Forum - View topicThis Week in Games - Not So Epic
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PumpkinMouse
 Posts: 82 |
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Man, I have a very soft spot for Hatoful Boyfriend as the first Japanese dating sim I liked wholeheartedly, so while I'm glad to hear that Epic has been successfully shamed into paying the creator, it sucks that she had to deal with that in the first place. I hope Steam is at least paying her consistently--that's where I bought both Hatoful Boyfriend and its sequel, and I'd hate for her to not be getting paid by them either.
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Rob19ny
Posts: 1700 |
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You mean Square Enix America. The Japanese FF7R and SEJP twitter accounts did not acknowledge it. |
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juaifan
Posts: 117 |
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Not surprising since it's a "meme" that's exclusive to the English community. Just like how the English accounts for Square Enix or Final Fantasy 7 post references to Cloud's infamous "let's mosey" line and other old, bad translation of FF7 that no one in Japan would know or really care about. Cait Sith's name was never an issue in Japan, only in English was it a meme how no one knew how to pronounce it for decades. But some people prefer those inaccurate-but-memorable translations, and people know the character as "Kate Sihth" in English so the English account is just making a joke about the whole thing and settling the debate once and for all; although I could have sworn his name was spoken before in past media so it should have been already known. Honestly as far as FF7's English localization goes, there's a lot more glaring issues than the way Cait Sith's name gets pronounced. |
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Northlander
 Posts: 901 |
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I'm not a historical expert by any means, so take that into account with what I write here, but... Skadi isn't a correct spelling of Skuld's name. Skuld's name has always been Skuld, and Urd is actually closer to the real name as "Urthr" or Verdandi's being spelled as "Verthandi". The 'ð" letter in both Verdandi's and Urd's name in the old Norse writing pronounces closer to a 'd' rather than the 'th' part that sounds more like English spelling/writing. Skaði (usually written Skadi in modern times) is actually a completely different character than Skuld, being a jotun woman who married Njorðr (usually spelled Njord in more modern writing) and serving as a patron goddess for skiing. As far as the manga and anime goes, I also kinda reacted to Verdandi being written as "Belldandy" (and pronounced Berudandi) on the subtitles of the original.... AnimEigo, if memory serves me right? ...VHS tapes of the five episode OAV back in the day when I was still a fresh anime fan. Given how loose and fast the show played with Norse mythology, though, in addition to being fairly charming, I made my peace with it relatively quickly. I also seem to remember there being some kind of inlay on the release that sort of explained the whole decision to do so, so... yeah. |
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ThatMoonGuy
Posts: 364 |
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The v/b switch is actually a pretty common thing in japanese (see Beerus in DBS being based on the word "virus", allegedly). Japanese doesn't actually have hiragana for the 'v' sequence and often represent the 'v' sound from other sounds as 'b' sequence (see ビクティニ, lit bikutiini, but more correctly Victini). So very often japanese unofficial (or even official) translations end up getting some pretty weird romanizations. Back in the days of fan translations of Fate/Extra CCC, Meltlyris (メルトリリス merutoririsu) was often translated as Meltlilith which while not incorrect ends up losing the original flower theme from the Sakura Five. With Belldandy the same happens, since it is a legitimate choice to render Veldandr as ベルダンヂィ (berudandi) in japanese and from then render it as Belldandy in english from the katakana.
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Andrew Wonderful
Posts: 9 |
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A lot of Final Fantasy characters have name different pronounciations or even entirely different names all together in English. That's like saying Ted Woolsey must be so embaressed for not realizing the katakana for the main heroine of Final Fantasy 6 says Tina instead of Terra. Or that the katakana for the main character of Final Fantasy 9 says Jitan and not Zidane. It's not ignorance, it's all intentional since localizations is about adapting works to be more digestible for a foreign market. Most people in the west pronounce Cait Sith the way they pointed out so they adapted it thay way, like how Tina may not be considered as exotic of a fantasy name as Terra to a native English speaker. Speaking of Ted Woolsey, one of the more bizarre cases of cultural replacement is from Chrono Trigger. Frog's signature sword in Japan is called Granleon, but in the West they change it to the very Japanese Masamune. While I don't think it was ever confirmed, given the Kingdom of Zeal is based heavily on Middle Eastern aesthetic and culture the most common theory people came up with is the Granleon being named after the Lion and Sun motif. If so, we now have Persian culture being replaced by Japanese culture to be more digestive for Americans. A pretty odd switch!
Ironically, while Yusuke Watanabe originally names Beerus after "virus", Akira Toriyama did not get the memo and thought it was a pun on beer, hence why he named Whis after whiskey, and then they all rolled with the alcohol theme for the Gods of Destruction and the Angels for all future characters like Champa/Champagne and Vados/Calvados. Beerus was initially also named after the German pronunciation of virus, hence the B sound. Similarly, Japan pronounces the wasei eigo "energy" like the German way of ener-gi (gi like the martial arts outfit) rather than the American English way of ener-G (G like the letter). So even in Japan it becomes a very tricky thing to keep track of their own puns and pronunciation. To make the energy one more confusing, if you say "energy drink", you pronounce energy the American English way and not the normal Germanic way. |
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Fluwm
 Posts: 894 |
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So do manga localizations still translate ふふふ as fufufu? Been a while since I've read anything with a proper, laughing ojou-sama.
Anyway that is, or was, a fairly common bit of onomatopoeia that frequently got lost-in-translation. Way-back-when I remember not a few times when Anglophone fans expressed confusion at just how, exactly, Japanese people laughed. |
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