Proposed Thracia Names Changes

[CrashGordon94]

What about "Havan" to "Halvan"?

[Agro]

What about "Havan" to "Halvan"?

That's already there in the list of changes.

[TheEnd]

>Changing Crusader and location names from the romaji written in FE4

Good thing I know that as well.

As well as you can interpret, I suppose.

Fight on, Kana Masutaa.

Edited April 10, 2012 by TheEnd

[irtikliwT]

I don't understand how you can have all these yet you haven't said anything regarding the true tragedy of the translation, where ベルクローゼン was translated to Schwarze Rosen because the proper translation of Bergrosen (Mountain Roses) wasn't considered evil enough.

[TheEnd]

Why not Vergilrosen

[Lord Raven]

hey vergil was a better name than belf ok >;/

[Renall]

Do you guys have anything constructive to add to some of these proposals or is it okay to just be like "lol Banzai" when he actually tries to justify some of the things he's doing? The arguments mostly make some sense to me. What exactly is the argument to the contrary again? If it's just translation patch hazing or general-purpose trolling, I'm not sure I understand the point of it. The translation patches that exist are passable but hardly perfect. Just as fixing blatant spelling errors, shitty memes, and other such crap is important, I would think fixing names where an argument can be made for fixing them is important. "Eyrios" isn't right just because it was first; maybe it's still right, but I haven't heard any substantive arguments to the contrary from anyone who claims otherwise.

If someone's just going to be like "lol you don't know Japanese" about words that aren't even Japanese in origin (and thus as much subject to butchery into Japanese as out of it), it's not really in any way useful or constructive. "x is wrong because you can't/shouldn't read it that way" is constructive, "lol let's just not change anything because you suck" isn't. I don't understand why posts like that are allowed.

Incidentally on Eyrios/Ilios: Troy is known in Greek as either Ilion or Troia, and in Latin as Ilium (and the Roman city built over its ruins was also called Ilium). Hence The Iliad. I'm not sure why there are two different names for the same place, except that the names derive from a mythical founder... who has two names, for some reason. Anyway calling him Troy would actually work but is stupid (though it's something I imagine NoA doing for a hypothetical rerelease translation, somehow, probably because it's stupid), but "Ilios" at least gets the reference right and sounds all fancy, which goes with the dialogue about his name.

[Anouleth]

I don't see why everyone is throwing a shitfit over Banzai's work. He'll release his own translation patch, and you can use the old one or his, if you so desire. Since the old one sucks, I'll probably use his and I won't give two fucks if he changes some names to be more easily remembered.

I don't think that Banzai using different names for many units makes it easier to remember.

I also think it's a bit weird that he's changing a bunch of names to line up with mythological references, but he doesn't change the place names to line up with the irish ones. I mean, it's not like Ilios has any mythological meaning in our own language; it's only meaningful in Japanese, so why preserve it? If he wanted to preserve the mythological reference, surely he should rename Eyrios to Troy?

One: I could change Lara's name to Laura, or Two: I could change Sara's name to Sarah.

Well, there's the other issue that Laura is already the name of an FE10 character.

[TheEnd]

The current patch might be hardly perfect, but Banzai has already proven he doesn't have what it takes to fix its issues.

His lack of technical knowledge means he relies completely on the work of others to fix what the Thracia patch has of worst - its presentation.

His shortcomings as far as textual interpretation goes and lack of sufficient familiarity with the canon make him unfit to properly locate and fix the script's flaws (I don't even have to bring the "doesn't know Japanese" card here, it's redundant).

And related to the interpretation issue, he seems unable to understand the idea that a name based on a mythological character doesn't need to be a carbon copy of it. He's more than willing - adamant, even - to change stuff that's already canonically romanized ingame. Even if we leave the Crusaders' names and whatnot FE4 had already set aside (and we shouldn't), he thinks, say, Ethlin should be named Ethlinn because huh, Thracia's opening is wrong because Tearring Saga's opening features a Dark Load. (?!?!)

I seriously question the sanity (not to say something else) of any hacker who decides to waste their time and effort applying Banzai's changes to the current patch.

[Quirino]

Just because the Genealogy patch has some poor translations doesn't mean I have to imitate them.

About Funf -> Fuenf and Zwolf -> Zwoelf, you mentioned in the first post that you wanted to change some characters' names in order to make them sound German, right? Funf and Zwolf are NO right translations for 'five' and 'twelve' in German. Correct spellings are either Fünf and Zwölf or Fuenf and Zwoelf, period. I know I didn't agree with it at first when Twilkitri changed it, but after I thought about it, it just made sense.

edit: I agree with above. I am willing to do some hacks to this translation, but IF I'll do that, I won't change any names I don't agree with.

Edited April 10, 2012 by Quirino

[Anouleth]

And related to the interpretation issue, he seems unable to understand the idea that a name based on a mythological character doesn't need to be a carbon copy of it.

I agree. It's fine for a name to merely be similar to the intended mythological reference, and I don't think it's necessary for it to be precisely the same. For example, Ethlin is a clear enough reference, and it looks better than Ethlinn, and it's in common use, and it's the canonical translation. So why not use it?

[dondon151]

Do you guys have anything constructive to add to some of these proposals or is it okay to just be like "lol Banzai" when he actually tries to justify some of the things he's doing? The arguments mostly make some sense to me. What exactly is the argument to the contrary again? If it's just translation patch hazing or general-purpose trolling, I'm not sure I understand the point of it. The translation patches that exist are passable but hardly perfect. Just as fixing blatant spelling errors, shitty memes, and other such crap is important, I would think fixing names where an argument can be made for fixing them is important. "Eyrios" isn't right just because it was first; maybe it's still right, but I haven't heard any substantive arguments to the contrary from anyone who claims otherwise.

Sure, it's fine to point out that many of the currently used translations are wrong - but Banzai's post isn't just a "fyi, just so you should know;" it's very clearly trying to establish some sort of paradigm shift about how we translate the game. That's completely unnecessary when everyone is familiar with the established, if somewhat incorrect, names.

If someone's just going to be like "lol you don't know Japanese" about words that aren't even Japanese in origin (and thus as much subject to butchery into Japanese as out of it), it's not really in any way useful or constructive. "x is wrong because you can't/shouldn't read it that way" is constructive, "lol let's just not change anything because you suck" isn't. I don't understand why posts like that are allowed.

Wrong. You do need to have a grasp of Japanese in order to understand how loan words are created. It's not always a simple intuitive phonetic translation like most people are led to believe. Furthermore a lot of possible anglicized readings will have the same kana, so you can't even confidently say that something is clearly meant to be another thing.

You know why posts like that are allowed? Because it is not destructive criticism to suggest "let's not change what ain't broke." Why do you feel so justified to criticize us otherwise? Why is that allowed?

[General Banzai]

The current patch might be hardly perfect, but Banzai has already proven he doesn't have what it takes to fix its issues.

His lack of technical knowledge means he relies completely on the work of others to fix what the Thracia patch has of worst - its presentation.

His shortcomings as far as textual interpretation goes and lack of sufficient familiarity with the canon make him unfit to properly locate and fix the script's flaws (I don't even have to bring the "doesn't know Japanese" card here, it's redundant).

The familiarity with the canon was what caused me to bring up the the Nanna quote, as the ambiguity of the phrase "that person" made it impossible to tell whether the script was referring to Evayle, mentioned in the line previously, or Lachesis, Nanna's mother. Had I known nothing of the canon I wouldn't even have questioned that it referred to Evayle, without even thinking that it may have referred to Lachesis. I mean, what are you trying to say? That I didn't know Lachesis was Nanna's mother? Because yeah, I kinda knew that. My problem was the ambiguity of the phrase, not "Who are Nanna mother? :V :V"

Meanwhile, I fail to see how anything you linked to is a shortcoming as far as textual interpretation goes. Because I managed to pick out problems with the Thracia script, even if they weren't strictly problems with the translation? The Leidrick mistake in Chapter 14 I'm almost certain is a mistake, and I can point to specific parts of the script (Chapter 22 pre-battle scene, for instance) which specifically contradict what Trabant and Arion say that "Leidrick betrayed the combined Northern and Southern Thracia at Fort Melgen". When I am faced with these errors, I have two places to turn. One, they're an error with the translation, or two, they're an error with the game. You can understand that I would probably suspect the translation first before I suspected the game. Oh, and for someone "not familiar with the canon," I sure was able to pick up on that error about Leidrick's betrayal immediately, requiring not only knowledge of the complete story (as well as the designer notes, which outline what is said in Ch 22 in far more detail), but also knowledge of the map to know that Fort Melgen (mentioned on this one time in Thracia, no less) is on the opposite side of the map as River Thracia (where Leidrick betrayed Lenster).

So anyways, thank you for strengthening my credentials.

And related to the interpretation issue, he seems unable to understand the idea that a name based on a mythological character doesn't need to be a carbon copy of it.

Good thing I accounted for all variations between the Kana of mythological characters and the Kana of game characters with similar variations in English, then. All of which I outline in the thread. Are there any specific instances you take issue with?

He's more than willing - adamant, even - to change stuff that's already canonically romanized ingame. Even if we leave the Crusaders' names and whatnot FE4 had already set aside (and we shouldn't), he thinks, say, Ethlin should be named Ethlinn because huh, Thracia's opening is wrong because Tearring Saga's opening features a Dark Load. (?!?!)

Again, canonically romanized is not the same as canonically translated into the English language. A romanization is just that--transforming the name so that it uses the roman (Latin) alphabet. Is that English? No. Is that any specific language at all? No.

I seriously question the sanity (not to say something else) of any hacker who decides to waste their time and effort applying Banzai's changes to the current patch.

I already have offers from Camtech, actually, who says he'll help me as long as I change Leaf's name to Vergil. :V

[Renall]

The current patch might be hardly perfect, but Banzai has already proven he doesn't have what it takes to fix its issues.

His lack of technical knowledge means he relies completely on the work of others to fix what the Thracia patch has of worst - its presentation.

Why are the things he's discussing not issues with the patch? He's mentioned other things he's doing, although I grant I haven't seen any of that other work so I can't comment on it.

You have, for example, intimated at "official romanizations exist so we should use those." That's an actual argument. If that is your position, stand behind it openly.

His shortcomings as far as textual interpretation goes and lack of sufficient familiarity with the canon make him unfit to properly locate and fix the script's flaws (I don't even have to bring the "doesn't know Japanese" card here, it's redundant).

And related to the interpretation issue, he seems unable to understand the idea that a name based on a mythological character doesn't need to be a carbon copy of it. He's more than willing - adamant, even - to change stuff that's already canonically romanized ingame. Even if we leave the Crusaders' names and whatnot FE4 had already set aside (and we shouldn't), he thinks, say, Ethlin should be named Ethlinn because huh, Thracia's opening is wrong because Tearring Saga's opening features a Dark Load. (?!?!)

Some of those questions are entirely legitimate, and your responses indicate more of a desire to bag on him than help him do work he's offered to do. You may think it's a fruitless endeavor in his hands or you may not like him as a person or something (I don't know either of you, as far as I know), but I don't think you're being helpful there and I don't think you're being helpful here.

I'm also not seeing the problem with asking people to clarify obscure bits of Jugdral Saga trivia that may come up here and there in conversations that the original patches (may have) screwed up. The timelines for these games are confusing enough to begin with. I see what he's doing as trying to make sure he's correct. You seem to see it as a complete inability to ever do anything right. It just seems to be assuming the worst from what he's trying to do. And I get the point of his TRS example, however nitpicky, which I guess is supposed to be "just because it's in the game in English doesn't mean it's right, because the original creators could have made a translation mistake themselves." That doesn't mean he's right, but you don't seem to be trying very hard to demonstrate that he's wrong.

I mean, I get the sense he's trying awfully hard for somebody who's supposed to be incapable. If that is, as you've suggested, wasted effort, I have to wonder why anybody is so invested in it at the moment.

I seriously question the sanity (not to say something else) of any hacker who decides to waste their time and effort applying Banzai's changes to the current patch.

That seems rather extreme to me. Questioning his correctness is one thing, but calling his efforts a "waste" when there are some things you don't agree with seems a little much, don't you think? I mean I clearly would assume you aren't going to do the hacking as you don't agree with it, so it won't be any skin off your nose if somebody else does.

Wrong. You do need to have a grasp of Japanese in order to understand how loan words are created. It's not always a simple intuitive phonetic translation like most people are led to believe. Furthermore a lot of possible anglicized readings will have the same kana, so you can't even confidently say that something is clearly meant to be another thing.

You know why posts like that are allowed? Because it is not destructive criticism to suggest "let's not change what ain't broke." Why do you feel so justified to criticize us otherwise? Why is that allowed?

Are proper nouns really loanwords now? There's a bit of a difference between a language adapting a word (with some grammatical or structural alterations) and representing another language's words as that language's words in your language's script. You're right that it might be wrong due to the ambiguity of the kana and the inability to access the intentions of the creators of the games (at least as far as I know), but I'm honestly not seeing any point in people playing the ambiguity card as though it stops the argument being made. It's a fan translation. It's almost always ambiguous. You can't even trust official romanizations in some cases. But from what I can tell, Banzai has attempted to show awareness of situations where kana do not match up and figure out a solution to that.

He could be wrong, so I don't disagree that you ought to be able to criticize his conclusions on that matter, but I get the sense there's either some serious argument from inertia going on somewhere or personal issues people are having that transcend him merely making disagreeable decisions. It just comes across as a spat that's about something more than what he's actually doing. I don't pretend to know, as I'm not personally familiar with anybody, but it strikes me as kind of weird.

At any rate: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is only a valid counterargument when the original argument doesn't outright claim it is broke. Which isn't to say it is broke, but that seems to be what Banzai is arguing here, and he's offered justifications for what he thinks is broken and why he'd fix. "It's broke" -> "Nuh-uh, so don't fix it" is not a very well-developed argument.

"It's broke" -> "It isn't broke, because x is an official romanization and we know we can trust it because of a, because your reading of y as b is not generally how that kana works and not how it's worked in other translations, and because z appears in FE4 in its current form and for consistency's sake should be maintained instead of being changed to c, therefore there is no reason to fix x y and z" is a well-developed and probably convincing one. It's also an argument I'm waiting for somebody to actually make, because I can't really make it myself, and I'd like to consider both arguments in detail (even though my opinion means exactly nothing, I'm still interested in the process).

[Refa]

hey guys let's not change anything

who's with me

hey at least change the menus.

those were garbage.

[General Banzai]

About Funf -> Fuenf and Zwolf -> Zwoelf, you mentioned in the first post that you wanted to change some characters' names in order to make them sound German, right? Funf and Zwolf are NO right translations for 'five' and 'twelve' in German. Correct spellings are either Fünf and Zwölf or Fuenf and Zwoelf, period. I know I didn't agree with it at first when Twilkitri changed it, but after I thought about it, it just made sense.

edit: I agree with above. I am willing to do some hacks to this translation, but IF I'll do that, I won't change any names I don't agree with.

It may make sense, but it is unfortunately wrong, because the English language is not known for making sense. When we use foreign accented words in English, like facade or cliche, we do not change the vowels to fit the pronunciation, but rather, as in the examples I just posted, remove the accents entirely and call it a day. This is well documented in nearly every (if not all) accented loan words, and is part of the reason why English vowels have so many different pronunciations. I use this same argument in the thread when I explain why the e in "Hezul" should actually be an o.

Fuenf and Zwoelf only make sense from a logical standpoint, not an English one. And since this is an English translation...

[shadowofchaos]

hey at least change the menus.

those were garbage.

That's exactly what he means.

Fix the presentation in the hacking. I honestly feel like dondon and TheEnd here. :/

And honestly, the only thing I follow this thread for? The storm of arguments. It's the FE12 thread ALL over again... which is both sad and funny.

I'm all for "localization" instead of STRICTLY sticking to katakana... Hahahaha Virgil

But the only thing WRONG with the current patch, is the hacking aspect of it. :/

Edited April 10, 2012 by shadowofchaos

[General Banzai]

That's exactly what he means.

Fix the presentation in the hacking. I honestly feel like dondon and TheEnd here. :/

And honestly, the only thing I follow this thread for? The storm of arguments. It's the FE12 thread ALL over again... which is both sad and funny.

And ignore the wooden, often typo-ridden translation? Why do that when we're hacking the translation patch anyways and I've already gone through and edited the entire script (an edit I will be posted today, perhaps later tonight... and don't worry, I haven't changed ANYTHING other than aforementioned typos and some wooden sentence structures).

[Refa]

That's exactly what he means.

hey guys let's not change anything

who's with me

i didn't know that let's not change anything excluded the menus. i was quite sure those were a part of the "anything".

but really dondon was referring to something else and i was being facetious.

Edited April 10, 2012 by Refa

[Quirino]

I know this has already been said, but how about we don't change any names and just fix the bad words/sentences, solve bugs and translate the menus and call it a day, instead of also changing different names which seems to only piss many people off.

I see no reason not to fix 'wooden sentences' and typos at least...

Edited April 10, 2012 by Quirino

[shadowofchaos]

i didn't know that let's not change anything excluded the menus.

The interface is horrendous. Again, that deserves fixing.

It was probably a bad move to assume, but from what I got dondon was referring to the "name changes".

I ALSO don't see ANY point in Banzai taking a "passive approach" to this. If you're gonna do script changes, take initiative and GET someone to hack it for you. From the way this thread is starting a storm, I don't see the POINT. And from what I've heard from the hackers I know that could even POSSIBLY implement your script... the fact that you're being lazy and just "putting it out there" for someone to implement alienates them even more.

[Renall]

I think everyone agrees that a menu fix needs to happen first and foremost, regardless of and probably independent from any additional translations. But I'm not sure that's even something he'd be able to do anyway? It's pretty much, as you said, work for a hacker, and it wouldn't really be necessary for any hacker to change the translation.

Unless altering the menu text has some major impact on the script I'm not aware of.

[TheEnd]

The familiarity with the canon was what caused me to bring up the the Nanna quote, as the ambiguity of the phrase "that person" made it impossible to tell whether the script was referring to Evayle, mentioned in the line previously, or Lachesis, Nanna's mother. Had I known nothing of the canon I wouldn't even have questioned that it referred to Evayle, without even thinking that it may have referred to Lachesis. I mean, what are you trying to say? That I didn't know Lachesis was Nanna's mother? Because yeah, I kinda knew that. My problem was the ambiguity of the phrase, not "Who are Nanna mother? :V :V"

If you knew enough, you wouldn't have needed to ask. Though more importantly, you have clearly difficulties at interpreting phrases and reading context.

Meanwhile, I fail to see how anything you linked to is a shortcoming as far as textual interpretation goes. Because I managed to pick out problems with the Thracia script, even if they weren't strictly problems with the translation? The Leidrick mistake in Chapter 14 I'm almost certain is a mistake, and I can point to specific parts of the script (Chapter 22 pre-battle scene, for instance) which specifically contradict what Trabant and Arion say that "Leidrick betrayed the combined Northern and Southern Thracia at Fort Melgen". When I am faced with these errors, I have two places to turn. One, they're an error with the translation, or two, they're an error with the game. You can understand that I would probably suspect the translation first before I suspected the game. Oh, and for someone "not familiar with the canon," I sure was able to pick up on that error about Leidrick's betrayal immediately, requiring not only knowledge of the complete story (as well as the designer notes, which outline what is said in Ch 22 in far more detail), but also knowledge of the map to know that Fort Melgen (mentioned on this one time in Thracia, no less) is on the opposite side of the map as River Thracia (where Leidrick betrayed Lenster).

Most issues you've picked were issues you had... because you couldn't understand what was written in plain English. Perhaps it was less of a familiarity issue and more on an English issue. Which one do you prefer?

So anyways, thank you for strengthening my credentials.

You have yet to have any credentials. You try to bite more than you can chew, and break your teeth in the process. You think you're prepared, but you aren't. There was a time when your passion alone, even if not backed by sufficient ability or knowledge, would have allowed you to contribute meaningfully to the then-fledging community. But that time is long gone.

Good thing I accounted for all variations between the Kana of mythological characters and the Kana of game characters with similar variations in English, then. All of which I outline in the thread. Are there any specific instances you take issue with?

Tordo. Baldo. Ethlin. Read my post. The examples were already there. The fact they were in a different sentence doesn't mean they were in a different world.

Again, canonically romanized is not the same as canonically translated into the English language. A romanization is just that--transforming the name so that it uses the roman (Latin) alphabet. Is that English? No. Is that any specific language at all? No.

Bwuh? So what?

It's inside the goddamn game, you create a blatant inconsistency when you change one and leave the other. You know what kills an experience faster than bad names? Incoherence. It makes it look like someone changed something on a whim - something that shouldn't be acceptable at all when you're talking about fixing something.

I already have offers from Camtech, actually, who says he'll help me as long as I change Leaf's name to Vergil. :V

My troll sense is tingling

Why are the things he's discussing not issues with the patch? He's mentioned other things he's doing, although I grant I haven't seen any of that other work so I can't comment on it.

You have, for example, intimated at "official romanizations exist so we should use those." That's an actual argument. If that is your position, stand behind it openly.

There are official romanizations in the game and official romanizations outside of the game. Tordo, Ethlin and Grandbell are the former; change them, and you'll be creating an inconsistent product (unless you're thorough and alters graphics too, which is downright silly). Levn, Ira and Siglud are the latter; they're in the TCG (and consequently in the FE museum), but a casual player could play a game with Levin, Ayra and Sigurd and not blink an eye. They're different categories and I treat them differently. Because of my murky position about the FE12 translation, I'm not quite at liberty to discuss the second category; else, people could reasonably claim I'm not making sense.

Some of those questions are entirely legitimate, and your responses indicate more of a desire to bag on him than help him do work he's offered to do. You may think it's a fruitless endeavor in his hands or you may not like him as a person or something (I don't know either of you, as far as I know), but I don't think you're being helpful there and I don't think you're being helpful here.

It's true, I'm not being helpful. I'm typing "hahahaha, shut up Banzai" politely enough so that my posts wouldn't be classified as blatant trolling.

To put bluntly, I'm being downright unhelpful because I don't see a glimmer of hope in Banzai's project. While he might improve himself in the future and make worthwhile things (you never know, at least he has some passion), that's impossible for him now. His current abilities are likely to only worsen what he sees as bad.

I'm also not seeing the problem with asking people to clarify obscure bits of Jugdral Saga trivia that may come up here and there in conversations that the original patches (may have) screwed up. The timelines for these games are confusing enough to begin with. I see what he's doing as trying to make sure he's correct. You seem to see it as a complete inability to ever do anything right. It just seems to be assuming the worst from what he's trying to do. And I get the point of his TRS example, however nitpicky, which I guess is supposed to be "just because it's in the game in English doesn't mean it's right, because the original creators could have made a translation mistake themselves." That doesn't mean he's right, but you don't seem to be trying very hard to demonstrate that he's wrong.

Trying hard to prove things that are self-evident in my eyes is against my religion.

I mean, I get the sense he's trying awfully hard for somebody who's supposed to be incapable. If that is, as you've suggested, wasted effort, I have to wonder why anybody is so invested in it at the moment.

He has the passion, I'll admit that. But that's it. And it isn't enough.

That seems rather extreme to me. Questioning his correctness is one thing, but calling his efforts a "waste" when there are some things you don't agree with seems a little much, don't you think? I mean I clearly would assume you aren't going to do the hacking as you don't agree with it, so it won't be any skin off your nose if somebody else does.

FOR THRACIA

i didn't know that let's not change anything excluded the menus. i was quite sure those were a part of the "anything".

but really dondon was referring to something else and i was being facetious.

This thread is about names, and Banzai can't hack. Technically, presentation changes aren't part of the subject discussed in this thread.

Edited April 10, 2012 by TheEnd

[Espinosa]

I propose Eyrios -> Aerith

[General Banzai]

It's true, I'm not being helpful. I'm typing "hahahaha, shut up Banzai" politely enough so that my posts wouldn't be classified as blatant trolling.

Well, I'm glad TheEnd was kind enough to sabotage his own argument, so I wouldn't have to spend a long time typing up a post explaining why my issues with the text were completely legitimate.