For anyone interested in why Snake’s echo questions are so prevalent, it’s because the localizers starting with Metal Gear Solid decided to translate ですか, or desu ka in that way.
In Japanese conversation, ですか is sometimes at the end of a phrase after a key noun as a way to clarify or keep a conversation flowing. You see it a lot of the time translated as something like “you say?” or even “huh?”.
“I’ve been reading a lot of Snake x Ocelot yaoi.”
“Snake x Ocelot yaoi, you say?”
Linguistically, this is an example of backchanneling, which in Japanese is called Aizuchi. When translating MGS, instead of adding something like “you say?” all the time, it was usually just left as the phrase or noun repeated in question inflection. It’s gramatically/linguistically correct, but the sheer amount of it (and the meme-worthy nature of the series) makes it stand out as a very Snake-y way of speaking.
Additionally, if anyone’s interested, here’s a great article written by Jeremy Blaustein, who was the English localizer for Metal Gear Solid 1: The bizarre, true story of Metal Gear Solid’s English translation. It’s not very long, but I love the detail he goes into about his thought process behind some of the decisions. It also illustrates why MGS1’s localization feels slightly different from the rest of the series. I just love Metal Gear so I love reading all about it.
Reminds me of the style of conversation ELIZA used.
Weizenbaum chose to make the DOCTOR script in the context of psychotherapy to “sidestep the problem of giving the program a data base of real-world knowledge”, allowing it to reflect back the patient’s statements to carry the conversation forward. The result was a somewhat intelligent-seeming response that reportedly deceived some early users of the program.
Back in the mid 2000s when fansitea were a thing Jeremy Blaustein did a semi open interview on the long dead Snakesoup forum. Another user who was bilingual did a borderline paragraph by paragraph comparison of the English and Japanese versions of the both mgs1 and 2 and compared the localization methods and also cleared up some misconceptions that came from the translations of both. For example, the Japanese mgs1 script states that big boss had his DNA jacked for les enfants terribles while in a hospital for injuries suffered in battle, only the English version has Liquid specifically say he was in a coma. Big Boss didn’t have 2 comas.
For anyone interested in why Snake’s echo questions are so prevalent, it’s because the localizers starting with Metal Gear Solid decided to translate ですか, or desu ka in that way.
In Japanese conversation, ですか is sometimes at the end of a phrase after a key noun as a way to clarify or keep a conversation flowing. You see it a lot of the time translated as something like “you say?” or even “huh?”.
Linguistically, this is an example of backchanneling, which in Japanese is called Aizuchi. When translating MGS, instead of adding something like “you say?” all the time, it was usually just left as the phrase or noun repeated in question inflection. It’s gramatically/linguistically correct, but the sheer amount of it (and the meme-worthy nature of the series) makes it stand out as a very Snake-y way of speaking.
Additionally, if anyone’s interested, here’s a great article written by Jeremy Blaustein, who was the English localizer for Metal Gear Solid 1: The bizarre, true story of Metal Gear Solid’s English translation. It’s not very long, but I love the detail he goes into about his thought process behind some of the decisions. It also illustrates why MGS1’s localization feels slightly different from the rest of the series. I just love Metal Gear so I love reading all about it.
Reminds me of the style of conversation ELIZA used.
That’s fascinating.
Oh, I’m going to like this article.
Back in the mid 2000s when fansitea were a thing Jeremy Blaustein did a semi open interview on the long dead Snakesoup forum. Another user who was bilingual did a borderline paragraph by paragraph comparison of the English and Japanese versions of the both mgs1 and 2 and compared the localization methods and also cleared up some misconceptions that came from the translations of both. For example, the Japanese mgs1 script states that big boss had his DNA jacked for les enfants terribles while in a hospital for injuries suffered in battle, only the English version has Liquid specifically say he was in a coma. Big Boss didn’t have 2 comas.