Lugia-EX · Ancient Origins (AOR) #94

6 comments

1. 

   Jiří z Poděbrad

   (1 year ago)

   Lugia 𝙑𝙎𝙏𝘼𝙍 has “Tempest Dive” — that attack has *optional* stadium discarding, not mandatory, like this attack.

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     AmbassadorJiří z Poděbrad

     (1 year ago)

     Unlike Lugia VSTAR, this Lugia’s attacks are actually faithful to the original attack names – エアロボール [𝐀𝐞𝐫𝐨 𝐁𝐚𝐥𝐥] and ディープハリケーン [𝐃𝐞𝐞𝐩 𝐇𝐮𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐞]. Lugia VSTAR’s JP attacks are also phonetic English, but both names the EN edition print has are incorrect.

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       televisionnationAmbassador

       (1 year ago)

       I wouldn’t say ‘incorrect’ – instead some artistic liberty was taken when translating the attack names. Lugia VSTAR’s VSTAR Power being changed from ‘Assembly Star’ to ‘Summoning Star’ may have had an alliteration motive behind it. The translator may have likewise reckoned ‘Tempest Dive’ sounded more exciting to English speaking audiences than ‘Storm Dive’. Both are a matter of personal preference, of course if your preference is to mirror the original Japanese as closely as possible then yes they come up short in that regard. Translators also have their own biases, I suspect whoever decided on ‘Summoning Star’ would be a fellow Yugi-boomer but that’s purely speculative.

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         Ambassadortelevisionnation

         (1 year ago)

         No translation is perfect, and it can often involve a bit of creativity. The thing is, there’s no translation to be doing here at all so I am much firmer here. The attack names are already in English, and changing it for the sake of it is obnoxious, and can only risk consistency issues down the line.

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           televisionnationAmbassador

           (1 year ago)

           I definitely agree that this type of ‘creative’ translation is notorious for creating consistency issues as time progresses! However, katakana English doesn’t always smoothly work in fluent Anglophone English. Think of the Mega Evolution Pokémon which feature the attack names in English as part of their Japanese artwork – in order to bring the same feeling the card is trying to convey to the English-speaking audience the attack names were written in katakana so that the word would still be in a foreign alphabet to the user.

           Katakana-English has a certain flair to it for the Japanese audience that may not be fully captured by simply translating it phonetically to the English-speaking audience. Going back to Twylis’s comment on Lugia FCO an attack name that sounds foreign to Anglophones might be a better representation of what the card was trying to convey to its original audience, does that make sense?

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           АmbassadorAmbassador

           (1 year ago)

           I mean, it’s kind of funny you mentioned that. I expressed my thoughts on how TPCI messed up the (intended) bilingual element of M Pokémon EX in the comments of Charizard EX101 – TPCI mucked it up on enough cards that it feels like they undermined the entire thing.

           Like, my thesis outright would be this: expecting transliteration of the katakana is actually the bare minimum of what I’m expecting here. The extra mile for bonus points would actually to start to do what Twylis suggested – start to inject the English edition of the TCG with some Japanese language in a manner complimentary to the way the Japanese edition injects English into it. At least they’re better at attack translations so the game itself isn’t horribly undermined, but this sort of faffing about where they won’t even get transliterations right is, to me, reminiscent of WOTC-era condescension where the translator(s) seem like they think they’re “fixing” something, but nothing is broken in the first place.