Is correcting names in games really that important?
You probably know what I'm talking about. a Japanese game has gone international, and some of the names may end up snagged by the translators having to decide whether a sound is an "l" or an "r", an "s" or a "th".
so the names we have are the translators' interpretation. Then the characters are revisited later on, and some helpful Japanese commenter just happens to say "that's not exactly the name we intended."
Best example of this right now? Aeris. Everyone knows the name Aeris. It's like Mario, or Sonic. People know this character.
Yet later appearances (Kingdom Hearts and Advent Children) have messed it up. According to those, it should be Aerith.
Aerith. Say it with me. AeriTH. No matter how many times you repeat it, you'll still have that voice in the back of your mind asking, "why are you pronouncing it with a lisp?"
translations of Fire Emblem games are infamous for this as well. Even more recently is the new GBA version of Tales of Phantasia, where Cless and Klarth are now Cress and Claus. There was even a point when people thought Nintendo would insist on calling Chozo homeworld Zebes "Zebeth".
My question is: What's the point? is it really worth these corporations' time and money to press the matter? Does Square Enix think it can force everyone to call her Aerith, after the game that told her story called her Aeris?
What's the point?
__________________
WARNING: The above post may contain sarcasm and/or sophisticated satire. Any psychological damage sustained is purely your fault.
Anyway, I think they're catering to the "whiny fanboy" segment of the population; the people who desperately want to be Japanese, even though every thing they now about Japan, they learned from watching anime. They figure that if they go with the "more Japanese" names it will make those people happy, while not pissing the rest of us off enough that we stop giving them our business.
__________________ "Men curse the Communist Party, but eventually it may release them. If hell were endless, then God would be worse than our Secret Police."--Pastor Valentin
Umm, not really. If that were so they'd directly translate the names from the kana and Aeris would be Eirisu (or however they'd write it, that's my best guess going from the pronounciation).
Basically, Japanese romaji can be translated to English in many many ways.
According to Kaliero, they were changed to be more in keeping with the Japanese. If he's wrong, take it up with him; my theory was built around his post.
__________________ "Men curse the Communist Party, but eventually it may release them. If hell were endless, then God would be worse than our Secret Police."--Pastor Valentin
And no, it's not the case that they're changed to be more in line with the Japanese names, it's just that there are many different ways to write them out in English based on the Japanese name.
Okay. Then ... wow. In that case, to answer the original post, correcting names is even less important than I'd previously suspected.
__________________ "Men curse the Communist Party, but eventually it may release them. If hell were endless, then God would be worse than our Secret Police."--Pastor Valentin
I think it can really matter when the names have some significance like the way Ted Woolsey butchered the elemental lord names for Final Fantasy IV. They were named after the generals of Hell's demon army from the Inferno but were instead dumbed down and scrambled.
__________________ Land of the free, home of the brave...
Do you think we will ever be saved?
In this land of dreams find myself sober...
Wonder when will it'll all be over...
Living in a void when the void grows colder...
Wonder when it'll all be over?
Will you be laughing when it's over?
lol.. well I think what kaliero means is that they initially called her Aeris because her name was something like Earisu in roomaji (I played the japanese one a bit before the american release.. got up to when cloud was in a dress >_> ) ... so after initally calling her Aeris.. they suddenly decided it to be a good idea to call her Aerith?.... that would be the same as suddenly calling Tidus his roomaji name of Tida, after telling us its Tidus... I suppose we all look for more consistency from the characters we've come to love.. /shrug
me too . you watch serious japanese movies like FF7 AC lots of times and you can get the gist of it without subtitles. eg. 'kazza' means 'mother'. that was an easy one that you pick up the first time you watch it
and yeh, aeris is aeris is aeris. not much can change that now.
__________________
Last edited by MadMel on Mar 4th, 2006 at 03:47 AM
No. We can either have "Sora" or something unpronounceable like "Hikaurzeteyu". Americans would like characters whose names they can correctly pronounce.
99% of names from games are just translated phonetically to English. Because of how Japanese is written, how it's spelled is not necessarilly how it's pronounced.
yeah sorry, kadaj has a weird accent. when he says it, it always seems like "kazza". now that i think about it, everyone else who said it said 'ka-san'
it was funny. when my copy of AC got stuffed somehow, i borrowed a friends, and its subtitles were effed up bad.
eg..."who is this "mother" they were talking about"---"mum, how're you?" they're same sentence
__________________
Last edited by MadMel on Mar 5th, 2006 at 06:42 AM
KMC Community Forums
Is correcting names in games really that important?
Feb 28th, 2006 09:04 PM
. you watch serious japanese movies like FF7 AC lots of times and you can get the gist of it without subtitles. eg. 'kazza' means 'mother'. that was an easy one that you pick up the first time you watch it 
