Zoids FMC lerns us how to spel

[Orange]

You would think these translation guys would hire some poor dude with an english major or something, and have him grammarcheck the translations into something less babelfish.

[KAndrw]

berserkorangefury said:

You would think these translation guys would hire some poor dude with an english major or something, and have him grammarcheck the translations into something less babelfish.

I went to a pulp culture expo a fortnight ago and there was one of the guys who set up ADV (who translate and distribute anime in the US) there, along with Tiffany Grant, who was ADV's first voice actress.

Anyway, he said that when they are translating anime, they have everything run through by least two professional translators, one a native japanese speaker and one a native english speaker. It's a shame that Tomy doesn't have access to a setup like that.

Heck, they could probably get better transliterations by getting J-pop writers to do the job!

[Orange]

Access? Dude, they go up to the most normal otaku with an english degree that they can find (not difficult!), and go, "Hey wanna live in japan and read anime scripts all day?". The sucker would do it for free. x.x

[Sen Vaez]

I don't care too much about spelling since letters and pronunciation vary between languages. How's the game itself? Is it another Zoids Vs. game or something a little better?

[Drk-X]

Full Metal Clash = nothing like VS

Full Metal Clash is a pure strategic fighting game similar to Soul Calibur III where you take a base character, in this case, a zoid with it's default weapons, and customize the crap out of it using a wide variety of weapons. It's a close combat type of game and TONS of fun.

Also, these issues have nothing to do with spelling and pronounciation as much as it has to do with bad romanization and knowledge of English words.

[Tilly]

It's weird. The old fanbooks have some pretty good English in, with most mistakes being little Engrish-style quibbles I could care less about. And while you had your Descats and your Zeekdobers, the English (and German) for Zoid names was better as a whole...

Which reminds me, another thing I find odd is they remembered the umlauts on König Wolf and Berserk Führer, but forgot them for Jäger...

The most AUGH mistake, to me, is Hayate being called Murasame in some of the Japanese on its box. There's no excuse for that, guys!

[Snowflake]

and don't forget tomy has such a propensity for using italian and german words that they confuse th e hell out of themselves AND english-speakers

[Tilly]

Yes. Trying to figure out German squished into Japanese is Not Fun when one has very little knowledge of it like me. I wouldn't have guess Sieg was Sieg the way they spelled it if the dictionary hadn't had it.

I'll just have to take German too :p.

(edit) Um, oops. Disable smileys and lock thread should NOT be check boxes so close to each other x_X.

[Drk-X]

Sweet Jebus...I just saw screencaps of the game...

"Luge" and "Gharagah" are both in the game and both make me wanna cry. I was really hoping to get official romanizations from this game but was let down. I already know I can't trust those based on "Luge" because I've seen "Ruuji" spelled out that way on merchandise while looking around for info. And "Gharagah" is nothing like a name... <.<

So, Ruuji and Galaga it is for now...as katakana tells us so.

"Re Mie" and "Zailin" I don't have a problem with because in english, "Mii" and "Mie" are pronounced exactly the same due to "e" and "i" both being vowels. I of course prefer "Mii" because of the way it's spelled in kana. As for Zairin and Zailin, it depends on how it's more commonly pronounced. Episodes 2-11 use"Zailin" and then everything after is more clearly sounded out as "Zairin".

I sure hope they don't mispell Ron, Gene, Gyorg, Souta, Seijuurou, or whoever the remaining 4 genesis characters to be unlocked are. (Ra Kan appears to not be a character and I highly doubt Ferumi or Kotona will be in the game.)

[KAndrw]

tilly said:

The kana are more Schwarz to me (remember the W is V-ish, and V sounds often are written with B sounds in kana)...and Karl had that black lily. It's also a common enough German name.

Katakana has that nifty VU character (U with nigori) that is pronounced exactly the same as BU, but used when the original word uses a v sound.

The VU character is not always used, but when it is used it usually seems to be used consistently - ie if a manga uses it once to replace a v sound, it will tend to replace every v sound with VU.

Raven is spelt with a VU in katakana. From memory it is REIVUN.

Karl's surname does not have a VU. IIRC it is SHUBUaRUTSU. To me this is an indication that the intention was not Schwarz, and Schubaltz seems to fit better.

All, of course, speculation based on observation. Not known fact.

[Drk-X]

Hmmm, odd. Recently I thought that was wrong when I saw Volcano spelled with the u". Changed my mind and thought it was supposed to be "vo".

Oh well...

[Tilly]

Dictionary says シュワルツ for Schwarz, which seems odd to me...I would think it'd be va, if anything. But I've seen multiple katakana spellings of "sieg" and I don't know German well, so I dunno. My brain hurts. I just go with Schwarz because it's more of a legit name and there's the black lily thing.

[Drk-X]

Hmm, I only seen one for Sieg and it was spelled as "Jiiku" which is why I call him that. This was from Zoids Saga I, the Jiiku OS for Blade Liger BS.