For those wondering how much of a minefield translating names and titles from one language to another can be, look no further than the gaffe XSEED Games almost stepped into when picking out a new name for what’s now known as Story of Seasons.
The farming sim series Bokujo Monogatari has long been known by the name Harvest Moon in North America, but that changed in 2012 when the series changed publishers from Natsume to XSEED. Since Natsume owned the name Harvest Moon, the series had to be rebranded with a new localized name.
And as a Twitter post from XSEED this week shows, Story of Seasons was not its first choice for a replacement. Before settling on that one, the publisher tossed around titles like Summer Solstice and Autumn Winds. These invoke the same natural vibe as Harvest Moon and could’ve worked in its place, but XSEED also considered another title, one that probably wouldn’t have translated quite as well: Plow & Propose, emphasizing just how difficult translations can be.
While it technically makes sense, given the series’ strong emphasis on farming and being able to marry different characters, it doesn’t take a linguist to see the suggestive connotations in a name like Plow & Propose, and why that wouldn’t exactly be a good fit for an all-ages franchise like Story of Seasons. It just goes to show that translating things without falling into the pitfalls of a language’s unique quirks is hard, and mistakes are easy to make.