[Ryusui]

As far as I'm concerned, if you're going to localize the names, use the Power Rangers nomenclature. Otherwise, stick to what the fan community is familiar with. (Unless it's blatantly wrong, as is often the case with Yu-Gi-Oh!, but that's a whole different kettle of fish.)

[danke]

You act like the Power Rangers nomenclature wasn't completely made up and disregarding the original Japanese.

If it sounds good, and fits the translation, go for it. Fans be damned. If you're translating for your own enjoyment, who's to stop you?

[Ryusui]

You act like the Power Rangers nomenclature wasn't completely made up and disregarding the original Japanese.

If it sounds good, and fits the translation, go for it. Fans be damned. If you're translating for your own enjoyment, who's to stop you?

I'm just saying that consistency is important.

Remember that Sylvanian Families nonsense of mine five years ago? (God, has it really been that long?) When I started that project back in 2005, I figured I was translating it purely for myself, as a test of my skills. It was karma that kicked me in the ass and forced me to shelve the project. I'd ranted and railed against Tokyopop's refusal to do the damn research for their .hack manga and novel translations, and there I was, being a freakin' hypocrite. So yeah, I went back, made my tools, did my research, and while there was still one gaping hole in my work (it's "Misty Forest" outside of Japan, not "Fairyland"), I tried my damnedest to make sure all the character names matched up with what they were known by in the rest of the world. The characters didn't even freaking have names in the original, to be honest: just species and family position. So the protagonist is "Ivory Usagi no Onna no Ko" ("Ivory Rabbit Girl") in the original and "Aster Dandelion" in mine.

[danke]

I'm just saying that consistency is important.

Remember that Sylvanian Families nonsense of mine five years ago? (God, has it really been that long?) When I started that project back in 2005, I figured I was translating it purely for myself, as a test of my skills. It was karma that kicked me in the ass and forced me to shelve the project. I'd ranted and railed against Tokyopop's refusal to do the damn research for their .hack manga and novel translations, and there I was, being a freakin' hypocrite. So yeah, I went back, made my tools, did my research, and while there was still one gaping hole in my work (it's "Misty Forest" outside of Japan, not "Fairyland"), I tried my damnedest to make sure all the character names matched up with what they were known by in the rest of the world. The characters didn't even freaking have names in the original, to be honest: just species and family position. So the protagonist is "Ivory Usagi no Onna no Ko" ("Ivory Rabbit Girl") in the original and "Aster Dandelion" in mine.

Pretty sure no one really cares about Sylvanians, as they are not Power Rangers and/or Sentai. And consistency is important. As long as he sticks to one naming scheme throughout his entire project, that is pretty darned consistent.

[Ryusui]

I didn't even give a damn about Sylvanians when I started the project. I just saw a cute kids' game that might make a fun project to practice my skills with. What I got was a revelation about a fan translator's responsibilities. If you don't care enough about what you're working on to either make sure your work is consistent with what's come before or have a good reason not to, then you're doing more harm than good.

Rozenkreuzstillette actually has a few quotes from Megaman X4; the people who fan translated it actually did the research to make sure the English lines reference the corresponding quotes from the US version. The DQV PS2 translation patch has two versions: one based off the traditional Dragon Warrior names, the other based off the newer names from DQVIII and onward. Hell, I changed the spell names in the Breath of Fire II retranslation to match up with their nomenclature in Breath of Fire III and onward. That's the kind of consistency I'm talking about: that level of attention to what's gone before that says "we give a damn about this project."

Now, whatever DarknessSavior ultimately decides to do, I'll support it, even if I don't entirely agree with it - he has a stated reason why he doesn't want to use the Japanese names, and I can at least agree with that (namely, opposing TV-Nihon's weeaboo bullhonkey). But translators don't have carte blanche - especially not fan translators, who are supposed to do justice to these things when official channels fail.

[DarknessSavior]

You act like the Power Rangers nomenclature wasn't completely made up and disregarding the original Japanese.

If it sounds good, and fits the translation, go for it. Fans be damned. If you're translating for your own enjoyment, who's to stop you?

This, this, and more this.

Honestly, if there's a group of fans out there who whine that I translate Daizyuujin? I don't give a damn. I am doing this for myself. I'm certain that one day TV Nihon will finish the series themselves, and those fans can go watch those releases if they want gratuitous Japanese in their series. And I'm sure as hell not calling it a "Megazord". Not when the single robots have such an awesome name like Guardian Beasts.

*reads danke's posts* Hmm...I somewhat agree with what you're saying here. But it's still hard for me to have three kanji to go from and to come up with something that strikes me as awesome. "Great Divine Beast" was a suggestion someone else made, and I thought it sounded better than "Great Beast God". Upon looking up alternate readings of the kanji 獣, I find that it can also be translated as "animal". Maybe that could be worked in somehow? I dunno.

I'm not going with "Dinorangers" or something. I recently had a discussion with community translators about names in katakana. While, yes, they do usually contain some meaning in them, most of us feel that if it's written in katakana and hard to make a good portmanteau out of, we should just leave it alone. So I'm going with "Zyuuranger".

Also, Ryusui: When I said in the RPG forum that I didn't agree with some of your translation choices, this is where it lies. Your changes in Breath of Fire II to match the previous localizations by Capcom. While I can perhaps understand the idea that you might want to be consistent if a translation is good, keeping translation mistakes in a script just because a US audience has been exposed to them already is asinine to me. If everyone went that route, we'd still have "Bolt 3" instead of "Thundaga" in Final Fantasy. We went years without knowing what the real names of things were in games such as those because of terrible NES/SNES-era localizations. And the Breath of Fire series in particular was one of the best examples of a terrible localization. That said, I love your writing and that's why I played through most of your re-translation. It's bounds ahead of what we got on the SNES.

And you have to keep something in mind when it comes to things like Super Sentai stuff. The only reason there's an entire community of people that are used to the names being romanized is BECAUSE of groups like TV Nihon. For years they were the only major group out there doing translations, so now there's an entire community of people who think that "Henshin" is an English word, or that leaving names like "Gedoushuu" or "Nanashi Renshuu" in a series forever is acceptable. That's why I want to try and find some super-awesome translation for the names in this series. I love the series to death, and I want to show those people that you can have an excellent translation without being filled with gratuitous Japanese.

~DS

[danke]

Only things that come to mind are:

Almighty Giant Beast
Divine Grand Beast

You can switch Giant/Grand/Great, since I feel the 大 refers to the size, and the 神 refers to the status.

[Ryusui]

Also, Ryusui: When I said in the RPG forum that I didn't agree with some of your translation choices, this is where it lies. Your changes in Breath of Fire II to match the previous localizations by Capcom. While I can perhaps understand the idea that you might want to be consistent if a translation is good, keeping translation mistakes in a script just because a US audience has been exposed to them already is asinine to me. If everyone went that route, we'd still have "Bolt 3" instead of "Thundaga" in Final Fantasy. We went years without knowing what the real names of things were in games such as those because of terrible NES/SNES-era localizations. And the Breath of Fire series in particular was one of the best examples of a terrible localization. That said, I love your writing and that's why I played through most of your re-translation. It's bounds ahead of what we got on the SNES.

And you have to keep something in mind when it comes to things like Super Sentai stuff. The only reason there's an entire community of people that are used to the names being romanized is BECAUSE of groups like TV Nihon. For years they were the only major group out there doing translations, so now there's an entire community of people who think that "Henshin" is an English word, or that leaving names like "Gedoushuu" or "Nanashi Renshuu" in a series forever is acceptable. That's why I want to try and find some super-awesome translation for the names in this series. I love the series to death, and I want to show those people that you can have an excellent translation without being filled with gratuitous Japanese.

There's an exception to my consistency policy: if the existing work is objectively wrong, or can be improved. I changed the spell names in Breath of Fire II to match up with later entries; this is the equivalent of backporting the "-ra/-ga" nomenclature into the original versions of FFI-VI, or the DQVIII spell nomenclature into the original versions of DQI-VII. On the flip side, while BoFIII uses "Gonghead" like BoFII, I went with "Gunhead" because its palette-swapped allies similarly had a weaponry theme ("Sniperhead," for instance). In other words, it's not an ironclad rule: it boils down to "be consistent with what's been done already, unless you have a good reason not to."

And yes, I freakin' agree on where you stand with the translation. Try being a Yu-Gi-Oh! fan who can read Japanese in an era where all the translations in circulation come from an aggressively erroneous source. I'm glad we now have Yu-Gi-Oh! Wikia instead; now I can correct at least some misconceptions before they become widespread. I think the idea of trying to create a new translation which corrects TV-Nihon's worst excesses in an attempt to de-weeabooize the fanbase is...well, admirable.

I gotta throw out another ridiculous idea: if you're so opposed to using "Daizyujin," why not call it "Megazord"? Z.H.P. translates "Ima koso henshin da!" as "It's morphing time!" in the songs, after all. I even use "Zord" and "Megazord" as catch-all terms for the various mecha; certainly it beats memorizing two dozen different kinds of "Zord."

[DarknessSavior]

All said, I sincerely hope I'm not causing any animosity between the two of us. I know this kinda discussion can get quite heated. And I wasn't aware you were picking and choosing; I thought it was a blanket thing for all of the stuff in BoF. That solution seems much better.

I still don't like "zord" and stuff. It's all made up terms for the US series, whereas these are the source names. Each series tends to have a different name for their mecha (like in Jetman, another series I'm translating slowly, they're the "Jet Machines" and "Jet Icarus" when combined). Though, most of the later series seem to simply go with "(first-half of the series name) King". At that point, I guess you might as well be calling them the "Goukai Megazord" or something. But I digress. The mecha in this series has a particular importance in terms of naming. If I call Daizyuujin "Megazord", what do I call the combinations thereafter? Do I call Gouryuujin the "Dragon Megazord"? Do I use all of the US nomenclature? Do I call the "Godhorn" the "Power Sword"?

I'd rather just avoid that mess, and come up with something that sounds good, rather than relying on the US names or simply romanizing them.

~DS

[Ryusui]

No, there's no animosity. I'm as eager to find a solution as you; normally I'd use Daizyujin without a second thought, but you do have a point. Perhaps a compromise?

http://supersentai.com/database/1992_zyuranger/index.htm

"Daizyujin" is a name. It doesn't, from my perspective, make any more sense to "translate" it than it would to translate the Red Ranger's name as "Attack." That does not, however, apply to all the show's jargon and terms.

I'm looking at the weapons list in particular and noticing "Ryugekiken" and "Jusouken" - with a bit of creative license, "Dragon Striker" and "Dino Dagger"/"Dino Flute" come to mind. Yes, I know "ju" is "beast," but the "Dino" prefix seems more appropriate. Or swap "Dragon" and "Dino" around - they'd make more sense that way, what with the Green Ranger having Dragon Caesar and all (which would of course give Jusouken its American name as an unintended side effect).

"Goryujin" ("Dragonzord in Fighting Mode") is another I'd recommend keeping, but for the remaining two forms, I suggest going half-and-half: "Zyutei Daizyujin" -> "Emperor Daizyujin" (or "Dragon Emperor Daizyujin," or something like that) and "Kyukyoku Daizyujin" -> "Ultimate Daizyujin."

As for the Shugozyu...that translates as "Guardian Beast," so if you don't want to use that, simply calling them the "Guardians" or "Dino-Guardians" might work. Yes, I know I'm playing fast and loose on whether you should translate "ju"/"zyu" as "dino" or "dragon" depending on context; Japan doesn't apparently make much of a distinction between them (especially given that the word for dinosaur literally means "fearsome dragon" - in retrospect, not all that different from the Western etymology!)

[DarknessSavior]

I actually like "Guardian Beast". I think that sounds pretty awesome. "Dino-Guardian" isn't bad, though. I like the idea of translating 獣 as "dragon" or "dinosaur" when appropriate.

Daizyuujin as "Supreme Dino God"? Meh. Still not good, but it's in the right direction.

"Dragon Striker" isn't bad for the 竜撃剣, either. But I already translated it as "Dragon Strike Sword", I think.　獣奏剣 I haven't gotten to yet, but I was thinking about calling that the "Beast Taming Dagger", given it's ability to command Dragon Ceaser. Or given the idea you gave me, perhaps "Dragon Taming Dagger".

Still don't quite agree with the idea to keep Daizyuujin as a name. The only time I agree with that idea is when the name is written out with katakana. Since they went out of their way to use kanji for this name, I believe the meaning is the important part of the word, not the spelling of the word itself.

Edit: It was suggested to me that I translate the last part of the name as "Dinogod". Thoughts?

~DS

[Ryusui]

Just translate it as that, if you must. I'll give "Dinogod" this: it keeps the cadence of "Daizyujin."

EDIT: And "Megazord," come to think of it.

[Paul Jensen]

A couple of thoughts on this:

I'd recommend rendering 竜 as "dino" or "saur" since it's pretty clear we're referring to dinosaurs here, and not dragons.

I think "Dragon Strike Sword" and "Dragon Taming Dagger" are too cumbersome. They sound more like descriptions than names. Names of weapons like this are supposed to roll of the tongue and sound badass. I suggest using "Dinostriker" and "Dinotamer". There's no reason to try to force the words "sword" and "dagger" in there. It should be clear what kind of weapons they are when people see them on screen.

Same goes for "Great Beast God" -- it doesn't roll off the tongue. Another idea for this is "Megasaur". It's got a good ring, and you can avoid using "Megazord".

HTH