So, after I figured out how to transliterate stuff for the Arcade flyer with the rough outline of the story, I just figured I could might as well try them out for the first manual, since the parts covering the stages were way lighter than SH2 or SH3.

I won't lie, transliterating these was already a bit of a headache. I saw they weren't being all too descriptive or whatever halfway there, but I have the bad habit of being too dumb to just turn my back on stuff when it looks like they're not getting anywhere.

Anyway. The transliterations are as follows - I had most trouble with a kanji that had like over 10 strokes and was blurred in the scan, and for good measure I also kept a copy with their furigana. Here I'll just present them in their 'raw' form, so if someone with a better grasp of japanese can do a proper job on them, I'm all for it - but I just ask that going off from saying the transliterated text used was mine, I'd be very grateful because yeah, this was a headache.

I don't know japanese fluently at all, but I have some notions. I like quadruple-checked this on the translators I knew, and then ran it through a kanji checker and checked a japanese dictionary to try for as most accuracy as I can. You ain't getting All your Base are to Belong to us, but it's not 100% to the last bit accurate.

Regardless, enough bantering. On with the bloodbath.

--

ステージ しょうかい

Stage Introduction

Stage I
鎖につながれた亡者と、奇怪な生き物が俳徊する地下牢. 地面からは鋭い刃物が突き出してくる.

Dungeon where the enchained dead and strange living creatures wander about. A razor-sharp object thrusts up from the ground.

Stage II
じめじめした地下水路でヘドロの化物が護いかかる。そしてたどり著いた一室ではポルターガイストが追にり始めた。

A damp underground road is guarded by sludge monsters. Pressing on you reach a room where a Poltergeist (phenomena) starts.

Stage III
リックはさらに森の中を進む.降りしきる雨の中、銃を手にしたリックを待ち受にていた者は...。

Rick advances further into a forest. While it incessantly downpours, among the rain Rick finds a gun, and someone awaits him...

Stage IV

侵入者を拒むゆうに仕掛けられた回転刃の向こうには鏡の間が。魔住の鏡は冥界の姿を映すという。

To repel the intruder, traps like the rotary blade are set. Beyond there is the mirror room. It's said that the demon dwelling inside the mirror projects a figure from the World of the Dead.

Stage V

恋人のジエニフアーをしてひたすら戦うリック。愛し合う2人はここで再会かるのだが...。

Rick has been restlessly fighting for his lover Jennifer. Here, two people who love each other are reunited, however...

Stage VI
化物どもが生まれ出でる場所がこの胎内洞だ。諸悪の根源を倒さかい限り、悪夢は永久に続くだろう。

The monsters are all born within this womb cave. The source of all evil, it has to be destroyed to the best of one's abilities, or else the nightmare might go on forever.

ーそして最終"STAGE VII"へー

- And then to the last "Stage VII" -

--

According to someone I know who's big into japanese merchandise, it's an archaic trend that even in guidebooks they usually leave the final boss/levels out, so let alone an instruction manual. In the end, nothing we hadn't known already, but this somewhat contradicts the deal with "Mirror World" for Mirror Rick found on WikiJP; couldn't see what the PC Manual has to say about that. It also is somewhat quirky in nature to the Deadmen, although a notion further bolstered by Part 2's manual: despite their names, they're... well, alive. Technically. West used the Altar to the World of the Dead to "keep the life of the experiments" found in Part 2, by Rick's wording.

I'll see later about tackling the "Ending" section, which Dios had already attempt to translate, but that frustrated even him. But overall, even if as a curiosity, there it is, in general lines, what the PCE manual said about the stages.

Yeah it appears that the Deadmen are simply creatures born from mother rather than the assumed zombies. Perhaps the "dead" in their names implying that their origin is from the World of the Dead, a spiritual dimension where all of the supernatural creatures in Splatterhouse are tied to in one way or the other. Though technically their origin is from mother, but perhaps her origin is tied to the World of the Dead.

It also appears that Deadmen are very adaptive and their forms can take a lot more punishment than humans. In Splatterhouse II, we have deadman fat which originally was a normal deadman until it became cannibalistic at some time, eating it's own kind and mutating into a more deadly creature. The deadmen in that game are all scarred and covered in boils, disfigured by the fire in the original game. However with mother dead and body eaters infesting them, the deadmen are quickly dying out.

At least, that is my own theories. Not sure where I am going with that. Cool translation, always neat to read these.

It's funny because here "World of the Dead" is called "Meikai" (冥界) in the PCE manual, and when they talk about in Part 2's manual they use "Shi no Sekai" (死の世界), which is more literally "Death World" / "World of Death". "Mei" implies "Dead" or "Dark", "Shi" is "Death" itself.

As for Deadman Fat, I'm hoping Part 2's manual has more about them than WikiJP did - though they did say it was a "Deadman subspecies" that "fed on its own kind" we don't even know the nature of the Deadmen there. I'm not holding my breath for it, though, and I haven't done more in the way of transliterating it because it's quite tiresome, but I hope it's more informative.

Regardless, the Ending section, which I had transliterated a couple of days ago:

エンディング

ENDING

呪われしスプラッターハウスに、永年呪縛のまま眠りについてにた「ヘルマスク」。

リックがスプラッターハウスから脱出おおせたその時、「ヘルマスク」還るべきとにろに還りつくであろ...。

These lines are already translated in "Lost in Translation" by Dios, but some things aren't necessarily as redundant ("Noro", for curse, is used twice in the first sentence, but they talk perhaps around "spell-binding" Splatterhouse into sleep, not necessarily 'a cursed sleep'), and the second sentence had something like "recovered" about the last line on the Hell Mask which, well, is exactly what the PCE ending didn't show. But I'm not exactly about to take over an online translator to someone who studies the language. Ironically enough, and having no idea how japanese sentences work like, apparently if you isolate one of the segments in the last sentences you also get a sentence that goes to the lengths of 'burning' or whatever (Excite gave it away as "furnace").

No less, it's up for those who could do an easier translation since it's already typed out in text characters.

FYI...

Not to be an ass, but "transliteration" generally means "the substitution of one writing system for another". So if you had written the Japanese text up here in romaji, that would've been transliteration. What you did, strictly speaking, was "transcribing", which is "copying a document by writing it down on another medium".

Oh, and none of what I just said takes away from the fantastic job you did or the hard work you put into it, whatever the process is called. Kudos and props to you, sir!