Engrish in KitN Options

[jcdietz03]

Okay folks, this thread is dedicated to the use of Engrish in Knights in the Nightmare.

Let's start with the promo video, found on the KitN website:

"One night, the denizens of the abyss, led by Zovornak, emerged out of nowhere and slayed all the kings men..."

Pretty much the only thing I found in the whole thing is "slayed all the kings men" which sounds like engrish to me. Killed all the king's men? Massacred the king's men?

Certain dialog boxes: Touch the box. (Groan) Sometimes: Touch either box.
Other dialog box: Go Next. (argh)

One word: KILL

[A knight joins you]: Join In! (?)

[Before battle]Get ready! Engage!

[Get an item in battle]Item gotten!

Warrior:
[Activate]The warrior: Activated!

On turn result screen:
KILL OUT!

On scene result screen:
Drive Tech (?)

One enemy slots screen:
Touch the box to be defeated enemy

[jcdietz03]

Yeah, and there was a lot of English (not ENGRISH) in Kitten, not to mention the English voice acting. They're in the credits because they helped with the game.

It's surprising that they made so few mistakes. However, they are a professional translation company. The Engrish is a small fraction of all the English text/voice there is in the game. I listed all I could find in the OP.

I concede it's a bad definition. Hopefully, I explained in previous posts what I consider Engrish. It's not something that can be worded concisely.

1) Doesn't fit into established patterns or styles of the target language and
2) Is an attempt at doing so.

There are problems with this definition - for example, a five paragraph essay written by a student who's never written one before would probably fall under this definition. It's the best I can come up with.

I could add:
3) Written/spoken by a nonnative speaker

This seems to be an element of Engrish in most situations. However, I have no idea who wrote the English text in KitN. I really can't see a native speaker writing KILL OUT, but you never know. Also, I'm sure if a native speaker tried, they could come up with some good Engrish. Also, machine translations can qualify as Engrish. So I don't really want to include this criterion.

There's some element of how far off the mark are you. Let's take the novice student's 5 paragraph essay. If a Japanese person wrote the same essay word-for-word, I still wouldn't consider it Engrish because it's pretty close to the established standard. How about this:

4) Must sound or read awkwardly to a native speaker. OR Must sound or read awkwardly to one fluent in the target language.

These are subjective criteria.

Saying that this proves all nonstandard English from Asia counts as Engrish is like saying you're a poppyseed because poppyseeds are living things.

Rai is being argumentative here. He doesn't really believe that English text in KitN is trying to be a form of English other than standard English (the equivalent of the poppy argument). Of course, I don't KNOW that he believes that, I simply believe he doesn't believe.

I'd still like Rai to post his definition of Engrish. What do you consider to be Engrish?

This post has been edited by jcdietz03: Oct 7 2008, 05:01 AM