The Nintendo Switch is region free, and many (not all) games, including Octopath Traveler, have the full Japanese text and audio available in the U.S. release of the game. No need to import from Japan! This is an amazing resource for gamers who are learning Japanese. Here’s my latest grab!

Japanese: 俺は人ではなかった

Hiragana: おれはひとではなった

English: I wasn’t even human.

Romaji: ore ha hito deha nakatta

A more literal linguistic translation would be “I wasn’t even a person,” because the literal translation of “human” in Japanese is 人間 ningen.

This Japanese phrase has the same intention and feel as when we say, “he’s not even human” in English. The character is remembering his past deeds and saying that they were so heinous, that he wasn’t displaying human decency and so doesn’t even deserve the label of being called a human being.

There are cases where the Japanese language will use the more literal term 人間 in this sense of value as a person. Notably, in the title of the famous book Ningen Shikkaku by Dazai Osamu, which is translated to No Longer Human. (人間失格 Wikipedia) (The full text of Ningen Shikkaku on Aozora Bunko)

By the way, the English localization that appears in the game says “No, I wasn’t even human.” Thanks to underbuffed.com for making this English video available. I’d never play a long game like Octopath Traveler twice to try to capture both the English and Japanese lines, so I’m thankful the folks at underbuffed have documented this so I can compare.

Enjoy!

Links:

Underbuffed.com: Again with Alaic – https://underbuffed.com/octopath-traveler-again-with-alaic/ – Underbuffed.com has a huge repository of Octopath Traveler side quest details. I never would have finished all the side quests without it.

Check my Twitter account @Japannewbie for more occasional Japanese language tidbits from games.