ALL ABOUT PHANTASY STAR III NAMES (AND A BIT OF OTHER STUFF) Contents: 1. Those syllables in the character surnames 2. Character and place names 3. Mea culpa What follows is a series of explanations of questionable entertainment and informational value regarding the translation choices I made for the names in PS3. I threw this together just to give readers background on how I made certain decisions and a heads-up on areas where I might have made the wrong call. I am permanently out of the loop so far as what's going on in the PS fandom, so what I'm about to write below has probably already been discussed to death on forums and the like. Please forgive any repeat information. To keep up with the discussions below, you'll need to know, as you probably already do, that the "r" sound in the Japanese language is used to represent both the Western "l" and "r" sounds. *** 1. THOSE SYLLABLES IN THE CHARACTER SURNAMES Most of the main characters in the Japanese PS3 have a last name composed of their homeland or presumable clan name preceded by an isolated syllable: Lynn No Satera or Lune Kay Eshyr, for example. Particularly since the cast of PS3 is almost entirely nobility, I took the syllable to be an Alisa III surname prefix like Earth's own "de" or "de la" and moved on. Recently, though, I happened upon this fanart (yes, this will be going someplace relevant): http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium& illust_id=12494708 that suggests that the syllables are meant to represent middle initials. (Please note that Japanese is a language of syllables; you can't, save for one exception that doesn't apply in this case, have a consonant standing all by its lonesome.) Now, on one hand, it makes sense for a bunch of short syllables between the characters' first and last names to be meant as initials, and the illustration did give me a bit of an "oh, boy" feeling when I first saw it. On the other hand, there are a lot of reasons why this wouldn't make sense in PS3, besides the fact that all those middle initials make everyone sound like a bunch of Nixon- era politicians. For one thing, you pronounce an initial by saying the name of the letter, and (with the exception of the "kay"/"kei" in "Kay Eshyr"), the middle syllables in the PS3 names aren't names of letters; if you wanted Lynn to have a middle initial of "N.", you'd give the rest of her name in raw Japanese as "En Satera", not "No Satera". Second is usage; if you address someone by or state your own full name, as the characters do on many occasions in PS3, you state the unabbreviated form of your middle name, not its initial (unless you're George W. Bush). Thirdly, note that this middle particle changes when a character changes their name upon marriage; Mr. Marina becomes Kein Le Cille, not Kein Sa Cille. Then again, every single argument above can be negated by observing that this is Phantasy Star III, and what do we expect, really. Plus, these are the kind of mistakes that I can honestly see someone whose native language is Japanese making if they were unfamiliar with the whole "middle initial" concept, as many folks in Japan are. (Much of the time, if a Western name has a middle initial, Japanese print sources will opt to leave initial in Western type, thus circumventing the issue of how to pronounce or transliterate the letter, even if the rest of the name has been rendered in Japanese script.) I'm going to keep the syllables as previously rendered, as parts of the characters' last names, but please understand that the middle-initial idea is, while problematic, another possible explanation. *** 2. CHARACTER AND PLACE NAMES Riik: It's "Riiku" in pure katakana, for which I couldn't figure out any sort of logical or attractive English rendition and just left in a more or less raw form. Asked now, I might have chosen to render it as "Rhique" instead, but that would mean devising a proper name for Shiin, so heck with it. Kein: His name as given in straight katakana and in Western letters in the character profiles on the Saturn PS compilation (though the latter is kinda iffy to cite for evidence; see below). "Cain" and "Kain," the two more popular spellings of the name, are for some reason usually rendered as "Kain" (pronounced "kyne") in katakana, though the sounds don't match up. "Kane" is rendered as "Kein" as well as "Keen," making it a legitimate potential choice, but I've decided to go with the more straightforward option. Maia: Initially, I translated her raw Japanese name, "Maarina," as "Marlena," thinking (along with another reason discussed below) that an elongated "a" sound for the initial syllable would not be necessary or present if her name were intended to be "Marina." As I've learned with experience, however, Japanese renderings of Western names can be a bit liberal with matching up vowel sounds to actual native pronunciations. Additionally, there's the minstrel in Rysel who mentions the sand bar between Shusoran and Cille as the key to meeting "the child of the sea," suggesting that the character is indeed supposed to have associations with the ocean (and that the whole I-washed-up-on-the-shore thing was not just a one-off thing from an artistic-thematic perspective). The on-disc first-generation character profiles from the Saturn PS compilation also give her name as "Marina" in Western letters; then again, it also gives Lyle's very-obvious name as "Rile," so. Still, I'm changing it back to "Marina," but keep in mind this still may not be correct, because... Lena & Lein: I stick to the official English names when they work as acceptable translations of the original names, and "Lena" works for "Rina," the raw katakana of the Sateran princess's name. I have two reservations, though. First, Japanese RPG writers are _awfully_ fond of the name "Rina" and its variant spellings (I mean as an intended Western name, not just as a katakana rendering). Second, PS3 is very fond of combinative wordplay in naming when it comes to relationships like family members or romantic rivals (Ayn chooses between Lann and Lynn for a wife; the names of all four of Kein's possible grandsons end in "in"). The other reason that I initially I translated Maia's name as "Marlena is that I originally thought Kein was being offered a cutesy choice between Marlena and Lena. While I suppose choosing between Marina and Lena is still cutesy soundwise, it does beg the question of whether the writers really wanted a choice between Marina and Rina instead. The PS compilation gives her the name of "Lina," which I guess you can throw on the "Rile" pile. I'm sticking with "Lena," but keep in mind that "Rina" might be the actual intent. In that case, the name of her son with Kein would be "Rein," not "Lein," as his name is a combination of his mom and dad's. (This leads to a possible argument for "Lena" and "Lein," though; on the path of L's, Japanese Nial's son with Alair/Luise is a combination of his parents' names (Luin = LUise + LeIN). That doesn't really work as well on the path of R's; all a Ruin would take from his mom would be the "u.") seems also to be a possible combination of his parents' name. Ain: "Ayn" is a legitimate translation, and it is indeed pronounced like the author's name. I used "Ayn" when I first translated his quest and would have continued using it had it not been for a discovery about the Kein Sa Riik family naming system: the names of all seven male leads end in "in," with only the first character in the original Japanese changed. Laia: Even though the pronunciations are the same, I chose to preserve the name as it's spelled in the original katakana instead of going with the English "Laya" because Japanese tends to render foreign words ending in "aya" as, well, ending in "aya" ("baya" and "Maya" both end in a "ya" katakana in the original Japanese). I believe, though, that I've seen "Laya" in secondary sources like Japanese soundtrack liner notes, so my decision here might be wrong. Shiin, Noin, Fuin, Luin: Yeah, I dunno. Shiin is another "I give up" case like Riik. One could note that "Sean" could be a possible translation of the name if the writers were confused on how to pronounce the name and assigned the "ea" vowel combination an "ee" sound. That doesn't follow the "in" naming convention, though. (Though you could argue for "Sein" in that case, but my native-English eyes revolt at that.) Noin is pretty straightforward. Fuin is too, despite its utter weirdness. One could argue that it's meant to be "Huin" (or maybe "Hewin") - strictly speaking, Japanese doesn't have a "hu" syllable; "fu" takes the place where it would be in the syllabry. One might argue, though, that "Huin" would start with a "hew" sound instead of a "hoo" sound and thus require a "hyu" katakana. Then _again_, see Marlena/Maarina above. The PS3 character book gives his name as "Fin" (or "Finn"), but that's not how his name is depicted in-game and also messes with the heroes' naming scheme. Luin, see Lena & Lein. I agree that "Ruin" is a far cooler name for an RPG protagonist. Lewin? The Violet Moon: The Alisa III's two satellites do indeed have more prosaic names in the Japanese version, but the color given to Dahlia, "murasaki," is in truth closer to purple than violet. But "purple" is an inherently inelegant word. (Yes, I know that's dumb reasoning.) Foundry: There's actually an extra "ow" vowel sound in between the "d" and the "r" - "Foundaury"? (The original Japanese is "Faundauri.") As with Riik, I choose "Foundry" and leave it in God's hands. (Yes, I know I've been lazy in regards to three proper names here, but goddamn if PS3 doesn't have some ugly names that're impossible to render into anything halfway decent.) Satellite: Not a name change per se, but an oddity in the text. It's not exactly a secret that PS3 was a rushed title, which led to a lot of corners being cut. Among them is rampant reuse of text; very few of townspeople outside the starting areas, for instance, have something different to say between Shiin and Noin's quests and between Fuin and Luin's. One of the bits of text reused is the party's dialogue whenever it arrives by shuttle at the final dungeon in the second generation; the lines are simply relabeled (with bizarrely, the end of the line attributed to either Lynn or Dan altered to make it sound more natural coming from either a younger woman or an older man). This presents a bit of a storyline problem, though, revolving around the final line in this exchange: "Satellite... So the moons in our sky were spaceships too..." Now, this is fine for Ain's quest, but Lein isn't searching for capital-S Satellite; he's simply blasting off for Lune's place and doesn't know anything about the Laian "place of peace." Now, in Lein's quest, this line given to Laia, which yields a couple possible explanations. First, Laia might just think (for some nebulous reason) that the Violet Moon is indeed Satellite the place of peace and is labeling it as such. This doesn't really work from a storytelling point of view, though; invoking the name of Satellite once without any context doesn't work in a game where the player could be going through Lein's quest first and thus have no idea of what Satellite is. The second is that Laia could be recognizing the moon as a small-s satellite. (Japanese has no articles and no means of capitalizing a word, so "a satellite" and "Satellite" are both represented with the same Japanese text.) This could work particularly for Laia, who presumably might have a better everyday working knowledge of the old technology given her closer links to the time that it was in wider recognition and use. (For the other humans, it's a little shakier; if everyone knew what a satellite was, then why did no one in Ain's quest suspect that the legendary place of peace Satellite was...well, you know.) One wonders why Laia would expect her present-day comrades to recognize the term, but then, Searren uses it just before she does. Then again, Searren isn't exactly up on his social graces. I suppose one can't expect Laia to be completely filled in on the current state of technology after a 1,000-year nap. Anyhow, the upshot: the line in the English script starts as "Satellite..." when given to Lann and "A satellite..." when said by Laia. This is a (slight) difference in the English script but not necessarily one in the original Japanese. *** 3. MEA CULPA I first translated Kein and Ain's quests back when I had considerably less experience with Japanese. Barring stylistic changes, here's a list of the errors I made the first time around, which were corrected in the 2012 reissues: Kein: - I missed that a villager in Riik refers to Kein as "dispossessed" from succession to the throne (then, presumably for the time being, since he's back in if he marries Lena). - The man in Hyurri wasn't "accosted" by Mieu; he merely tracked her to the lake. - I apparently forgot entirely to change the name of Hasatak to its Japanese name, Hazatak. ("Proofreading"; what's that?) Ain: - Lyle never left the battlefield. He's calling for aid when the messenger comes in the prologue and is going out and out again into combat at great personal risk when you visit Shusoran. I missed this twice. Christ Almighty. - The cape where Lyle appears is the "Dragon's Tail," not the "Dragon's Cape." - Endora is named "Lott" in the Japanese version; "the artisans' village" is an epithet, not the town name proper. - The woman who speaks of Quisto is obviously romantically interested in him. - Quisto in Lott has had his heart taken captive by Lann; he doesn't want to take Lann captive himself. Yeah, I know. At least Toyo Ozaki's PS3 character book has more than enough crack to compensate. *** R. Capowski, 12/16/12; comments and reprobations on laziness to RACapowski@sceneryrecalled.com.