So it doesn't. 「男の子である。」(Is boy.) is pretty definitive nevertheless, no?
That's a good question, and I suspect this is the particular phrase that's leading to the confusion.
There are a number of grammatical structures used in written Japanese that rarely appear in spoken, conversational Japanese. One of these is 「である」 (de aru), the verb construction from which the copula (the sentence-ending です (desu), だ (da), だった (datta), etc.) is derived.
In normal usage, absent of other context, 「ある」 (aru) could be translated as the direct-style present tense (or "non-past," since Japanese grammar doesn't distinguish between present and future tense) of the English verb "is." The direct past tense would be 「あった」 (atta), or "was." This would lead to the conclusion that 「男の子である」 (otoko no ko de aru) means "is a boy."
However, written Japanese also frequently uses verb tenses in a way that wouldn't depict time linearly if translating literally. Instead of using "de aru" (is) and "de atta" (was) to demarcate tense, "de aru" is almost always used,
regardless of implied tense. (Another example of this is the auxiliary verb 「しまう」(shimau), which similarly avoids using the past tense 「しまった」 (shimatta) in situations where spoken Japanese would normally call for it.)
As a result*, I believe there's insufficient context to specify with 100 percent certainty whether the literal translation would be "
is a boy" or "
was a boy." I mentioned this a couple of posts earlier, but it would be helpful to see Bridget's Japanese in-game character profile to see if it differs from the
profile on ArcSys's site**.
* The sentence's other verbs are similarly inconclusive, something that I glossed over because this post is getting too long already. I can clarify in another post if anyone would really like an explanation.
** I suspect that the Japanese in-game profile might be identical to the online one, despite the English version containing a different translation from the
online profile. The Japanese language is capable of expressing the same idea in fewer characters than the English language, something that can lead to issues when localizing video games. Text boxes are often designed to fit the number of characters required in Japanese and can't be expanded without altering the game's code. Although not as restrictive as it was back in the early console days, like when unfairly-maligned SquareSoft localizer Ted Woolsey had to chop out huge chunks of Chrono Trigger's plot to fit all the text on a SNES cartridge, localized versions have to be compressed into a limited amount of space. It's entirely possible that the Strive localization team didn't have enough space to use "Bridget" in place of pronouns like the English online profile did, so they went with the pronoun that would cause them the least amount of grief. (That's just my theory, though.)
