Did Xenogears Really Fear a Lawsuit from “Star Trech?”

Follow @lostinloc

Xenogears, a SquareSoft JRPG released for PlayStation in 1998, had a notoriously troubled localization. The sole localizer for most of the project, Richard Honeywood, was under an immense amount of pressure for several reasons. The game had a massive, difficult, technical script with potentially controversial religious themes, and Square’s lack of a formalized localization process at the time didn’t help either. It’s hard to blame him for the fact that the English release contains several textual and translation errors. Given what he was up against, he did an amazing job. Honeywood talks about the ordeal at length in this episode of the 8-4 Play podcast.

In one infamous scene from the English script, antagonist Tolone worries that her “positronic photon brain” might put the Xenogears developers in danger of legal action from the creators of Star Trek. Due to how badly this fourth-wall breaking line sticks out, fans have talked about it many times over the years. As one recent example, the Resonant Arc podcast discussed it in an episode of their 21-part retrospective series on Xenogears. If you are a fan of seeing games analyzed in great depth, I strongly recommend checking them out!

So, what was this line in the Japanese version? Was this in the original script, or was it added in the localization? Let’s examine the scene in both languages and find out!

Line-By-Line Breakdown

To provide context, the line occurs during a scene where a pair of comic relief antagonists, Tolone and Seraphita, confront the protagonists to buy time for one of their allies to escape. The dialogue between the two resembles a 漫才 (manzai) routine, a Japanese style of comedy similar to a Western straight-man/funny-man double act.

Of the two, Tolone assumes the role of 突っ込み (tsukkomi, straight man) and Seraphita the role of ボケ (boke, funny man). As the tsukkomi, Tolone takes the situation very seriously, and gets annoyed at the boke Seraphita when she lets slip that the protagonists managed to bypass a computer security system that had stumped them.

Note: The Japanese version of Xenogears calls Tolone トロネ (Torone, Throne).

Japanese Script	Official English Script	Direct Translation
[セラフィータ] そうだ！ セラフィーたち、キカイのつかい方 わかんなくて、あたふたしてたんだ！	[Seraphita] Yeah, we didn’t know how to operate that machinery, so we were so confused!	[Seraphita] That’s right! We didn’t understand how to use the machine, and we were panicking!
[セラフィータ] どうも、ありがとう！！	[Seraphita] Thank you very much for your kind help!	[Seraphita] Thank you, very much!!
[トロネ] お、お前…… そんな事をバラすんじゃない！！	[Tolone] Oh Sera… Don’t tell them that!	[Throne] Y-you… Don’t reveal something like that!
[トロネ] 人が苦労して心理的優位を つくってるトコなのに……	[Tolone] Just as I was building things up to make us sound psychologically superior to them! Damn…	[Throne] Even at a time when ONE of us is working hard to demonstrate our psychological superiority…
[セラフィータ] ええ～っ！！　……だってぇ……	[Seraphita] What!…But…	[Seraphita] Hu~h!? ……Buut……
[セラフィータ] シンセツにしてもらったら ちゃんとお礼するんだよって、 おばあちゃんがぁ……	[Seraphita] When people do you a kindness you should always say thank you. That’s what grandma always said…	[Seraphita] If you receive a kindness from someone, you should thank them properly, Grandma saaaid……
[セラフィータ] でも、トロネちゃんすごいんだ！ シンリテキユウイ？	[Seraphita] But, I’m impressed Tolone! ‘Psychologically superior’?	[Seraphita] Still, Throne-chan, you’re awesome! “Psy-cho-lo-gi-cal su-pe-ri-o-ri-ty?”
[セラフィータ] さっすがポリクロロトルエン子牛脳 トーサイさいぼぉぐっ！！	[Seraphita] Your ‘Gin n’tonic Futon Brain’ cyborg inplants sure make you smart!	[Seraphita] As expected of a polychlorotoluene calf brain-equipped cyborg!!
[トロネ] ポジトロン光子脳だっ！！！	[Tolone] That’s ‘Positronic-photon Brain’ you idiot!	[Throne] It’s “positron photon brain!!!”
[トロネ] 何だ？　その、検えきで ひっかかりそうな 危ない名前は！！	[Tolone] ‘Gin n’tonic Futon’…? You make me sound like I’m a sleepy drunk! (It’s already bad enough as it is… ‘Positronic-photon Brain Cyborg’… That’s bound to get us into trouble with the makers of ‘Star Trech’!)	[Throne] What? That likely-to-get-caught-in-inspection, dangerous name is—!!

Gin n’ Tonic Futon Line Analysis

There’s a lot going on in the Japanese script, so let’s go through it one thing at a time.

First, when Seraphita says a word that would normally use kanji, she uses katakana instead. We see it several times in the excerpt: キカイ instead of 機械 (kikai, machine), シンセツ instead of 親切 (shinsetsu, kindness) and トーサイ instead of 搭載 (tōsai, equipped). The writer uses this to tell the reader that she does not know kanji (even though it would be impossible to tell that from spoken Japanese), and is therefore unintelligent.

Next, in the Japanese text, Seraphita makes two mistakes in trying to say “positron photon brain”. One mistake is straightforward: she confuses 光子 (kōshi, photon) and 子牛 (koushi, calf). These words are identical when written in kana (こうし) but have different pronunciations. This mistake plays into the idea that she relies on kana and struggles with kanji. This Japanese-specific wordplay is completely untranslatable, as “photon” and “calf” sound nothing alike in English.

Her other mistake is swapping “positron” for a completely different word, the fictitious chemical ポリクロロトルエン (porikurorotoruen, polychlorotoluene), which she made by putting the prefix “poly” in front of the real chemical “chlorotoluene”. It’s possible Honeywood understood this word and changed it on purpose, but even if he didn’t, it’s hard to blame him for mistranslating a corruption of an obscure chemical. I was only able to translate it because I have access to resources that didn’t exist in 1998.

Though he changed the joke, Honeywood preserved its spirit. “Futon” is phonetically close to “photon”. “Gin n’ tonic” rhymes with “positronic”, and has the same number of syllables and stress pattern. Also, while humor is subjective, I’m comfortable calling “gin ‘n tonic futon brain” significantly funnier than “polychlorotoluene calf brain”. Honeywood’s comedic efforts succeeded here (at least by the standard the original line set.)

Punchline Comparison

Now, let’s look at the most important line:

Japanese Script	Official English Script	Direct Translation
[トロネ] 何だ？　その、検えきで ひっかかりそうな 危ない名前は！！	[Tolone] ‘Gin n’tonic Futon’…? You make me sound like I’m a sleepy drunk! (It’s already bad enough as it is… ‘Positronic-photon Brain Cyborg’… That’s bound to get us into trouble with the makers of ‘Star Trech’!)	[Throne] What? That likely-to-get-caught-in-inspection, dangerous name is—!!

Comedy is hard to translate, so this is a difficult line for sure. In my research for this article, I found this entry in a Japanese online glossary of terms used in Xenogears. While the glossary isn’t an official source, it does offer an attempt by a native Japanese speaker to explain this joke, which is sure to give us some insight.

The glossary entry is a definition of the term “polychlorotoluene calf brain”. It breaks down the word “polychlorotoluene” and explains how compounds involving chlorine and toluene are often health hazards. Finally, it explains that calf brains can potentially carry bovine spongiform encephalopathy—more commonly known as mad cow disease.

Based on how dangerous these things are, the glossary entry concludes that an artificial brain made of these things would certainly get caught in 検疫 (ken’eki, quarantine/medical inspection), like Throne says. (Throne actually says 検えき, using hiragana instead of kanji for the second half of the word, but that’s probably due to a technical limitation, as the kanji 疫 does not appear in the Japanese script even once.) So, Throne isn’t just mad Seraphita got it wrong; she’s mad she got it wrong in a way that makes it sound dangerous.

If you don’t think the joke is very funny, don’t worry; I don’t either.

The joke in this line is downstream from the calf/photon pun. Since Honeywood had to change the calf/photon pun, changing this one as well was inescapable. So, the English script has Tolone getting annoyed with Seraphita for making her sound like a “sleepy drunk”, followed by the infamous reference to Star Trech. Honeywood added a considerable amount of text here, substituting one joke for two.

Honeywood’s first joke seems very much in the spirit of the joke from the Japanese script—in both, Seraphita draws her partner’s ire due to the specific words she substituted for “positronic” and “photon”. The second joke, involving “Star Trech”, is the more puzzling one.

Analyzing the Star Trech Joke

The simple explanation for the second joke is that it’s a liberty on Honeywood’s part. The scene is meant to be funny, and so Honeywood tried to make it funny. The second joke resembles the Japanese text so little that this seems like the most likely explanation.

However, I have seen some claim that the Japanese line has a double meaning, and the second joke is an attempt to capture the second meaning. The logic goes, the name is “dangerous”, not just due to the toxic chemicals and mad cow disease, but also in the sense of posing a legal risk, and the “inspection” Throne mentions could also refer to a legal review.

There are problems with that, though. For one, the glossary entry above, in which a native Japanese speaker tries to explain the joke, makes absolutely no mention of this possible second meaning. Second, ken’eki refers specifically to medical quarantine. Finally, Throne’s use of the second-person demonstrative adjective その (sono) makes it more likely she’s talking about Seraphita’s “polychlorotoluene calf brain” than her own “positronic photon brain”.

One possibility is that Honeywood confused ken’eki for a different word, 検閲 (ken’etsu, censorship). If so, the fact that the second half of ken’eki was written in hiragana may have caused his confusion—once you learn kanji, it’s much easier to read text with them than without. Even if this is what happened, substituting ken’eki for ken’etsu turns the Japanese sentence into “That likely-to-get-caught-in-censorship, dangerous name is—!!” So, the mention of a lawsuit from “Star Trech” would still be a significant punching-up of this line.

The Verdict

So, the short answer is “no”. There is no reference to Star Trek or “Star Trech” in the Japanese script. Richard Honeywood either invented it from whole cloth, or based it on a misreading. This scene is a good example of how difficult localization can be; when a joke is untranslatable, the best thing to do might be to write your own. It wouldn’t occur to most people that localizers also need to be comedians, and yet, they often do! Localization can be challenging in many ways, including unexpected ones.

Unfortunately, I do think the line is a failure in the end, as most discussion of this line centers around how immersion-breaking and out-of-place it is. Still, it was a difficult line to translate from a difficult script, and Honeywood’s translation is still the only way to play Xenogears in English. My goal in this article is not to criticize him for a line in a game he worked on 24 years ago, but to get to the bottom of a mystery that many players have wondered about.

As always, we’re eager to hear your thoughts. Do you think the line adds needed comic relief? Or is it just too immersion-breaking? Are there any other lines in this game’s massive script you’ve been wondering about? Let us know in the comments below! If you enjoyed this detailed look at a single line of dialogue, check out my article on the “jelly donuts” line from Touhou. Or if you want another article about how misunderstanding a single word can totally change the meaning of something, check out this article on why Dark Souls lies to the player during character creation!