So let me start this off by saying how incredibly awesome I felt when I understood the first words out of the character’s mouth. Though to be fair, it was something like: “好痛好痛… 這下麻煩了， 這裡居然有個洞.” (he basically just fell down into a cave. you know how people work, they just don’t notice holes big enough to fall through when they’re walking around)
And then the next part was this piece of work:
邊境上的鳥爾村的少年
是由托帕帕和妮哪
共同撫養大的孤兒
好奇心十分旺盛
在跑出村子晚耍的時候
掉入了大地震造成的洞中
This was 魯內斯/Luneth’s introduction*. Already, I can see just how many useful words this game is going to teach me<sarcasm>.
Vocab List.1.1:
邊境; biānjìng; frontier, border
少年; shàonián; youngster
共同; gōngtóng; jointly, together, collaboratively
撫養; fǔyǎng; to raise, to foster
孤兒; gū’er; orphan
好奇心; hàoqíxīn; inquisitive
十分; shífēn; completely, utterly
旺盛; wàngshèng; exuberant
村子; cūnzi; village
耍; shuǎ; to play…?
大地震; dàdìzhèn; earthquake
造成; zàochéng; to bring about
*oh, the fun I had when I tried to figure out the English names. 妮哪 is obviously Nina, but 托帕帕? 魯內斯? 鳥爾? I just had to replay the beginning in English, if only to see what the names were originally transliterated from.
Now for the menus:
When you’re walking around, there’s a button on the right that says 選項 (xuǎnxiàng) which is your Options menu, obviously. Open it up, and you’ll see these options:
VocabList1.2:
道具; dàojù; items
魔法; mófǎ; magic
裝備; zhuāngbèi; equipment, outfitting
狀態; zhuàngtài; status
隊形; duìxíng; formation
職業; zhíyè; job, class
設定; shèdìng; preferences
中斷; zhōngduàn; to break off, discontinue
儲存; chǔcún; to stockpile (save)
It’s kinda surprising how many words I recognized in this part–while I might not know these specific combinations of the words, I still can recognize some of the individual components. Like 隊形 I was able to figure out because I knew the individual characters from 樂隊 and 形式. So hey, even if these specific words I will probably never use in natural conversation, still knowing what meaning certain characters relate to will probably be useful.
Anyway, there’s also another important menu to learn, which is the battle menu! Here we go!
Vocablist1.3
攻擊; gōngjī; attack
防御; fángyù; defend
后列; hòuliè; draw back
逃跑; táopǎo; escape
And then when you grow a level….
魯內斯熟練度上升了！shúliàndù shàngshēng; Luneth’s class leveled up!
魯內斯升級了！shēngjí; Luneth leveled up!
And this basically gets you through the first dungeon up until after the boss battle. That’s when the talking crystal comes in and you get some really wonky translations of “bringer of hope”… but anyway. That’s for next time.
Chinese Through FFIII 