Spoiler There's a gross pedophilic relationship in the english translation of BOTW and TOTK! The Nintendo of America translators are messed up!

[Kat23]

In Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, there's a relationship between two characters, a female Zora named Finley and a male Hylian named Sasan. It's funny, because in Japan the relationship between Finley and Sasan is definitely scripted as 1000% platonic, a platonic friendship -- there are no hints of any romantic relationship of any kind. But for some reason the people who handled the English translation (NoA, Nintendo of America, as opposed to Nintendo of Japan) made it romantic (and that's really messed up, because she is a child and he's a fully grown adult, so apparently Nintendo of America loves pedophilia and romanticizing innapropriate relationships between adults and children, also some people make the ridiculous argument that Zora age more slowly than Hylians or other races and that Sidon is over 100 years old in TOTK even thought he barely looks a day over 25, but come on!, arguing that it's okay for an adult Sasan to have a romantic relationship with Finley because she might be older than she looks despite her looking like she's 7 which is a total turn off and a no go is like making the absurd argument that an adult human being having sex with baby Yoda is totally cool because he's like 50 even though he has the literal body of an infant or toddler, no it's no, this is not okay or acceptable in any way shape or form, it's weird as hell, and it's so wrong, It's so weird like even if you tell me Finley is older than Sasan, also these explanations about her being "older" than Sasan don't work for me, it's not about age, but is she mature enough for a relationship? Someone who still acts like a child and says "I promised my mom not to go too far" should not date a man that travels Hyrule alone, regardless of age, and he shouldn't be calling her "my darling" nor should they be sending each other "love letters", and Sasan is definitely an adult and about the same size as Link). It isn't even a case of mistranslation in BOTW and TOTK when it comes to the relationship between Sansan and Finley -- it's just straight up changed from platonic friendship (in the Japanese version) to romantic relationship (in the english translation). Clearly someone on the English translation team either has a very messed up sense of humor or is into this sort of thing. Gross!!

Also, someone who finds that very upsetting said, "Just did the follow up quest in TOKT, they're still interacting. IDC how slow Zora's age or if it was translated wrong. Somebody screwed up, that is a CHILD and he's a FULLY GROWN ADULT." and "If you don't remember these two, Sasan is the pedophile fish-screwing Hylian man and Finley his child-fishwife from BOTW. Naturally, Nintendo saw fit to double down on this bizarre and creepy tiny sideplot and bring them back for a meaningless sidequest in TOTK."

Another added:

"Yes there’s been lots of talk about this quest, and there’s always the same outrage before somebody actually explains what happened.

Here’s the deal. It’s a translation error. In the original Japanese, they’re pen pals who want to go adventuring together. (Sasan wants a travel buddy, Finley wants to get away from Zora’s domain and explore the world). It’s purely platonic, and Finley only wants Sasan to be fit etc so he can protect them better. (Being strong and able to climb stuff easily is important for adventuring).

When Nintendo of America got the massive text dump to translate, somebody on the translation team was given this side quest to translate along with several others. Seeing a “two friends meet up” quest, they either went “Awe wouldn’t it be cute to make them lovers?” or interpreted it as such, and so translated the quest to be that way. After doing it they moved onto the next bunch of translations.

I’ll edit this in a bit once I’ve found the previous talks about this quest and will link them.

Edit: Found the detailed analysis of it

Edit 2: Another time it was brought up

Edit 3: And another time. Honestly? Just search in r/Breath_of_the_wild “Finley” and you’ll get a bunch of results."

Accidental mistranslation or not, because some people make the argument that the translator might not have even even seen the characters they were translating the text for and might have been just given the text to translate without knowing who these hundreds of side characters were or looked like (but I don't think it's mistranslation at all, like I said earlier it was straight out changed from platonic to romantic), the folks at NoA should be forced to change and fix it in the english translation because it makes the english translation straight out look and sound pedophilic, that's just freaking wrong and it's not what the Japanese version says. This really needs to be patched immediately. Completely changes absolutely everything about this sidequest in the english translation, people should start a petition and send it to NoA and demand that they patch it immediately because it's so creepy, cringy and wrong.

Check out the comments here and you'll see that a lot of other people are creeped out and disgusted by this and that I'm far from the only one:

Spoiler

https://www.reddit.com/r/Breath_of_the_Wild/comments/8dl1hn/finley_and_sasan/

https://ovarit.com/o/Women/2523/ped...lda-botw/db8601fd-b8bd-4fff-9188-38fb115b4e31

https://www.reddit.com/r/Breath_of_the_Wild/comments/v8d8l1/did_i_just_assist_a_sex_offender/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Breath_of_...love_this_game_but_this_quest_will_never_not/

https://www.reddit.com/r/botw/comments/njurmd/botw_oc_i_dont_care_if_finley_is_meant_to_be/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Breath_of_the_Wild/comments/zraas2/im_sorry_what/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Breath_of_...hy_has_no_one_talked_about_this_sus_af_quest/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Breath_of_...o_you_two_are_breaking_up_right_now_calamity/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Breath_of_...e_else_creeped_out_by_the_end_results_of_the/

Also, someone said online, " Yeah, the whole Finley and Sasan thing in the english translation of BOTW and TOTOK is so messed up. Also, if you want to about the ethics of consent on ancient beings who maintain childlike appearances, I recommend you go over to the Fire Emblem: Waifu boards where they do nothing but talk about if it's ok to grind on ancient little girl dragons."

JESUS CHRIST, STOP IT PLEASE, THAT IS SO MESSED UP AND GROSS AND DISTURBING AS HELL!! Jesus tap dancing Christ, What in the world is wrong with those people??? Maybe they should get some professional help! And the classic "1000 year old loli" argument is so messed up!!

My fellow ZD folks, what do you think of this stuff being in our english translation of BOTW and TOTK? Do you think someone should contact Nintendo of America to tell them that putting messed up pedophilic stuff like this in the english translation of our Zelda games is unacceptable and that they should patch the english translation immediately and stick to what the Japanese version says about Finley and Sasan being platonic friends? Do you think parents should boycott Nintendo of America for putting a made up pedophilic relationship in the english translation of BOTW and TOTK that doesn't even exist in the Japanese version? Do you think parents shouldn't let their kids under the age of 16 play this game and should warn their kids about how wrong this messed up thing in the english translation is?

(PS) (If a mod is reading this, please let me know if this post/thread should be moved to the Mature discussion section of the forums. If you move it there, send me a message to let me know. Thank you.)

 

[Fierce Deity Link]

Its creepy the changes they do in American editions.. shrug.

They removed from A Link To The Past that the book is a Bible and made it a spell book in America and barred the original idea of Link going into a chapel with a crucifix:

 

[sasasasasa]

Spoiler: TW: Child Abuse

I know you and maybe someone else may have an adverse effect from my response to your post, but I disagree completely on it being a problem.

These are fictional characters, for one. No one at Nintendo is suggesting that real life people go and get with seven year olds.
I was abused at that age back in Japan, by my own uncle, who UPLOADED it to certain sites he frequented. THAT is actual harm. This fictional stuff isn't.

I have a crush on Deku (mha), that doesn't mean I like fifteen-sixteen year olds (that would then be a problem at that point and I would need help). I like playing gta, that doesn't mean I like going and hitting people and stealing their cars. I am not the same as my abuser.

Some more info: I have a cousin who was also harmed in the same way, but like way worse. I won't go into detail here, but tl;dr she was sold and abused buy multiple people until she couldn't even function anymore. They "destroyed" her. She doesn't sleep, maybe once a week at most, because the nightmares are so bad that she is too afraid for her brain to allow sleep, and only sleeps when she is so exhausted she passes out, OR if they put her to sleep in the mental hospital. BUT she does FAAAAAR better when surrounding herself with characters she's in love with, like Bakugo and so on. She writes stories too (they are mature, I am not gonna go into detail about them because I wanna keep it as PG as I can in this comment of mine). She is already outcast from family because one of her abusers was also an uncle and they took his side - and so did our entire town - and characters would never leave her. She isn't hurting anyone. No one makes fictional stories that don't involve real life people is hurting anyone. When she's in the hospital and even when she's not, the doctors and nurses know what she's writing. They know the nature of it. They also know the characters are fictional and she isn't writing about some irl person, and they see how it helps her so they leave her to it and encourage her to never stop writing if that's what keeps her alive. Because she stopped writing for a short period and had tried to take her life multiple times. She's alive now, and is so happy when thinking of her stories or writing them. We haven't seen her smile in so long. Because of moving around she's been in several hospitals, and not one time did a doctor go "ewe that's a problem". Because that "problem" is not a real problem. And even though the stories are "mature" she isn't running around the facilities showing it to people, she just sits and writes, so they see no issues. AND she's made friends with people who are the same way and suffered similarly. THAT is when she does the best in the facilities, they said. Maybe there exists a doctor who sees it as a problem. That's fine, everyone has their beliefs. But I nor my cousin have yet to ever come across one.

The people who "like kids"? They're SOMEWHERE ELSE already hurting us or trading bad images and videos. They aren't living vicariously through stuff like this. It is so easy to hurt us, unfortunately. If they WANT to hurt us, and they already decided they're gonna do it, then that's that. No fictional story line, ship, pictures, etc. is going to "force" them to all of a sudden go through with it.

And just like violence in video games causing irl violence isn't actually a thing, this isn't going to cause people to hurt anyone. If someone sees something in fiction, and then goes and hurts someone because of it, then they were already messed up to begin with.

Furthermore, this is a personal moral compass situation. You have every right to state your opinion - and anyone, in turn, has the right to agree or disagree and state why; that goes for my comment as well - but because there is a small group of loud people who try to "punish" or "shame" anyone who likes fictional stuff they find uncomfy, I decided to go ahead and speak up, just in case. So, there is nothing wrong with you not liking this. But there is also nothing wrong with it existing. No one can force their personal morals or religious beliefs or whatever onto anyone else and decide for the world that they're bad people because of it, triggers or unfomyness or not.

It's okay to not like certain things, but you have to be mature enough to understand the difference between purely fictional storylines and actual harm. I know that someone can potentially get mad as us who have suffered in this way but still support the right to fiction, because to them we're needed to "fight back" and so if WE are saying "actually, nothing is the matter" then it destroys that. But I promise you everything is fine. I just had a panic attack TODAY because I dosed and dreamt of my uncle. I still get nightmares too. I get to decide how I handle that pain. And for people who maybe didn't go through that, like the translators - I don't know their life, maybe they did maybe they didn't - none of us who were abused get to gatekeep a topic. I don't care how "unfair" if feels. Everything isn't a fight, but I fought my way out of being upset at stuff like this. The trauma made me have adverse effects to it. I fought my way out of that after YEARS of pain, no one will tell me or anyone else what they can or can't make a fictional story about.

 

[ExLight]

Uh, I'll step in real quick. As a mod I believe it will be better to lock this thread up since it might snowball a bit.
This topic in particular (the localization giving it some pretty bad undertones) doesn't necessarily belong to Mature Discussion, but I'd like to ask for it to be worded with more caution.
Feel free to contact me or other staff privately for discussing reopening it.

The way the OP is written in a fairly emotional manner, which doesn't help in having a proper discussion, specially regarding a sensitive topic like this. Coming here accusing a team of Nintendo workers of condoning "pedophilia" because of what was likely an innocent overlook in localization is a bit too extreme. It's likely they were given only the text scripts and weren't even aware of who the characters were.



sasasasasa, I'm sorry to hear that you and your cousin went through such terrible things. Your posts contains a few many details that escape from the point of the thread, and that might be triggering to some other individuals with similar traumas. As such, I'll then put your post in spoiler with a TW (Trigger Warning) label to it. I believe the things your post tries to discuss are fairly broader, and could be more fitting topic for the Mature Discussion subforum, but not a Zelda subforum.