This is a mod for the English localisation of Sparking! ZERO which converts various names and terms to closer align them with their original forms in the series (as opposed to the American adaptation). It's primarily intended for people who play with the Japanese voice cast, to whom the terms and spellings used in the US product might be peculiar.

Names are changed wherever they are used in the game. However the character is being addressed will appear in the subtitles—honorifics are included, and variations like "Son-kun", "old-timer", "Ten-san" etc. are maintained throughout the dialogue.

Other terminology, such as "senzu bean" and "power level", have also been changed where appropriate.

While it's likely that not everyone will agree with every single choice here, the idea is that it will feel more natural to anyone whose familiarity is with the original (Japanese-language) anime of Dragon Ball or the manga as translated into English by VIZ. The most controversial thing is probably "Geran" over "Jiren". (It doesn't get any weirder than that, I promise.)

While names are replaced across the board, the dialogue itself unfortunately remains the same otherwise—ie. captions of what is said in the American dubbed version, which is sadly the case for all localised Dragon Ball games. I don't speak Japanese, and if I did, it would be a Herculean Satanic effort to re-translate the game's tens-of-thousands of items of text. Campaign to have Dragon Ball games receive two sets of English subtitle scripts, such as Like A Dragon has. It's 2024! We can have 300 characters but can't have two subtitle tracks? What's up with that?

The translation seems (to my completely untrained eyes) to be broadly "fair-ish", in most cases carrying across the meaning of the original lines but really hamming it up to align with the American portrayals of the characters. With that said, I did change a handful of lines that stuck out as egregious, usually by having been changed outright in service to fans of the American re-versioning (eg. "over 9000", "as a matter of fact, it isn't"). I only changed these when I chanced upon them during my find-and-replace efforts, so the majority are surely still there—notify me of lines that bother you and I can visit them in a future update.

I'll endeavour to update this mod if mistakes are reported (missed instances, wrong honorifics, find-and-replace faux pas, etc.) or to replace egregious or memetic dialogue with faithful translations.

Dull stuff:

• Names of playable characters (ie. what you see in the character select screen rather than what the character's actual name is) are taken from the Japanese version. My  personal preference would be to do away with things like "Vegeta (Scouter)", but alas that's what they call him. Likewise, I prefer "Super Saiyan Blue" and "Vegetto Blue" but they haven't been used. I referred to a translation once provided by the eminent VegettoEX to better adapt the age descriptors (eg. "Kid", "Teen").
• Techniques with vocalised names tend to be written out in Romanised form rather than translated (eg. "Genki-Dama" over "Spirit Ball"). Piccolo and Gohan have non-vocalised techniques that riff on Masenkō, Makankōsappō etc., so those also appear in their Romanised forms to maintain the theme.
• Honorifics are added where they are used with a couple exceptions: namely "Kami-sama" (God) and occasionally "Kaiōshin-sama" when that is used to refer to the title/position rather than the character himself.
• On that note, titles are not adapted to English as a stylistic choice (eg. "Kaiō" and "Kame-Sen'nin" over something like "Lord of Worlds" and "Turtle Hermit"). Exceptions are "God" and "God of Destruction"; "kami-sama" and "hakaishin" aren't original to Dragon Ball.
• In dialogue, the term "fusion" ("fusing", "fused") is limited to where the word "fyūjon" is used by the characters (that is, pertaining to the Fusion technique used by Gotenks and Gogeta), as opposed to the American adaptation which uses it for Fusion and Potara alike. However, I elected not to change the name of the gameplay function Fusion (which in the Japanese version is the usual "Gattai") on the basis that I don't really want to alter the verbiage of game mechanics, but I might change that later.
  

1. Make sure you have installed UTOC Signature Bypass Patch.

2. Download this mod under Main Files.

3. Unzip the .PAK file and place it in your ~mods folder.

Note: This mod overrides all English Localization files. It won't be compatible with other mods that also make changes to these files.


Thank you to TechnoSyndro for generously helping me out with the technical stuff. Check out Kakarrot, TechnoSyndro's name fix mod for Kakarot, which inspired me to make this for Sparking!

Thank you to Randy, kanasandx, and azurebirb for bug reporting and translation advice.

Thanks to Kanzenshuu for being an unparalleled resource and community hub (and for many podcast episodes about faithful translation and name adaptation, which are timelessly fascinating)!