Hello guys, pokejungle translator Kriffix here once again!
In just a few hours we will be having our usual live translation of Pokémon Smash right here.
We have been promised a demonstration of Keldeo in battle. What will this reveal? Who knows!
That’s why you have to be here to find out!
In the meantime however, I would like to draw your attention to this little old map…
There has been much debate as to whether Unova is actually frozen over or whether this is merely a ploy to conceal information. My initial interpretation is that it was in fact frozen over. That is how the original Japanese text from CoroCoro read to me. It was only when someone pointed out that that it specifically uses the word “map” (as opposed to region itself) that I began to feel there was room for the latter interpretation.
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To me though, word choice of “frozen map” always felt like it was trying to scream “Frozen map that reflects the actual state of the Unova region”, after all isn’t that what maps do? Plus, Japanese is a language that omits things that are considered to be ‘a given’. (I.E the map is frozen therefore the region it represents is). It feels very redundant to say something like “Here is the frozen map of the frozen Unova region”. It’s just awkward and unnecessary.
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Alas, the fact that I too speak English has caused me to become split between my initial interpretation and the somewhat sterilised English translation.Something that may be of interest though, is that it only really seems to be the western side of the internet that is currently debating this. I have searched many Japanese threads and it took me a good 30 minutes to even find someone who questioned it being frozen.
What’s more interesting, is that the few people who are questioning it all seem to be focusing their posts on this single thread. Out of the hundreds of posts here, there is about 5 posts suggesting that it is not frozen, 3 of which seem to be the same person (judging by how he/she comes across) although they are all anonymous.
These 5 or so posts versus the couple of thousand or so that are simply saying something along the lines of “Wow, I wonder what happened to Unova!” (1,2,3,4 among others).