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Name changes made during translation that worked, those that didn't, and those that made no sense
- Thread starter SolVanderlyn
- Start date
The word sounds - to me - cutesy. That word might be the actual name of the entity in Japanese, but as somebody who isn't Japanese it has no meaning to me so I can only go off it's sound and spelling, and to me it doesn't have any "oomph" that supposedly the OP said it does. I don't know why they went with Dromarch especially since it has seemingly no connection to any of that character's themes, but going purely off of how both names sound. Dromarch sounds more powerful to me, if that makes any sense.
I was coming in here to say this one.
Esty Dee
Esty Erhard (Esty Dee in the localized garbage version) is a recurring support character in the Arland trilogy series. She first appeared in Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland as a supporting character, and later became a playable character in Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland. She...atelier.fandom.com
This is kind of an infamous one, where NIS America changed a character's name to make an STD joke due to her issues with finding a husband.
Stuff like the above is one of the many reasons I don't think highly of their localization work. >.>
They had the opportunity to correct it for the remasters, and STILL left it there. She's a cool party member too.
Gouki to Akuma in the English releases of Street Fighter games. I don't dislike the name Akuma, but I don't understand it the change to begin with. They're both Japanese words, it's not like the change means anything in English.
I used to think it was too late to change it, same with Balrog, Vega and M. Bison...but then they actually did just start referring to Charlie as Nash in SFV, something they'd been doing in Japan since he was created. Maybe they thought it was an easier change though, since it was always his last name, even in English.
I used to think it was too late to change it, same with Balrog, Vega and M. Bison...but then they actually did just start referring to Charlie as Nash in SFV, something they'd been doing in Japan since he was created. Maybe they thought it was an easier change though, since it was always his last name, even in English.
There was no way they were keeping Umbreon's name lol 😬
But it's true, so many Pokemon games are reaaally good and creatively spun into English (I'm sure it's the same in Japanese otherwise)
Forreal. Tina is a hairdresser at your local strip mall. Terra actually sounds KINDA magical by comparison.
We do lose the Celes+Tina [Celestina] combo (which might assuage "who's the heroine" debate), but.....Terra is better.
ALSO HER HAIR IS GREEN SQUARE ENIX. Stop with the blonde or that ugly ass vomit colour between blonde and green.
Jesus Christ, I'm a massive FFVI fan and Celes and Terra are top 5 RPG characters of all time for me (Terra is better than Tina, because Tina sounds like a girl who puts in 30 years at my local Minnesota gas station and was also my great-grandma's name).
BUT HOW DID I MISS THE "CELESTINA" THING?!
On the Xenoblade 2 topic, let's talk about Poppi.
Poppi α = Hana JS
Poppi QT = Hana JK
Poppi QTπ = Hana JD
Hana just means flower while Poppi refers to the specific poppy flower. Aside from that these are (almost) all puns in both languages, though they're a bit less skeevy in the localised version. We got QT = Cutie and QTπ = Cutie pie, obviously. iirc α is just alpha. In Japanese, JS stands for Jet Spark, but it can also mean Joshishougakusei, or elementary school girl. JK stands for Justice Knight, but also Joshikousei or high school girl. And JD is Judgement Day, but also Joshidaigakusei, or college girl. These are kinda loaded terms, the initials especially, and are mostly used in fetish circles and porn. It's just another example of XB2 being way too goddamn horny for its own good. The localised versions are goofy but fairly innocuous.
Poppi α = Hana JS
Poppi QT = Hana JK
Poppi QTπ = Hana JD
Hana just means flower while Poppi refers to the specific poppy flower. Aside from that these are (almost) all puns in both languages, though they're a bit less skeevy in the localised version. We got QT = Cutie and QTπ = Cutie pie, obviously. iirc α is just alpha. In Japanese, JS stands for Jet Spark, but it can also mean Joshishougakusei, or elementary school girl. JK stands for Justice Knight, but also Joshikousei or high school girl. And JD is Judgement Day, but also Joshidaigakusei, or college girl. These are kinda loaded terms, the initials especially, and are mostly used in fetish circles and porn. It's just another example of XB2 being way too goddamn horny for its own good. The localised versions are goofy but fairly innocuous.
Not many people probably played this one, but I picked up Food Girls because it was massively on sale and came with some cute acrylic stands, a shikishi, + extras. I tried out the game itself for about 10 minutes and was pretty put off by how they localized some of the names.
Madoka = Bubbles
Hikari = Aurora
Xiaolong = Long'er
Japanese voice acting included, so really noticeable. Haven't touched it since.
Madoka = Bubbles
Hikari = Aurora
Xiaolong = Long'er
Japanese voice acting included, so really noticeable. Haven't touched it since.
Wow…
Not sure if the localization team deserves praise or criticism for seeing through their bullshit excuses for those abbreviations and coming up with a softened version of what they really meant for the west, but they certainly handled it creatively. lmao
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And has his nationality changed from Brazilian to Pakistani in the process.
To this day, I still don't know whether to pronounce it "Skala" or "Shala" (silent c).
It's probably the latter but I just can't rewire my brain to correct it, same with Celes (I spent way too many years pronouncing it "Cell-Less" instead of "Su-Less").
I have it on good authority that Cloud and Tifa were always meant to be depicted as just friends and nothing more. In my 20 page essay, which you can find on Clarith4EternityTrueHeartsAsOne, you will find that...
Didn't even know about these, oof. Goddamn XBC2 and it's dialed up to 100 horniness bothers me to this day.
Don't get why you brought this up in a name change thread that didn't mention shipping.
This one was also super unusual although it's good for Middle Eastern representation.
The french translation of Ace Attorney was mostly good, they had great ideas to translate all the puns, but...
Miles Edgeworth was changed to... Benjamin Hunter
This made no sense at all, and changing an english name to another english name? What?
My guess was that even for french people that's a name that would convey the idea of being relentless, and it's easier to pronounce than Edgeworth for french folks... But even then, why Benjamin? That's the most mundane name imaginable lol
At least that's the only name of the main cast that was changed
Miles Edgeworth was changed to... Benjamin Hunter
This made no sense at all, and changing an english name to another english name? What?
My guess was that even for french people that's a name that would convey the idea of being relentless, and it's easier to pronounce than Edgeworth for french folks... But even then, why Benjamin? That's the most mundane name imaginable lol
At least that's the only name of the main cast that was changed
For the love of all that is holy, the latter. I feel like there's a Drake meme for this.
All these characters have different names in Japanese. They didn't change Miles Edgeworth; they changed Mitsurugi Reiji.
This is the most Aerith coping I have seen in a long time lol. Guys, you can think it sounds better but that doesn't make it the original intent or something.
Anyway, I really dislike a lot of Fire Emblem localization because they love changing Western names into different Western names for almost no reason. While it doesn't matter to most people, it can make looking stuff up in different languages a nightmare because English will have changed John to William or some crap.
They also randomly changed like half the European-ish noble family names in Three Houses to… similar but distinct European-ish family names. It is just sort of weird.
Anyway, I really dislike a lot of Fire Emblem localization because they love changing Western names into different Western names for almost no reason. While it doesn't matter to most people, it can make looking stuff up in different languages a nightmare because English will have changed John to William or some crap.
They also randomly changed like half the European-ish noble family names in Three Houses to… similar but distinct European-ish family names. It is just sort of weird.
I mean, all the other names are the same as the english ones so... pretty sure they didn't translate from the japanese.
FR <--> EN
Samuel Rosenberg <--> Marvin Grossberg
Victor Boulay <--> Winston Payne
Conrad Gavin <--> Klavier Gavin
Byrne Faraday <--> Kay Faraday
Dick Tektiv <--> Dick Gumshoe
Dahlia Plantule <--> Dahlia Hawthorne
Andrea Landry <--> Adrian Andrews
Melchior Grimoire <--> Magnifi Gramarye
Virgil Grimoire <--> Valant Gramarye
etc. etc.
Yes, as I said in my first post, they translated the puns for the support cast but we have the same for the main cast.
Phoenix didn't get renamed Nicky Larson, he's not called Naruhodo. He has the english name.
Wasn't the main male character called Elza in the JP version?
Arthur the Hero is lightyears better than Harold, your middle-aged dad perusing the comics section.Harold from Fire Emblem became Arthur in the US version, despite his belt with an H on it:
Dormarch - Wikipedia
It's not a name change during translation. Aerith is an approximation of the original name, not a change made during localisation.
See, I always subscribe to that pseudo-official short film from the mid 00s:
It bothers me so much that they went ahead and unified Charlie/Nash but they didn't fix the Mike Bison/Balrog/Vega
Right but we're missing the Princess Sarah reference.
I can understand wanting the main characters names to be immediately understandable, but i don't understand feeling like you have to excise all Eastern mythological references and replace them with Western ones.
A long time ago, someone woke up and said "today, I choose chaos".Team Ealis.
They're probably gonna wait for Mike Tyson to kick the bucket before they change the names back in Street Fighter.
I really want to know why Rosalina (Rozetta being her original name in japanese) is called Harmonie or Estrela depending on the country
Nintendo seems to have pretty strict guidelines when it comes to names, Peach, Daisy and Pauline have the same name everywhere, so why her?
It goes even deeper in Italy where she's called Rosalinda
Nintendo seems to have pretty strict guidelines when it comes to names, Peach, Daisy and Pauline have the same name everywhere, so why her?
It goes even deeper in Italy where she's called Rosalinda
If I recall correctly, it's more like Vinega, Soysau, and Mayonnai. Basically condiment references but not quite the right spellings.
It's Tsuki no Mamono which wouldn't make it the same type of demons as in Demon's Souls at all so nah.
BB and Demons are not connected even in the Japanese version.
So much arguing over Aerith/Aeris. I always preferred -th as it just sounds more natural as a name and its the canon spelling anyway.
I would expect nothing different from him and I will continue to avoid any content he makes.There'll always be Tim Rogers's version I guess...
Tell me about it. It's okay to prefer Aeris over Aerith, but to wallow that far down deep in denial and try to pass off your spectator's opinion as a valid truth, man... it's been near 25-fuckin' years, 1/4 of a century, GET OVER IT!
I'm fine with people that prefer Aeris over Aerith, just because they might think it sounds better or prettier, but I don't see how it can be more of a valid name than Aerith. It's just another take on the same name. The whole "it sounds weird" is relative to what one thinks sounds weird. I've always been against the excuse that "It sounds stupid because it sounds like you are talking with a lisp", because I used to attend speech classes for speech problems in middle school. That shit's a no-no to me, I've known people that spoke with lisps. It's an occasion of "Okay, you, you can not like the name or prefer Aeris better, but you don't have to be an asshole about it!".
That said, I've never known an actual Aerith (it's quite a unique name), though I've never known an actual Aeris either. The closest I've known was a girl named Enid in high school.
Funny that the original translation from Japanese got it right regarding King Koopa. So many people like to jump in and say, "Nah-uh, his original Japanese name was ACTUALLY Bowser!" just because Peach was translated to Princess Toadstool, but nah, it's always been King Koopa in Japan.
I'm Team Claud and Bullet!Team Ealis.
I'm pretty sure it's Shala, though I (and my siblings) used to call her Skala back when we originally played the game on the SNES.
For Celes, both are pretty similar. Though, I've known someone that pronounced her name as "Cell-EEZ", and that was the only person I've known to say it like that.
To be fair, I think just one person was going that far. Most just preferred the way Aeris looked and sounded over Aerith, and left it at that.
Maybe I misunderstand the post (sorry, if so, english is not my native tongue!) but the "th" was always suppossed to be there. For example: you can write "Earth" as アース in Japanese (Asu) and now look how you write Aertih in Japanese... エアリス which is Earisu... I am not implying that you cannot translate ス to "s", you would do that for Iris / アイリス, I am just saying that ス could very well be "th" as well... other examples in which ス stands for th are バース (Birth/Bath), ブレス (breath), ミス (Myth)
And since her Name is suppossed to come from Earth, the "th" makes more sense than the "s" (Information taken from an interview from 1997 september issue of Famitsu).
It is even seen in the Concept Art of Nomura:
(And you can see it's more closely to the japanese / right pronunciation: "Ea" instead of "Ae")
It also was written like that for the Ultimania (not the Remake one, so the old one):
I mean: you can still like it more as Aeris, no one can take that from you, but the intended way of writing it was always with "th".
It was written as Aerith in tons of pre-release stuff in NA and the extra knights toys.
I've often renamed him Claude after seeing that initial reveal. I never could jive with a name as nonsensical as "Cloud", even if that is rather the point.
I've always thought that the protagonist of Star Ocean 2 had been named Claude because it sounded sorta similar to Cloud
I'm probably wrong but it was my headcanon back then
Syd of Valis (Genesis) is a weird one. I think it was supposed to be Valis SD in Japan, and SD somehow became Syd in other territories, with them changing Yuko's name to Syd and everything.
I will echo this and say the same for Charizard being renamed from Lizardon.
Come on, Lizardon is way more fun to pronounce.
Oh, the War of the Lions loc is so much more consistent in tone, and that includes most of the names they changed.
Yeah.