Fire Emblem 12 ~Heroes~ Translation Project

[Rewjeo]

eventually they'll just get used to them and stop caring, because there was nothing they could ever do by complaining about the names and they don't fucking matter anyway.

Because NO ONE calls her Sheeda anymore, right?

Also, Ellerean was shortened to Elrean for a few reasons. This was decided a while back (I think it was our first name change), but here's what I recall. First, there's a character limit on how many characters can be in a row of dialogue (which is even shorter than the dialogue box, thanks to the recap text feature); shortening a longer name (a longer name that actually has dialogue and is spoken of) is a way of helping us stay within these boundaries more easily. Second, Elrean is actually proposed by Intelligent Systems. IS used "Elrean" as the character's internal reference name (this is also where Malicia came from). Third, at least for myself, was that cutting out the middle 'le' makes the name smoother, and thus I find Elrean to be a better name.

I feel like Elrean actually flows worse than Ellerean. Eh-lair-ee-uhn (stress on the second syllable) vs. El-ree-uhn (stress on the first. How do you say it?

I think the whole Malicia thing (which I still vehemently oppose) has shown you that maybe it's not always best to go with what IS suggested The technical aspect is still there, though.

Edited August 17, 2011 by Rewjeo

[Crimson Red]

Two more reasons to use Elrean over Ellerean (I'd like to say "I'm open to suggestions on something better than Elrean but I think that's just going to make people think that we still might just use Ellerean, whereas I'm looking for an alternative to BOTH names...)

1) Magic tomes have the prefix 'El' before them and then the name of the tome (I never bothered to look into if "El" is a reference to "Hell", but anyway, the point is the same). 'El' may be common in both names, but the emphasis is increased in 'Elrean' because there is no second 'l' to connect the two syllables and as a result we are more likely to see the significance of 'El' and even think of it as a sort of 'prefix' to the name (it's fantasy so names can have prefixes and suffixes AFAIC). Furthermore, "Rean" is an actual boy's name which can mean even-natured or compromisable. Funny enough, in the chapter Elrean joins, you have to compromise with him for him to join, though he is reasonable (which I think is part of being even-natured--someone who's calm-minded, open to suggestions, reasonable, but at the same time not persuaded super easily--something in the middle) and funny enough, Elrean is also a mage (Elrean uses Elfire, I think it's catchy, though me thinking so can't really be used to argue the name much...)

2) If I were by some chance talking to one of the few people I know who have played Fire Emblem IRL and they by some chance knew of FE12 and we by some chance came to discuss the game and we by some chance came to mention that mage dude whose name starts with 'El', I'd much rather say "Elrean" than say "Ellerean" because the latter makes me sound like I'm either A) talking about a fantasy game like a nerd (YA I WUZ USIN' ELLEREAN AND I SLAYED THE DRAGON WITH MY 1337 TOME... no, that's not me, or if it is I'd rather be in denial) or B) talking about a ballerina--all you have to do is add an 'a' at the end of 'Ellerean' and it practically rhymes with 'ballerina' in pronounciation.

In other words, when actually pronouncing the game, Elrean sounds a lot better and more male IMO, and the basis of the name is nicer too, I think.

Edited August 17, 2011 by Luffy

[Rewjeo]

Although the first part there is cool, I still disagree that Elrean sounds better than Ellerean. For one thing... Fire Emblem sorta is a fantasy game. Hiya magic, dragons, and pegasi!

Wait, if we add an A, it becomes feminine? Guess we need to scrap, Marth, Robert, Belf for Belfa Luke, Gordin, Julian, Castor, Frey, Wendell, Jeorge, Merric, Dice, Beck, Dolph, Abel, Macellan, Ymir, Michalis, Lang, Lorenz, Camus, Hardin (how's Hardina for a ballerina name?) Gharnef, and Medeus. And these are just names you can feminize by adding an a, let alone some other means.

[VincentASM]

For the fans, it did not exist. That art work and its romanization came out after the game was out :/

Those names, including Asseray, were used in the ROM. Nobody really liked them though and kept sticking to stuff like Noel (Knoll) and Yuan (Ewan).

Not really sure what's wrong with Warren. Are we trying to stop people getting confused with that port town?

[Crimson Red]

-_- You don't have to exaggerate so much to try and prove a point, it really isn't helping

Whereas "Ellerean" made me think of "Ellereana" automatically, most of the names you mentioned (barring Marth->Martha maybe) don't shout out "omg, if I add an 'a' to it it'll feminize it a lot more", they're just possibilities, but because they are generally accepted names already we don't think that. Sure it's more of a this-is-how-my-brain-works thing but it doesn't change the fact that Ellerean is an uncommon name and people will try and label it as either masculine or feminine (subconsciously, anyway), and if it's so close to a name that rhymes with "Ballerina" I think it's a lot more likely to be portrayed as a feminine name than a masculine name, which is unsuitable because the character is male (both in looks and character, I think).

The difference with Elrean being that it's A) shorter, and male names tend to be shorter IIRC (Chris vs. Christina, Julian vs. Juliana, Ash vs. Ashley, just to name a few examples), as well as the fact that B) it doesn't rhyme with 'ballerina', a word that has a female connotation (not sure if I said that right).

Though looking back it is a little silly to say "no" to a name based off of rhyme schemes that no one else has mentioned, it's more of the "it all contributes to the big picture" than "it rhyming with ballerina is the definite 1 reason why we can't use Ellerean". I hope people understand that it's almost always a collection of reasons that influence the decisions of names as opposed to just 1 or 2 for sure reasons. You can throw logic behind almost anything, it's (simplifying things, again) a competition of what has the most logic. :\

And I still think that names actually sounding cool is a factor in choosing names, albeit not the most important factor. Did whoever localized Marusu choose "Marth" over "Mars" thinking that "Marth" would be cooler sounding than "Mars"? It's a possibility. Maybe someone also chose Castor over Kashim because Castor sounds more modern and 'cool'. We can't know the thinking behind such names for sure, but as I said, you can throw logic behind almost anything.

EDIT: Vincent ninja'd me, only naturally so since I think pretty hard about what I say, I don't know the situation on Warren either so if someone could enlighten me on that, that would be great. Warren sounds like a great name to me but if there's some reason it can't be Warren then we have to decide on the next closest best-sounding thing. ._.

Edited August 17, 2011 by Luffy

[Rewjeo]

Well, the way I read Ellerean, it doesn't rhyme with Ballerina if you add an A, so that's another difference between our reasoning. El-eh-reen is pretty boring, but I'd take that ove El-rean, which is, in my opinion, a pretty terrible name. Actually, it feels to me that, if you pronounce the last part as reen then his name will always sound feminine.

And not all of those names are ridiculous, although some were there to make a point, which was really pretty minor, anyways. Martha, Roberta, Juliana, Georgia, Freya, and Becka are all real female names, and Medeusa is remarkably close to Medusa, which is actually pretty cool now that I think about it.

[Crimson Red]

Oh, I just noticed how you pronounced it

El-leh-re-an where 'rean' is two syllables as opposed to 'reen' (the way I pronounce it). Is that right? So if you were speaking it'd sound like El-eh-ree-in , where ree does not mean hold out the 'ee', it denotes a long 'e'--I suck at using pronounciation characters or else that would clarify what every vowel is supposed to actually sound like -_-. And 'in' because people rarely take out the time to pronounce the 'an' ending correctly, it just turns to 'in' (just like how people say "fasin your seat belt" instead of "fast-EN your seat belt", except with an->in instead of en->in).

Since English doesn't use accent marks to differentiate between stuff and most of the time 'ea' makes the 'ee' sound I pronounced it the way I did. I think it's more likely to pronounce it the way I did too. I doubt it's "Ellerean" where the 'ea' sound makes the sound in 'read' (past tense form of the verb 'to read'--'to read' being the infinitive). Looking at the katakana or even the Romaji might help with this but I don't have it on me.

And it wasn't so much you pointing out the names since most of them could have a case made for them as it is "you're taking one example of me viewing something as feminine due to a change and trying to apply it unfairly to every other name", i.e. me mentioning that adding an 'a' is a relatively big jump in femininity was more specific to that example than in general, if that makes sense

Edited August 17, 2011 by Luffy

[Rewjeo]

Technically, I'm making the 'n' a syllabic, if that means anything to you. You could also say the 'an' is taking an unstressed uh sound followed by an n sound. If I knew how to type IPA and if people knew how to read it, that would make this whole pronunciation thing so much easier.

Apparently, the Romaji is Erureen. So from that I'd actually guess Elren. Which I like a lot more than Elreen, and about as much as Ellerean. Elrena is feminine, too

[Jave]

I just want to say that I want to play this translation because I want to understand what is going on as I play the game without the need of having to look at a script on my computer screen or a printed document. Name changes are the least of my concerns and you can change Marth's name to Mario for all I care. It's not like I'm in a position to demand anything.

[Arch]

We could make "Marus" into "Marius" to be more true to the kana....

"Is Marth in this gaem?" Yeah, but we're calling him MARIUS now! Imagine the insanity, hahah.

Edited August 17, 2011 by Arch

[Rewjeo]

Well, Marius IS an actual name. Although I don't know who this Marus is. Do you mean Malice/Maris? I thought the romaji for that was Marisu- GASP BRILLIANT IDEA: MARY SUE

IMO, Elren sounds better than Elrean (pronounced el-reen, at least) but doesn't look as nice :/

[Darros]

I patched the clean ROM with the latest patch, and it works fine until I get to the prologue 1 map. I have been skipping the Japanese dialogue with the start button, but when I tried it without skippin ghte dialogue, it glitched right when MU moved to the starting spot. Looks like I'm playing in Japanese for a while then.

[sn0w75]

I was so excited about seeing what you came up with I woke up from my sleep :P

you forgot that we're staying consistent to the FE11 translation, Snow XD a lot of those names have been decided on for good. sheesh, you told me you were lurking the blog, you should know that much

@Celice he's missing some names of new characters cuz he's a busy guy :(

so ignoring those, Shiima is bad, English just can't have two Is next to each other, it looks ugly as fuck and no one does it, and as you said, Sheema is a no-no, so we have to figure something out.

Malliesia, no, Snow you must have missed the whole post where I was like "NO! MALLIESIA! EVERRRRRR!!!". Mari~shia best translates to the English "Malicia" anyway, if you pronounce the 'c' as 'sh' (which it sometimes does in English). Better than "Melissa" or any of the other plausible translations (Melissa's a nice and common name but Malicia is also viable but is also a likely translation anyway, a win-win in my opinion).

Not to mention if you google "Malliesia" you'll get only ~2.5k results, most of which are probably related to Fire Emblem anyway. Whereas Malicia has 5,250k results. Using the google analysis trick you used, Snow. XP

Snow and I are going to have a chat about Shiima and the rest of the names he didn't have time for soon ^_^

Yep, I'm missing some of the names new to FE12, and some enemy names, etc. That was just to cover the playable characters from the original FE3, which I figured would generate the most flamage.

...So apparently we're going with the FE11 translation names! ^.^"""""""" Sorry guys, completely oafed up there. So basically that table is a complete failure for any names that have completely different names in the FE11 translation. -.-"

Sheema's/Shiima's/Trololol's name is definitely a hard choice. Maybe just 'Shima' might make a good compromise? Anyway, it's something we'll work out after lots of head banging. ^.^

I'm going to try and address the new names or highly debated names below (sans Trololol-kyun/Sheema):

Malliesia- Yeah, '(weird name) gonna play it safe' = trying to get this done, fan translation column's name looks good enough, moving on. ^.^" AKA: I didn't do my best homework on this name (Malliesia). Since that name seems important, I'll do my homework on it now:

http://d.hatena.ne.jp/keyword/%A5%DE%A5%EA%A1%BC%A5%B7%A5%A2

^The katakana マリーシア can stand for Portuguese word "malicia". Therefore, I would highly recommend a translation of "Malicia". It also fits along pretty well with the original japanese pronounciation.

Belf-ベルフ->Berufu:

First off, Vergil or whatever is a rather weak suggestion. Pronouncing 'Vergil' makes a 'ji' sound, which is nowhere close to the original pronounciation (BE-LU-FU). Also, the 'L' sound is the middle syllable, not the last one. Be->Ve is possible, but probably not what was intended for this name.

I found several cases where ベルフ was used in names as 'Bergh' or 'Berg' (not sure what the origin of this name is, Latin/Austrian/German/French?). However, to you all this probably feels closer to 'barf' than Belf. (link) (link)

The thing is, you don't pronounce 'Bergh/Berg' as in "Burger". Apparently you pronounce it as something close to 'BE-LU-FU' (I don't know my European languages, sorry).

But unfortunately over 50% of readers will read it as in 'Burger'. This one's a tough call.

Wollen/Warren - I think Warren was probably the intended name, but Wollen comes closer to the original pronounciation.

....

Exhausted, just to show here's a list of the rest of the names I'm going to re-analyze later:

Gail/Gile?

Claine/Kleine

Raiden/Leiden

Samto

Sheema

Torus/Toras?

And yes, I made that document using Libreoffice (the new OpenOffice after the OpenOffice open-source community broke ties with Oracle), so if the formatting's weird, I'm sorry. ^.^"

[Arch]

To be honest, we weren't really trying to have a super-strong suggestion with Vergil. Belf is one of those names that people don't really seem to care about preserving, it's a bad name, no alternatives really improve it (even Berg is sorta "meh"). It's one that can definitely get some more radical treatment.

[Jave]

If "Belf" is such an issue you could try...

Uhhh... nevermind, scratch that.

[Balcerzak]

Now, let me first preface this by saying: I am not one of those 100% nothing must every be localized fellows. I argued vehemently for a Gii->Guy localization, and was perfectly comfortable with insani's Yumemi->Reverie localization, among others. However, there has to be good justification.

Internal code-name, or that is the name in the filename, or any similar arguments are terrible, and using them as a crutch strikes me as the mistake of a freshmen translation effort. The field is rife with examples of shoddy internal naming practices, and the Japanese have demonstrated on numerous occasions that they cannot be trusted to make English names out of their katakana. If you're going to force me to reinstall and unpack several old games to prove a point, I may have to do so, but I would rather not. I did grep some IRC logs and found one such example, however.

リィナ to Leanaa is simply cringeworthy. Also, while Cleighton isn't bad, I would have argued for Crichton.

Now granted, most cases you guys are at least trying to do the right thing, but please, drop this "it's the internal codename" rubbish arguement for the nonsense it is.

[Psych]

I feel if you were to localize Ellerean it would become Ellis. >_>

[Crimson Red]

That's one big image of one big chick.

[Celice]

リィナ to Leanaa is simply cringeworthy. Also, while Cleighton isn't bad, I would have argued for Crichton.

Now granted, most cases you guys are at least trying to do the right thing, but please, drop this "it's the internal codename" rubbish arguement for the nonsense it is.

To add, in some games, internal names aren't names, but reference IDs. The argument goes plat when you're trying to say one should call the main character 'ref_ACTOR' because he's referred that way in the game's data repeatedly. Also, SWORD_1 SWORD_2 SWORD_3 wouldn't be fun either. There are internal names and sometimes they're interesting. But they're not always indicative of intent--if not laziness itself. If the games in development, you might not even be calling the characters by the correct name--let's say 'Sted' and 'Fred' were originally two starting Social Knights, but later in development, they were rewritten and redesigned. Yet internally, the ref names are still Sted and Fred. It's early, early information most of the time. It's a tad clumbersome to rely on it--but there's nothing wrong with taking it into suggestion.

Sometimes it might be cool to see what the developers used for reference assets during development. Often times its nothing more than jargon and misliteralization. Though, you sometimes find really interesting things, like the FF4DS naming its files stuff like 'Tower of Bab-il' and 'Mog Works' and stuff like that. Just for fun.

[Momo]

The one thing that confuses me about the whole Belf this is, where did you get the name Virgil? Seems random that you'd pick something like that.

[Crimson Red]

We realize that, internal names are usually treated as just suggestions for plausible names. Not always, but in this game, usually.

Again, pinning down a decision based off of one factor is not a very good thing considering how many factors go into choosing names.

[Parrhesia]

Because NO ONE calls her Sheeda anymore, right?

Right!

I think the whole Malicia thing (which I still vehemently oppose) has shown you that maybe it's not always best to go with what IS suggested The technical aspect is still there, though.

...Um, how exactly does this fit into anything?

And big deal, you vehemently oppose Malicia. Hell hasn't begun to freeze over.

No, seriously, how does this prove anything about 'what IS suggested'.

[Tragedy]

For Belf, how about Belden/Belten or something similar? It keeps the beginning of the name, but in my opinion at least, sounds better overall and fits better with Robert and Raiden/Leiden.

[Celice]

The one thing that confuses me about the whole Belf this is, where did you get the name Virgil? Seems random that you'd pick something like that.

It is. The argument is that if a couple people on the team want a different name for the sake of having a different name, judged under subjective tastes, then it should be changed, regardless of what the game actually says or uses.

Which is a bit tivvy, when two members of the team are showing they have no clue how to even read some basic katakana. It's hard to aptly translate something when you have no clue what you're doing--making up things doesn't exactly match well with that tendency either.

Edited August 17, 2011 by Celice

[Crimson Red]

It seems some people resort to slander of sorts when they don't get things their way~

For the record I can read katakana better than most people on this forum, and even if I didn't, I could just look up a chart, it doesn't take a genius, and if you have to know Japanese to make an English localization then everyone who doesn't know Japanese might as well move out of the picture