Talk:All your base are belong to us

Template:Featured article is only for Wikipedia:Featured articles.

Removed parts

Removed the following text, which seems to be a speculative digression. - Rootbeer 2002-04-04

It seems all but inevitable that the various strange urges compelling people to bind various ideas to these memes will eventually conspire to make them mean something - although most likely there will be no consensus on that meaning, and new meanings will spawn faster than old ones could be agreed on.

this part was moved to viral meme and rewritten

A parallel is to the phrase "no problem" which means everything from "really, no problem, I've taken care of it and will completely indemnify and insure you for all risks of trusting me and against every conceivable threat to the maximum of my own ability" to "I have just sold you and your firstborn into slavery, to this nice man." Context defines the whole of the meaning, and the use of any phrase at all is perhaps to convey only a tone of voice or a choice of timing and conveyance.

this part was rewritten too in no problem

propagation via the Internet

Total number of recent edits of "AYBBTU" = 12
Total number of recent edits of "syllogism" = 1
Say's it all really... :)

, almost seeming to imply a strange alien English dictionary of their own behind the odd phrasing.

I removed the bit above. "Strange" & "odd" are redundant, "almost seeming to imply" is so nebulous as to say nothing. The above is highly subjective: "seems" is uncertain, "imply" is subject to interpretation, "almost" reduces the information content to zero. In short I could say that the sentence above certainly indicates a need for editing. :-) Koyaanis Qatsi

Best Usage Ever: at an anti-GMO protest, a giant mutant corncob with the caption ALL YOUR BASE PAIR ARE BELONG TO US. - user:Montrealais

It is to be noted that "All your base" is by no means the first piece of thoroughly opaque slang to have come to currency. In eighty years, studies of slang will likely still record exactly where the expression came from, and from what context -- but we will not be appreciably closer to understanding the original context of the 1920s slang expression, "23 skidoo". --FOo

I removed:

Starcraft, which includes a map named AllYourBaseAreBelongToUs. The map consists of two landmasses, with three bases clustered on each, linked by one long, narrow isthmus.

Starcraft and the extension Starcraft Broodwar were released 1998, three years before according to the article the phrase became popular. If somebody creates a fan map, the only way it becomes important is when the map is widely used. I don't know if it is, but this was misleading anyhow.

--Ados 15:38, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

extra line of dialog, as per edit?

Cats: Ha Ha Ha Ha ....
Operator: Captain!
Captain: Take off every 'Zig'!!

Does this line of dialog exist, and if so in which version?

It's not in:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/17122.html
http://www.allyourbasearebelongtous.com/

OK, I see. That extra line spoken by "Operator" is in the original Japanese, but not in the English version.

It looks like the Japanese text was deleted because in Unicode form it screws up the formatting when comparing revisions of this talk page. I moved it to the article page.

Let's not get started on the legality of emulation, but the line "Operator: Captain!" is in fact on the Zero Wing (E) Genesis ROM. And yes, the Japanese version has some extra lines that weren't translated and/or were condensed.

GusGus 04:19, 2004 Mar 1 (UTC)

Translation

Are there any correct english translations of the japanese text, which could be included in the article? Would be interesting to read.

- Wintran 10:41, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I did the current 'correct' English tranlation for Wikipedia from the Japanese text here. Because I didn't have to think about how words would appear on the game screen, lines are longer and more descriptive. I think it makes more sense now and the sarcastic tone of the enemy, missing from the original translation is there as well.

Most of mistakes happened because Japanese is spoken with few words as possible with the great dependence on other person to judge its meaning. So if a translator simply pick words from a dictionary, the tranlated text is not going to make any sense. I think the best line to compare between translations is the line 11. Zero Wing FAQ's translators wrote "Im...impossible!" and I wrote "Damn you...!". Judging from the Japanese and the original, I think the captain had tried to say "Baka na koto wo iuna!" which in a word for a word tranlation is "What you say is stupid!". I think my translation is better here because it shows the defiance as the captain had not given up yet.

Revth 06:59, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Good job, was very interesting to read! Perhaps we could use what you said here, about the problems of translating japanese, in the article as well? - Wintran 09:01, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I've added an introductory paragraph before the translation, based on the comments here. Thank you Revth for providing this rather useful content!

One amusing thing that just occurred to me was whether the Japanese Wikipedia has/could have pages for this kind of thing - informing Japanese readers of the phenomenon of AYBABTU. Now that would be an interesting use of multilingual collaboration... - IMSoP 14:16, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Since that translation was added, a whole string of people have come along and "corrected" it. Some of those changes I simply reverted, because they did little to alter the meaning, but made the English seem somewhat stilted - spoiling the whole purpose of an unconstrained translation. However, line 11 (as mentioned above) is particularly liberal, and not knowing the Japanese, I don't know how correct Revth's justification is - is the Captain expressing defiance ("Impossible, you will never succeed!"; which Revth rendered as "Damn you...!") or merely incredulity/disbelief ("That's impossible! This can't be happening!")? At the moment, I've put in a bit of a compromise - including the word "impossible", but adding the defiant "damn you!" to make it look more like real English dialogue. Does anyone want to have an opinion on which is "better"/"more correct", or have a further idea? - IMSoP 18:00, 30 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not a native Japanese speaker, but I do have 5 years of experience. My understanding is that the Captain is expressing only incredulity and disbelief, not defiance, in line 11.

Revth appears to have simply misunderstood the original Japanese. In line 11 the captain says, stutteringly, "ba-b-baka na!". The word "baka" is an extremely common word in Japanese, which in 90% of cases means "stupid" or "foolish". However, it also has a rarer secondary usage as an exclamation meaning "no! impossible! it can't be!" --- often omitted in smaller dictionaries --- in which case it always appears in the irregular form "baka na". Revth seems to have been unaware of this second usage, and since the form "baka na" looks like (if you don't know this irregular usage) an odd abbreviation of a longer phrase, he guessed that it must mean something like "don't say stupid things!", or "you are stupid!". So he incorrectly inferred a defiant tone in the captain.

My view is also supported by the fact that the Captain stutters in this line, and also stutters previously ("o-omae wa!") in the line when CATS arrives. He seems in turmoil, and only gets back in control of his emotions when he gives the order to launch the ZIGs. I think the "damn you!" is the result of a misunderstanding and should be removed. Perhaps CATS' "go ahead and struggle" in line 13 ought to be removed as well --- no such phrase appears in the original Japanese.

By the way, another line that appears to be a clear mistranslation is line 18, "mirai ni kibou" to "future and hope". The particle "ni" surely does not mean "and". A better translation would be "hope for the future". This is more natural English as well.

I had a few other small gripes with the translation, but they were more a question of taste. Those two seem to me clear errors which can't be ascribed to "free text"-ness. --Shibboleth 21:09, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

there should be something said about "Chinglish" the old "Good Good Study, Day Day Up" 好好学习，天天向上

That would belong at Chinglish, not here. DopefishJustin (・∀・) 02:16, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Origin: tribalwar?

Moved from article (no justification or expansion provided, but could be worthy if more details are given and backed up): Original AYB thread started on http://www.tribalwar.com - IMSoP 13:14, 14 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I remember that Tribal War's forums WERE the first spot where the AYB trend [i]really[/i] took off, but I don't know if it really deserves credit as the "first" place. The rom had been around for ages, and I'm sure people had mentioned it before. But most people do credit the Tribal War forums. Sadly, I don't think a link to that original thread exists anymore, but if one could be found, that's as relevant as any SomethingAwful link. --Golbez 03:36, 18 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Escape Velocity Nova

I just noticed someone removed the entry for the Escape Velocity Nova game in the AYB references section, claiming it to be "unrelated". Well, just take a look at this screenshot. Looks like it is related indeed. The Easter egg is real, and so is the reference. It wasn't me who put that entry on the article, but it took me about one minute searching on Google to find out whether the thing is "unrelated" or not. I'm posting this here, so that you people know why I reverted the article to the last version. I did some minor changes to the entry as well. – Mackeriv 00:25, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Fine...I admit I didn't adequately check it, but the description! "Where you can see cats occasionally flying around the universe" what does that have to do with AYBABTU? Ilyanep (Talk) 23:55, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

After reading the new revision...this is much better. Ilyanep (Talk) 23:56, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The Easter Egg might not refer to the AYBABTU phrase directly, but it's related to the whole "AYB phenomenon" instead. If people haven't decided to keep repeating that phrase and create tons of photoshopped pics years ago, the fad would have never started... and I'm sure that little Easter Egg would have never been inserted into that game, because it is the phrase that made the world notice the existence of Zero Wing and all the little elements pertaining to it (like CATS himself). The way I see it, this article deals with the AYB phenomenon that spread out within the Internet years ago, as well as the effects of it. Not just about the opening sequence text. That's just what launched the fad. Your argument on that is still valid, but this is my opinion. =] – Mackeriv 03:45, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)