How TARTAR Changed in Splatoon 2's English Localization: A linguistic analysis

In the Spanish localization, Tartar sounds like a "chavorruco" (an old man talking with young's slang) for look cool with Agent 8. It's something that happens a lot on Mexico, adults triying to act more younger using modern slangs, so was actually very fun to see Tartar be the chavorruco at the beginning and be the old angry man at the end.

Another interesting thing about the "robotic-ness" of Katakana is the fact that early, limited displays in old Japanese appliances could often only display Katakana, since the symbols are more simplistic. So it is possible that this might've strengthened the machine-like connotation of Katakana, but since I didn't find any mentions of this though, that's only speculation for now

honestly, i think either interpretation of tartar's character makes sense. a tartar that reveres humanity after becoming disgusted by observing inkling society, or a tartar that despises humanity after being abandoned for 10,000 years and seeing no hope in the inklings' future. both feel like equally valid interpretations of the character that emphasise different aspects of their backstory

Personally I feel like Tartar being petty and nitpicky on exactly why he hated the Inklings and Octarian was showing his reverence of humanity in a way by condemning the current races for things humanity itself can be guilty of. Another aspect of him that I like a lot is him following the Professor's instructions very literally, saying to pass on humanity's knowledge to the next 'worthy race' presumably with no guidelines of what constitutes 'worthy', which leads to Tartar having his own ideas and seeing the current races as 'unworthy'. Great video, a really interesting watch!

"the parallel between Tartar and Mr. Grizz is completely absent in the japanese version" Splatoon 3 comes out

Sheesh, I gotta respect you writing an actual University paper on this topic. Thats gotta take guts to formally talk about a funny squid “kid” game for school. And you got an A on it too

Tbh i feel like both dialogues have different streanghs and if they didn't scrap the thing about tartar seeing humans as gods it would've been great, i like the way they made tartar contemporary speech since it feels like it fits in this world and not a lot is lost beyond that detail that might even have significance for the next game since u know, mamalians and all

Honestly, I prefer the start of the NoA version, mainly because the TARTAR IN DA HOUSE" part being zoomed out before zooming in for the rest of the speech just looks better than him starting to speak seriously with the camera so far away, coupled with the music going from the silly "AWEE" music to its more serious/"creepy" version.

Personally, I took Tartar's obsession with the Inkling society's fixations(Turf Wars, fashion) to be an ironic thing where he revered humans so much that he didn't realize they had the same flaws Inkling society has

From the English localisation, I read it as Tar Tar was annoyed how the inklings are repeating what seemingly led to the doom of humanity. So he likes humans and wants to see the successor species surpass or at the minimum live up to the humans he holds in high regard

I’ve always believed that TarTar looked up to humans in an unnatural way, even if I had never seen the OG Japanese dialogue. I’ve always thought it ironic that he hates inkling society for their love of fashion, fun, and being trendy, as well as octarian society for their militaristic ideals, when humanity is just like that. I just wish they had kept him thinking of humanity as gods of some sort.

Remember, in an alternate universe the localisers could have called it General Marmite instead.

This is such a breath of fresh air, so often when someone complains about localisations it's just the same old "it's not perfectly accurate >:(" stuff which I find super annoying, of course things are going to change. They're not just translating, they're localising, they have to change cultural stuff as well as translating. But this video was really nuanced and didn't just bash the localised version, it properly criticised it. Really great stuff!

I'm in love with the choice of making Tartar's text resemble Spamton's. I really love that character and the entire "suddenly speaking in brackets" thing makes me imagine it as if the brackets were spoken in a different voice and tone from the normal text. Like a machine trying to fill in the gaps in its programming with other audio files it has.

Finally it is here... the Rassicas Splatoon linguistics video! Translating power linguistics can be a hard topic to talk about without over explaining things but you brought up the (most) important points in spoken and written communication and how it's different in JP and ENG Splatoon in a way that was not at all overwhelming! Very excited to see more language comparison stuff on other topics in the splatverse, they're so fun. Great work as always!

In my personal opinion I think TARTAR's EN speech was actually going for something a bit deeper that got lost in writing rather than translation. As Tartar waxes poetic about how cephalokind does pointless things, notice how he speaks with an objective tone, using "minor" and "trivial" without bother for what those things mean to the cephalopods themselves (while also conveniently leaving out the Jellies as a species who perform a truly stunning array of important tasks like tech maintenance and ALSO producing things like music and art but eh this is all for storytelling purposes so ill let em have it). He consistently implies that the conflicts Inklings and Octolings face or cause are pointless because he's looking at it from a position of a bigger picture, and becomes convinced that they're not worthy of humanity's knowledge. I rewatched the cutscene a few times in the past and noticed something: Conflict and individuality are both things that were, and are, extremely important to humanity, one informs the other after all. What matters here is that TARTAR, a clearly hyper-intelligent computer, in both languages but more clearly in EN, doesn't draw the parallel between cephalokind and mankind in their flaws. This, on one hand, could mean that in his devotion to humanity he's chosen to ignore these flaws but his objective and larger-than-life speech on why our cephalopods aren't worthy clearly shows he's actually above that. I think that the implication is that TARTAR actually DOESN'T KNOW what humans are like. He doesn't have the first clue, and that's why he fails to recognize the fact that Inklings and Octolings are actually the closest thing to a sequel to humanity, because as we know from the story of Alterna, Inklings and Octolings emerged from what remains of Alterna and advanced quickly primarily thanks to the humanity element they absorbed via the liquid crystals. TARTAR doesn't recognize this because he has no clue what humans are like. He has examples of what humans looked like and what they created, as he's seen the professor and he has the data left to him, but he's never been able to observe normal human life because he was created as a last resort, the echo of humanity's knowledge, not it's experience. TARTAR finds inklings appalling because he deifies humans as creatures without flaw, when it's flaws that DEFINED creatures. The final hint to this is the implication specifically in EN that TARTAR makes with the line "...the primordial ooze from which the ULTIMATE LIFEFORM will emerge...", essentially confessing that he views humans as flawless, likely lacking information of what really happened to them (or indeed what happened in Alterna but that's a no-brainer). This also hints at a bit of a sad reality that no matter what other species developed on Earth, TARTAR would still be disappointed in them because they aren't the deified idea of humans he's developed for himself. TARTAR isn't remaking humanity, he's making OCs.

That connection between Tartar and Mr. Grizz wound up strikingly prophetic on Nintendo of America's part.

My guess at the time for why Tartar kept adding weird, out-of-place slang near the beginning of the campaign was because he looked down on the Inklings and Octarians. He lamented how they fought over wars and trivial fashion choices, so I figured that he must not like their slang either. Like he was thinking "Hey, you stupid kids, since you're too dumb to understand proper English(?), how about I throw in a bunch of slang so that you understand what I'm saying."

I really do appreciate the NA translation in how they do their best to capture the essence of octo expansion to the best they could. TarTar using slang mixed in with robotic code makes it really sell it to a NA audience. It is a shame some things are lost in translation, but overall I'm pretty content with the stuff the localisation team did.

As brilliant Tartar think he is, just like any device it’s faulty a bit especially the translation part. It hard to translate complex Japanese to silly Inklings and back to simple English.