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Note: if you are looking for translator resources, go here. |
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The Japanese language is one that eludes me personally. That's why I rely on my friends, or in an emergency a machine translator to read it. It gets to be a pain, sometimes. But compared to those who DO know the language, and agonize over the translations of Japanese TF boxes, tech specs, and video, I have it easy. *I* don't have to decide between two dialects, nor do I have to invent letters to fill in for sounds that don't exist in Japanese. Read below to see some of the problems folks run across. -Fred |
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Himawari) I hate romaji! Morg) Too bad. I don't have the option of showing kana on my computer. Himawari) Sure you do. Download Internet explorer 6 and get the Japanese IME. You can input Japanese as easy as 123!!! Romaji just complicates things and makes things harder to read and understand. Just translate directly to english. I hate it when I see Japanese Transformer name lists done in full romaji, especially when they include letters from English that Japanese people don't even make when they say that word! But anyhow... The reason I don't is because I'm not always sure I'm correct. When I include the romaji people can see what I did and understand how I came to that conclusion. I wasn't implying on your list, but what I ment is why go through all the hassle and make things more difficult by calling Swoop Swarp? or Devastator's name so impossible to read? Morg) I personally use the "different" names to reflect that the names are different in Japan. Whether it is pronounciation or actual differences in spelling, I feel that the difference should be acknowledged. Himawari) That's fine, to each his own but in my own opinion I don't like them, and only stating as such. I don't plan on forcing my opinion on others, so I hope you or anyone else took it that way. We know it's not a DIFFERENT name like "gong" just that Japanese is a consanant vowel language so they cannot pronounce things the same as we do with English. And then trying to translate their pronunciation back into English just doesn't do any justice. Like Swarp? Come on! Japanese people would love to be able to make a real "R" sound! especially a ar or er sound. They get close with an "a" sound that is extended like when they say escalator like S (small 'oo' sound as in 'cool' may be heard after "S")-KA-lay-ta with a long 'ahhh' sound. If you really wanted to romanize the katakana for Swoop it'd be su wa - pu. There is no l or R sound. so Suwa-pu. (sue whah poo). Morg) Now that is something I had wondered about. I know Japanese language is generally bereft of the letter r, so I wondered why he would be called Swarp. What about Deszarus though? Himawari) Well, that is a tricky one since people could argue all night about what is right or wrong, all I can say is we generally know what the Japanese wish to say in terms as pronounciation as well as they did also, but if it came out that way in the end could be another story. Japanese seem to like the 'za' sound from saurus. In fact, I think Japanese just like the sound 'za' period. They use that sound for 'the' in English since they cannot pronounce that word or sound of 'th' blend. But still they over use it. They say 'the' chocolate bar in a commercial for example, they put 'the' in front of almost anything they can just because for them it sounds cool, not due to a grammatical error - they do it on purpose. That in itself is their error I suppose. Japanese have a cross between 'l' and 'r' and in romaji it can be written both ways since it is for hte same sound in Japanese. Ra ri ru re ro, or la li lu le lo. Either way, japanese don't say either a definate "L" or an "R" and it goes differently for each Japanese person. fffXfUf?fX is desuzarasu. That is how it is spelt in romaji. How they TRIED to spell it I'll leave up to the fans to battle out. I had always thought it was a bad Japanese rominalized spelling of 'death' saurus myself. :-) As you can see the Japanese just want to say "Swoop" leave it at that. we shouldn't rub it in that they can't pronounce English or other language sounds. Morg) Okay, that is a fair point. However, should we bastardise Japanese to come up with names like Deathsaurus and Killbison? My understanding is that Killbison's name is actually Gilvison, so why Killbison? Something I do want to do is revise my list so that the names on there (in particular the later characters) are acurate. However, that means that certain characters names are going to be changed and will be virtually unrecognisable. Himawari) No it's not Gilvison. One, Japanese people cannot say 'v' since they don't ever place there front teeth on their bottom lip while talking and second there is no "ten ten" after the "ki" making it a "gi". Kilubaison is pronounsed (key lou bye soh n) since they cannot say a short "o" sound, well that is as best as it gets for Japanese pronunciation. Kill comes out quite obvious. And substituting a sort "o" in place of the long "O" sound that Japanese people are only able to make you can see they were wanting to say bison. If the Japanese used rominzed "bi" in Japanese it would sound like "bee", not bi as in english. Just like in Japanese if I want to enter Diaclone into my keyboard I have to type: da i a ku ro nn. English has about 14 vowel sounds on average schwa being the most used of them whereas Japanese has only 5 always. We have stress to determine which vowel sound will be used, the speed of or sentence whereas they have one speed. We have blends, and vowels which are made by moving our tongue to another location while their vowels are stationary and they don't have blends. they have a small tsu which may be the only hard thing for non speaking Japanese to pronounce. I still get a kick out of 'Devastar' on LOC. Cause if you watch the Japanese cartoon it certainly doesn't sound the way you woud read it in English. Morg) Something else to bear in mind here is that Takara either couldn't make up their minds as to what their characters' names are or that the "fandom" have bastardised the Japanese names. Case in point: Lio Kaiser. His card calls him Liocaeser, not Lio Kaiser, so which is correct? Same goes for Kup with the whole Cha/Chear thing. Are we really going to say that the cards which come with the toys are wrong? Himawari) It's not a matter of not making up their minds, just the person who is in chage of tring to lable his name in English. WE KNOW that "c" can have a both hard and soft use, "K" or "S" sound respectivly, but don't expect non native english speakers to know that. f?fCfIfJfCfU[ is pronounced rah ee oh kah ee za. Now if we pronounce laio or raio or even basterdized japanesenglish lio with Japanese pronounciation they are almost the same except laio or raio is pronounced "lie o" and Lio can only have the same pronunciation if prononced with an English pronounciation since if it were pronounced in Japanese would produce "lee o". Notice that the pronunciation of "rah ee o" and "lee o" are totally different, but one is fitted for English pronounciation it seems. Now, for Japanese, they probably weren't aware of hte "c" being used as a soft "c" since they pronounce it as a hard "C" even in english when used like a soft "c" and pronounce it the same as a K sound. If they really wanted to use "ceaser" i'm sure the jatakana would have been with a shi, not a ka. so I'd have to go with Lio (english adaption to produce lah ee o as in lion) and kaiser since they used ka, not shi and have a long za sound to represent "er" or "ar" sounds. The card is just poor work by Joe blowaguchi at Takara...and yes, same goes for Kup. The person who did the chear on the card didn't know how English spelling worked to mark the "ar" sound. Simple as that. Stupid mistake, stupid argument. It's Char. Morg) Admittedly, Hasbro screwed up a lot of tech specs but how likely is it that Takara would screw up the spelling on character names? Himawari) VERY likely. You can't expect them to get it right just like they can't expect us to get Japanese names 100% correct either since we aren't native Japanese speakers. Gilvison??? WTF? just look at Starscrem that comes with B.B. or that AM named Omega Spreem? that was done through a Japanese screw up. A translation from the Japanese to romaji to bad English spelling. By the time they caught on it was too late. Or how bout the Diaclone Porsche spelt Polsche? They made a correction later, so that means there is a box varient for you Diaclone collectors.
I don't believe there is anything else for me to add... |