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The English-speaking Elden Ring community's favorite meme messages often don't make a lick of sense when translated to Japanese, and they've even sparked some bizarre theories among Japanese players.
As freelance Japanese-English translator DistantValhalla observed on Twitter, the abundance of Elden Ring messages using the words "Fort" and "Night," which are meant to be a joking reference to Fortnite, have caused some cross-cultural confusion. When Japanese players read these messages, they see the specific kanji for the actual words, leading some to believe that they were hinting at a secret that would only occur at a fort at night.
"I've been searching for a big night-only event at some fort because I see messages like 'fort, night' everywhere in Elden Ring, but apparently people playing in English are Fort and Night. I'm crying because it seems like a message that I'm just laughing at making Fortnite by combining."
The layered circumstances that led to this misunderstanding are just incredible. Firstly, it's actually pretty reasonable to assume that some Elden Ring messages would be teasing a night-exclusive fort encounter; there are lots of forts in the game, and several enemies and bosses only appear after the sun has set. Then there are the differing cultural lenses for Fortnite and memes in general, which are already ripe for confusion.
Finally, we have Elden Ring's message system, which – at least theoretically – can easily be translated to other languages since it limits players to specific terms within a rigid pool of combinations and phrases. But as ever, using the same words can only capture so much of the meaning given how context and culture impact our perception of language.
Fortnite wasn't the only meme to cause chaos, either. Another Japanese Twitter user asked "What's the butt and fingers?" in reference to the ten billion messages offering the tried-and-true sage advice, "Try finger, but hole." Another translator, Kevin Ishizaka, replied to explain that, "But hole looks like a butt hole, so it says 'put your finger in that / your ass hole.'"
"So that's it! I do not understand!" replied another Japanese player, neatly summing up the feelings of everyone who's ever had to translate a niche reference.
