During the translation of Animal Crossing: New Leaf I asked to be in charge of the Kapp’n’s songs, which I achieved with some help from my then-colleague Alberto Arias. It was a titanic task: 120 pieces, half of them with 2 verses, whose metric should match the music (the syllables would appear on screen in sync with each note) and under a strict limitation of 3 lines and not so many pixels… There’s never enough pixels.
The original Japanese texts and Nintendo of America’s English text were of course great sources of inspiration, but the thick of the work wasn’t so much translation as “transcreation” (that’s a thing now, I promise I didn’t make it up). We even decided to reuse a few songs from previous titles in the series, as a homage to songs that the Kapp’n would have been singing all his life. Even in those cases we had to made various adjustments, some to fit the metric, some because dear old Kapp’n, who used to be a ladies’ man, was now happily married.
I would have loved to compile videos of all 120 songs, but I just lack the techonology to do so. If you wish to enjoy them in the full splendour of their melody and rhythm, you’ll need to play the game… and pay 1000 Bells for each trip. It’s a very entertaining game indeed, and easily available for the ubiquitous Nintendo 3DS. Until then, I leave you with these simple screenshots.
Navigation tips: Click on an image to enlarge and use the arrow keys to scroll through them. Remember that half the songs take 2 screenshots, while the other half fit in one.
