gets cut off there, right in the middle of the quote. Maybe he collapsed. I suppose one can say he fainted and so still lives another day. Or, perhaps, he died. There is no variation in the text dump between Classic/Casual that I saw. Regardless, its equivalent in Japanese is below:

Hinata: 敵に背中を見せるのは…恥だ…それでも、俺はタクミ様の臣下として…あの方を置いては…死ねないんだ…ここは、撤退するしか…ねぇな…

Turning my back on the enemy…is embarrassing… but as Lord Takumi’s retainer…I can’t just die…and leave him behind… I have no choice…I’ve gotta retreat…

You can see how he very clearly retreats, be it Classic or Casual. I talked about this on my Selena post, but fans of the game already know that the men are the ones who determine the child, while women only determine the hair color. This is the opposite in Awakening. As a result, the women do not “need” to live in the game play sense to produce them. This is purely from a gameplay perspective, however. The only men who can die are those that produce no children in Japanese (Fuga, Izana, etc).

Yet, Hinata seems to die, and is the only one of the first generation males who can produce kids that does so, judging by the English translation. Of course, as I said, he could have simply fainted mid-sentence, and am reading too deeply.

But seeing as the rest of the translated quotes for the male characters include the lines about withdrawing, I wonder if this was perhaps an oversight on the translator’s part.

Death by mistranslation, perhaps?

Update (09/05/17)

Years later, a reader brought this up:

This is pretty late, but I think it should be noted that if Hinata dies before being recruited in Birthright, he says this in Japanese:

敵に背中を向けるのは…恥だ…

俺は…最後まで…立ち向かっ……

Which is, as far as I can tell (read: online translators) very similar to the English line here. In that scenario, Hinata is be separated from Takumi, and he actually would die. So I think it’s very plausible that it was indeed an oversight and the alternate death quote was accidentally copied over.
They’re right! That is indeed the line that seems to have led to our English one. So it really seems he did end up getting killed due to a translation mix up!
We will never know for sure though!

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What do you think? Did he faint or die? Do you think it was an oversight by the translator considering the rest of the death quotes?

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