Romanization! The source of many headaches revealed!

[sincere]

I was seriously having some DGM-related angst. I was seriously asking myself if I could bear to go with the "official" spellings of people's names, despite knowing that Hoshino is not an English-speaker and does not know how to spell things, with all due respect. This was only emphasized as I went through the manga and, for instance, saw "Noa" on a door when clearly what was intended was "Noah," since the name refers to the actual religious figure Noah.

Could I stand using Tiedoll instead of Theodore?
Cheryl (for a man) instead of Cyril?
Claudnyne instead of Cloud Nine?
Arystar Krory instead of Aleister Crowley?

And I was seriously questioning this, right up until I realized that the "official" spelling of a certain individual's name seems to be "Jeryy".

And then I said, fuck the official spellings.

Comments

[vicious-lullaby.livejournal.com]

...XD;;; I'm not even in the DGM fandom, but "Arystar Krory" actually made me snicker out loud. You know, I do not think I blame you in the slightest for not sticking with official spellings. 8D

[kay-willow.livejournal.com]

I physically can't do it. XD It's just -- too absurd for me. I'm glad to have outside validation to return poor Crowley and poor Jerry to sane names.

[chibimazoku.livejournal.com]

It's funny, because I know several other people whose canon-name breaking point happened at Jerry's name. It's just so ridiculous!

[kay-willow.livejournal.com]

Seriously, it's cool with me when a name is supposed to be foreign and it looks weird. I'm not going to tell people how to spell Lenalee; it's supposed to be Chinese, and Chinese can be romanized in a lot of ways. Lenalee it is.

But all these obviously European names assigned to European characters (or in Jerry's case, a European nickname for an Indian character) -- I have such problems with their names being gibberish. XD

[ladycrysiana.livejournal.com]

What's fun is when people say, "But clearly the mangaka meant it that way!" and you have to tell them that that, unfortunately, is the point. On the other hand, Quillsh Wammy has not yet been topped, so it could always be worse.

[inarticulate.livejournal.com]

I guess you could argue that Quillsh Wammy is worst because it's intended to be in a realistic setting, but the names from Hunter x Hunter are so bad that not even the official translations use them. And I take great delight in bringing them up during every debate on this subject 8D

Por ejemplo: Curarpikt (Kurapika), Quwrof Wrlccywrlir (Quoll Lucifer), Wbererguin (Ubogin), Chzzok (Shizuku), Phalcnothdk (Pakunoda)…

The alphabet does not work the way Togashi-sensei thinks it works.

[kay-willow.livejournal.com]

S, SOB. I remember Kurapika's hideous name romanization (although last I checked I thought it was just Curapikt), but I had not been aware of those others. Why does Lucifer's name have so many w's and no vowels? CRY.

Togashi is much more offensive to my sense of spelling, but as far as I know (SOB) none of those are supposed to be actual names. So there's a special place of frustration in my mind for being expected to type "Jeryy" when what I'm sure she means is "Jerry", because Jerry is a valid and real name. XD

[inarticulate.livejournal.com]

Lucifer is a real name! But not in the sense that Togashi romanized it close enough that it's clear he intended it to be read that way, yeah. Hoshino is… special. S/he kind of reminds me of those people who give their babies common names with the most whacked out spellings possible.

[kay-willow.livejournal.com]

Well, Lucifer is, but Wrrlccc--something is not, unless it is, in which case I will cry and continue to use Lucifer because I cannot even begin to imagine how you would say that. (Apparently, Lucifer!) But yeah, I meant that those manglings he wants you to use are not names. They're not even pronounceable. :\

[v-voltaire.livejournal.com]

Ha. I'm pretty strict about using the official names (Light not Raito!), but my break with official romanizations also came from HunterxHunter. Even the published translations don't use his crazy romanizations!

[usagi-alchemist.livejournal.com]

HunterxHunter is secretly set in Wales? XD

[kay-willow.livejournal.com]

They can say that, but, again. XD I know that the mangaka meant for it to be "Noah" because it is supposed to be the Biblical figure, but she spelled it "Noa". Yet no one pretends that it's the Noa family, because we know better.

Why shouldn't this policy apply to names. :\ We know his name isn't supposed to be Jeryy because that isn't a name sflkjdfg.

[sora-ishida.livejournal.com]

Or they could all be "official"! Have you read the Viz DGM manga? In one book -- THREE different spellings of Lenalee/Linali/Rinali (two of those were on the same page). I mean, seriously, WTF was their QC doing?!

I say go with whatever you think best, often the fans are more inclined to do the research to make a better judgement. Personally, I disagree with a good deal of the KKM "official" names, because a few minutes of research could easily have shown that, for example, 'Voltaire' is impossible from the katakana of Gwendal's surname while assuming a German pronunciation (as most of the other obviously Germanic names do). It's frustrating when the translators don't care or don't have the time for that little bit of extra attention that would make for more accurate name translations. :/

[kay-willow.livejournal.com]

Although to be fair, IIRC Voltaire is an official spelling on the Japanese side, and that's okay with me, because while it may not match the katakana perfectly, it's still a name, the way she intended it to be. Voltaire is very clearly a name. Now, if the mangaka had said his name is Voltayre or Voltyyr, I probably would have had this dilemma. XD

And yes, I've had that hateful experience in Planet Ladder -- where a name is spelled differently every time you see it, sometimes on the same page. Viz and Tokyopop spit out polished crap and then get paid millions for such half-assed work that grammatical errors and typos run wild. I can't stand it. How do you not notice when you spell something 2-3 different ways on the same page?

[v-voltaire.livejournal.com]

Of course, the ironic thing there is that when Voltaire chose his alias, it was no more a real name than "P Diddy" or "Lemony Snickett"

[kay-willow.livejournal.com]

Y, you mean Lemony Snickett isn't a real name? :\

[abrogate-nadir.livejournal.com]

Aha, I wanted to pull my hair out when I kept seeing all these different ways of spelling people's names on the internets. Like the Krory and Crowley, and I don't know if this is related, but the Lavi or Rabi and Lenalee or Rinali business. Ugh.

I support you and your rejection of those damn official spellings!

[kay-willow.livejournal.com]

That's not directly related, because both of their names are foreign -- Lenalee's name is Chinese, and Lavi's name is like, Hebrew I think -- and so there is no natural romanization. When Hoshino said that their names were spelled Lenalee and Lavi, I shrugged and went with those, because it's the official way she wanted those non-English names romanized.

But Crowley is a name. We all were sure it was Crowley until we saw her mangling the roman letters. And when she said Jerry is spelled Jeryy -- that -- no. ;_; His name is Jerry.

[rain-waltz.livejournal.com]

Most agreed.

I remember when Cloud Nine first came from the manga, some people called her Klaud Nyne.

The Lavi/Ravi/Rabi/etc. and Lenalee/Linali/Rinali business is pretty nuts [I can understand]. I use Linali because "lee" does not exist in the Standard Mandarin romanization [also, because I am Chinese myself].

Reever/River doesn't bug me. I honestly don't even mind the whole Krory/Crowley, but I draw the line at Jeryy.

*shrugs*
It's a messy situation.