Uma Musume Localizers Explain Why Kansai Dialect Became 'Ya' and 'Dis'
The session shows that the English version's success, including its Best Mobile Game award at The Game Awards, rested on a deliberate rejection of standard dialect substitution in favor of building each character's voice from scratch.
Key Facts
- CEDEC 2026 ran from July 22 to 24 at Pacifico Yokohama North.
- Cygames Localization Department members Alison Catrell and Ryuhei Morita presented the session on July 24.
- The English version of Uma Musume Pretty Derby launched in 2025 without English voice acting.
- For Tamamo Cross, the team wrote "you" as "ya" and "this" as "dis" to mimic Kansai dialect's fast tempo.
- Uma Musume Pretty Derby won the Best Mobile Game award at The Game Awards last year.
Reporting from 2 sources: GameBusiness.jp, Inside.
At CEDEC 2026, held July 22 to 24 at Pacifico Yokohama North, two members of Cygames' Localization Department, Alison Catrell and Ryuhei Morita, presented a session on how they localized character speech patterns for the English version of Uma Musume Pretty Derby. They distinguished translation, which transfers information, from localization, which conveys a character's tone, personality, and background. Because the English version has no English voice acting, the team had to express each horse girl's personality through text alone. For Tamamo Cross, who speaks in Kansai dialect, they avoided the common approach of mapping it to an American Southern accent, since Taiki Shuttle already uses that. Instead, they spelled words like "you" as "ya" and "this" as "dis" to mimic the fast, contracted sound of Kansai speech. For Yukino Bijin, they used archaic English from the 1930s to 1960s. Agnes Digital's lines drew on English-speaking otaku community expressions, and Daitaku Helios used Gen Z slang. The team assigned staff familiar with each character's culture, used a Slack channel for discussion, and created per-character speech guidelines.
- CEDEC 2026 ran across 12 venues at Pacifico Yokohama North, with the Uma Musume session taking place on July 24, the conference's final day.
- The session title was "Creative Approaches to Localizing Character Dialects and Speech Patterns in the English Version of 'Uma Musume Pretty Derby.'"
- The team's stated goal was balancing recognizability, being instantly identifiable as the character, against authenticity, feeling like the character truly exists.
- Catrell said the success of the anime and Japanese version created high expectations for the global release, which the localization team felt they had to meet.
- The English version launched in 2025 without English voice acting, using the original Japanese voice actors' audio, which made text-based expression essential.
- For Tamamo Cross, the team mimicked how "chigau" (different) contracts to "chau" in Kansai speech, applying the same sound breakdown to English words.
- Yukino Bijin is a country girl who yearns for the city and is pure and unaffected by trends, which the 1930s to 1960s archaic English was meant to reinforce.
- Agnes Digital is known among fans as an otaku horse girl who pours passionate love onto other horse girls, so her lines use online excitement text expressions familiar to English-speaking otaku communities.
- Daitaku Helios is a gyaru whose heavy social media use led the team to conclude she would naturally speak in current Gen Z slang and vibes.
- For Helios, the team assigned a Gen Z member; for Agnes Digital, the member most knowledgeable about English otaku terminology on the team.
- An in-house language quality control team, knowledgeable about the IP, continuously checks whether translated speech patterns are too rigid or too loose and diluted.
- Catrell noted that even staff joining the project midway can easily grasp the translation direction thanks to the guidelines and management system.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 2 cited sources below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.