Help With a Confusing Japanese Name

[Infernoplex]

I am editing the characters page of this visual novel and I stumbled upon a dilemma with one of the character's names. I am looking at this character and I am wondering if the given romanization of her last name is correct. Namely, when I look at the JAST's page and while in-game she's referred to as Surugawa Sorami but the initial creator of her page on VNDB named her Kanbara Sorami so I decided to check who's right and who's wrong but since my Japanese is very weak at the moment, I can't decide what's right ...

So far, I've tried with online dictionaries looking for her name with kanji input (菅原 空美), but as expected I came up with multiple variants of reading her last name, and it seems that Kanbara is probably the right answer, JAST's naming Surugawa isn't even listed as an option here, and ENAMDICT returns somewhat similiar results. Did JAST mistake with her romanization? What's the correct answer? Asking those who are good in Japanese and can help me out with this dilemma Thanks in advance

[Nosebleed]

Getchu page says it's 菅原 空美 (かんばら そらみ). so Kanbara Sorami is correct indeed.

I don't really know why Jast translated it as Surugawa Sorami. Do the characters actually use that name when they speak (as in, voiced lines).?

[Infernoplex]

24 minutes ago, Nosebleed said:

I don't really know why Jast translated it as Surugawa Sorami. Do the characters actually use that name when they speak (as in, voiced lines).?

Thank you! I should have looked at getchu page first but I forgot that they always list hiragana for names ... That confirms it

I don't know why they did that either. The protagonist isn't voiced and there's only like one line in the entire VN when her full name is mentioned so there's no way to hear her last name pronounced in-game ... But I do think I have heard Sorami mentioned so there's no dilemma with that one Anyway, that's the info I was looking for, thank you @Nosebleed

[Nosebleed]

Usually when a character is first introduced in a game they have furigana above their name, maybe try looking for the moment her name is first mentioned if you really want to be thorough,  but I doubt Getchu got the name wrong.

[Narcosis]

Seems like Sorami Kanbara. It's a kanji compound, so the spelling should be onyomi. Other approaches are more or less incorrect in this case and results they bear don't make much sense, either.

If you want to know more, there's a preety neat article that covers it all.

[Infernoplex]

23 minutes ago, Nosebleed said:

Usually when a character is first introduced in a game they have furigana above their name, maybe try looking for the moment her name is first mentioned if you really want to be thorough,  but I doubt Getchu got the name wrong.

I was reading the English version of this VN, not the japanese one, so there's no furigana anywhere to be found ... Actually, Sorami's last name is only mentioned once at an introductionary phase and by a 3rd person ... And then never again, she is always referred to as Sorami and it's voiced as Sorami but I couldn't confirm her last name. I noticed the problem with the romanization only when I went to VNDB and saw that they named her Kanbara Sorami which got me off guard because in my notes she was called Surugawa Sorami.

In all honesty, I think the original translator of these old VNs (G-Collections) got some translations wrong. Some other VNs translated by them that I have read also had obvious translation errors that even I who am not good in Japanese can notice them (because the translated text itself sometimes seem very strange and off the scale at times). This is the first time I noticed they badly romanized a Japanese name. It's not just a missing vowel ("Ryouko"=/="Ryoko") ...

[Narcosis]

3 minutes ago, Infernoplex said:

In all honesty, I think the original translator of these old VNs (G-Collections) got some translations wrong. Some other VNs translated by them that I have read also had obvious translation errors that even I who am not good in Japanese can notice them (because the translated text itself sometimes seem very strange and off the scale at times). This is the first time I noticed they badly romanized a Japanese name. It's not just a missing vowel ("Ryouko"=/="Ryoko") ...

They most propably used the wrong pronunciation for kanji that made up the name. If a name doesn't use hiragana, you should almost always use the chinese spelling. Kanji compounds should be read that way, otherwise silly mistakes are bound to happen.

[Infernoplex]

49 minutes ago, Narcosis said:

Seems like Sorami Kanbara. It's a kanji compound, so the spelling should be onyomi. Other approaches are more or less incorrect in this case and results they bear don't make much sense, either.

If you want to know more, there's a preety neat article that covers it all.

They most propably used the wrong pronunciation for kanji that made up the name. If a name doesn't use hiragana, you should almost always use the chinese spelling. Kanji compounds should be read that way, otherwise silly mistakes are bound to happen.

For some reason, I can't like your comments, it says "you are not allowed to give reputation to this user" ... Anyway, thank you for the link, some of the things mentioned there I already knew and some of the things I didn't ... I bookmarked the site, it looks like it has some interesting Japanese materials, I do collect this type of sites for my study of Japanese. Reading through the article you linked and my analysis of the Kanji name, now I think I semi-understand why (菅原 空美) is read as Kanbara Sorami:

菅 - (On-yomi: カン、 ケン) (Kun-yomi: すげ)

原 - (On-yomi: ゲン) (Kun-yomi: はら)

空 - (On-yomi: クウ) (Kun-yomi: そら、 あ.く、 あ.き、 あ.ける、 から、 す.く、 す.かす、 むな.しい)

美 - (On-yomi: ビ、ミ) (Kun-yomi: うつく.しい)

Kanji readings obtained from http://jisho.org/ ... I hope it's not a problem I increased the size of the text, this way kanji can be examined better.

Looking at it like this, it seems that last name "Kanbara" came from the combination of one on-yomi and one kun-yomi reading (somehow はbecame the "ha" with dakuten marker).

And "Sorami" came from the combination of one kun-yomi and one on-yomi reading ... Though I have no clue how one decides which one to pick, it could also be "Sorabi" xD ... I am maybe misunderstanding some things, I am sorry if that's the case, I am still in the learning phase so I really try to learn this stuff in the best way that I can.

My current knowledge of Japanese is some low N5-N4 stuff and I did learn all of the Hiragana and Katakana as well as their writing and reading ... As for kanji, I learned like 150-200, of the 2000+ standard ones that must be learned.  The only kanji that I knew of earlier in this name was 空 ...

Edited October 24, 2016 by Infernoplex
Too much new lines - fixed

[Nosebleed]

Narcosis has the right idea, but the onyomi/kunyomi rules apply primarily to words, not people's names. There really isn't a rule when it comes to Japanese names, hence why in say a legal Japanese document, in the name field, you have to write both your name in kanji and then the pronounciation, otherwise even a Japanese native will often times misread the name.

[Infernoplex]

5 minutes ago, Nosebleed said:

Narcosis has the right idea, but the onyomi/kunyomi rules apply primarily to words, not people's names. There really isn't a rule when it comes to Japanese names, hence why in say a legal Japanese document, in the name field, you have to write both your name in kanji and then the pronounciation, otherwise even a Japanese native will often times misread the name.

That's what I have also thought. I remember reading something similiar to what Narcosis said in one of those huge Kanji Dictionaries, it's actually a very famous Kanji book, with lots of pages and the first 200 pages were on explaining the way to read kanji and general "rules" when reading kanji but you mostly need to remember them on a case-by-case basis. Interesting to hear about the forms, I never knew that but it definitively makes sense I can see why it's required.

[Nosebleed]

1 minute ago, Infernoplex said:

That's what I have also thought. I remember reading something similiar to what Narcosis said in one of those huge Kanji Dictionaries, it's actually a very famous Kanji book, with lots of pages and the first 200 pages were on explaining the way to read kanji and general "rules" when reading kanji but you mostly need to remember them on a case-by-case basis. Interesting to hear about the forms, I never knew that but it definitively makes sense I can see why it's required.

It really is like that. A lot of people try to grind kanji one by one and remember their individual pronounciations but honestly, other than remembering what they look like, you really only need to know how to pronounce them in context (i.e as words, or part of a word, in a setence).

And when it comes to names, it's basically a "just pick whatever you think sounds nice" type of deal (of course if you're part of the culture you know there are certain combinations that sound/look nice and others that don't, but you get the idea).

I was talking to a Chinese friend about how to pick a Chinese name for myself (so I don't have to ask the teacher to assign me one), and he basically said "idk, just pick whatever you think sounds nice lol ¯\_(ツ)_/¯". Japenese is mostly the same way.

[Infernoplex]

4 minutes ago, Nosebleed said:

It really is like that. A lot of people try to grind kanji one by one and remember their individual pronounciations but honestly, other than remembering what they look like, you really only need to know how to pronounce them in context (i.e as words, or part of a word, in a setence).

This is so true. I remember I tried to memorize the readings as best as I could but at the end, after my 50th kanji I gave up because it's meaningless to learn it like that xD ... Especially for Kanji that have like more than 15+ readings like this one ... Nowadays, I remember them only through new vocabulary, that's way easier for me, I can associate better that way. And usually I remember some readings of the kanji that way, I don't have the speed in reading and pronounciation but I do have a general idea on how to read it and what it means.

11 minutes ago, Nosebleed said:

And when it comes to names, it's basically a "just pick whatever you think sounds nice" type of deal (of course if you're part of the culture you know there are certain combinations that sound/look nice and others that don't, but you get the idea).

I see I kind of guessed that's how it works ...

12 minutes ago, Nosebleed said:

I was talking to a Chinese friend about how to pick a Chinese name for myself (so I don't have to ask the teacher to assign me one), and he basically said "idk, just pick whatever you think sounds nice lol ¯\_(ツ)_/¯". Japenese is mostly the same way.

Oh, so you are learning Chinese too? Cool, though all those asian languages can be really tough to learn. They are totally different cultures.

[Nandemonai]

11 hours ago, Infernoplex said:

In all honesty, I think the original translator of these old VNs (G-Collections) got some translations wrong. Some other VNs translated by them that I have read also had obvious translation errors that even I who am not good in Japanese can notice them (because the translated text itself sometimes seem very strange and off the scale at times). This is the first time I noticed they badly romanized a Japanese name. It's not just a missing vowel ("Ryouko"=/="Ryoko") ...

Older VNs have questionably-competent translations basically by default.  Slave Pageant was translated by G-Collections back when it was actually an independent entity and not part of the J-List Coalition of the Undead.  This particular game's localization dates to 2004.  Pretty much every game translated in 2004 has at best a serviceable translation; in 2004, even mainstream games would often have sketchy translations in 2004.

Nocturnal Illusion was translated in 1998, a mere 6 years before; games from then have abysmal translations.  I can speak for NI, having retranslated it myself.  I'd originally planned just to update the new lines, but the original was beyond hope.  An example:

Quote

The heavy metallic door having a strongly-built key could not be opened.  (Original US release)

When I was checking the key...

 土蔵の入口にはがっしりとした大きな鍵がかけられていて、金属製の重たそうな扉はびくともしない。  (Original Japanese of the same lines in the remake)

 鍵を調べていた時・・・。

The door of the storehouse is locked with a big, sturdy lock.  The heavyset, solid metal door doesn't budge an inch.  (My translation)

While I'm examining the lock ...

So the original Japanese uses the word 鍵, kagi.  A dictionary will tell you that this word has two definitions:  1) Key; 2) Lock.  Now, one (and only one) of these translations makes sense in context.  The other, however, has the unarguable advantage of being the first definition you see when you look the word up in a Japanese-English dictionary.  Guess which one made it into the game?

For a game from -- I guess I'd call it the second generation of English visual novels -- For a game from the second generation of visual novels, mistranslating a character's name is ... not a big surprise.  I'm sure the translation contains even bigger sins if you look hard enough.

Why was this?  Well, a lot of reputable translators won't touch porn.  And in the 90s and early 2000's, the pool of talent was definitely smaller.  The anime boom and the online fansub boom had the effect of bringing VN fans to the forefront.  So all of this means that in the early days, VN translation outfits had to make do with whoever they could find.  Visual novels didn't really start getting well-localized releases until the localizations started being done by visual novel fans.

[Infernoplex]

12 hours ago, Nandemonai said:

Older VNs have questionably-competent translations basically by default.  Slave Pageant was translated by G-Collections back when it was actually an independent entity and not part of the J-List Coalition of the Undead.  This particular game's localization dates to 2004.  Pretty much every game translated in 2004 has at best a serviceable translation; in 2004, even mainstream games would often have sketchy translations in 2004.

I am aware of what you said and yes, as you said, it is a servicable translation, it's not abysmal like Nocturnal Illusion and some other titles (I have heard that Divi Dead also had a bad translation even though when I was reading it I thought it was kind of servicable xD) ... When I posted the question yesterday about the Japanese name I didn't mean to start the discussion about quality of translations. I am not in favour of bashing G-Collections for their efforts, first of all most of their localized titles were 2000s-2005s VNs (mostly from Zyx and Trabulance) and most of them were pure nukige stuff like Slave Pageant and similiar (there are some exceptions with several bishoujo titles but most of the VNs were indeed nukige) and you could generally enjoy these titles with servicable translation, this isn't some heavy-plot VN that would require a very good translation so I am certainly okay with how they translated it, even if it has a lot of mistakes, generally it's readable and I am not missing a lot by not having a very good translation ... Unlike the situation with Nocturnal Illusion (I didn't read it but from what I have heard, it's suposed to be a good VN) ... And unlike Divi Dead which got me confused at times and especially after endings, that's how I discovered there were some mistranslations xD ...

12 hours ago, Nandemonai said:

So the original Japanese uses the word 鍵, kagi.  A dictionary will tell you that this word has two definitions:  1) Key; 2) Lock.  Now, one (and only one) of these translations makes sense in context.  The other, however, has the unarguable advantage of being the first definition you see when you look the word up in a Japanese-English dictionary.  Guess which one made it into the game?

I know kagi, it's a kanji I passed while I was in my beginner's lessons, I didn't know it could also be interpreted as a lock But truth be told, there's so many different possible interpretations for some of these kanji that I simply have no idea how would one remember them all, a dictionary is a must when translating because without it you can't make sense out of sentences. For example, your translated sentence makes much more sense than the one in the original translation. Totally different meaning, lock and key don't have the same meaning and looking by your example I can definitively see the difference, this initial translation really is abysmal as you said. It looks like the original translator didn't even try to make sense out of sentences.

12 hours ago, Nandemonai said:

Why was this?  Well, a lot of reputable translators won't touch porn.  And in the 90s and early 2000's, the pool of talent was definitely smaller.  The anime boom and the online fansub boom had the effect of bringing VN fans to the forefront.  So all of this means that in the early days, VN translation outfits had to make do with whoever they could find.  Visual novels didn't really start getting well-localized releases until the localizations started being done by visual novel fans.

An interesting history, I didn't know that. But I think I do understand why reputable translators from that era didn't want to touch porn.

[Nandemonai]

I wasn't really ripping on G-Collections.  My point wasn't so much ripping on G-Collections, as pointing out that the talent pool they had to work with was likely a lot less than what you can get now.  The boom in anime really motivated a lot of people to learn Japanese, and many of them have gone into translation.  The rise of fansubbing and fan translation groups also really helped VNs in particular.

As for Nocturnal Illusion, there's other spots where kagi was translated correctly.  Dunno how that happened.  Clearly, nobody edited the script; it's riddled with typos.  It was translated by RCY America, which seems to have been a distribution arm of a Japanese eroge company.  These have a very spotty history with translations - just ask Mangagamer about the early days!  Either the translator wasn't fluent in English, or had to translate the game on a super-short deadline, or just plain didn't care; at this point, who can say?

[Infernoplex]

14 hours ago, Nandemonai said:

As for Nocturnal Illusion, there's other spots where kagi was translated correctly.  Dunno how that happened.  Clearly, nobody edited the script; it's riddled with typos.  It was translated by RCY America, which seems to have been a distribution arm of a Japanese eroge company.  These have a very spotty history with translations - just ask Mangagamer about the early days!  Either the translator wasn't fluent in English, or had to translate the game on a super-short deadline, or just plain didn't care; at this point, who can say?

Oh, yes, I do know of MangaGamer's early translations, I think they got better only after Kouryuu joined them though. As for NI, true, nobody can tell and/or even guess what was going on with the translation of NI, I wouldn't be surprised that it was done on a short notice ... Speaking of translations by Japanese companies, you reminded me of one particular VN I tried to read several months ago ... I think it was called Giniro or something like that (I saw some new VN with similiar name like Gin'iro Haruka mentioned on Fuwanovel but that's not the VN I am speaking of) ... I remember opening up the VN and since it's a dual language release, I picked up English ... And, oh my, what an abomination that is! THAT's waaaay waaay worse than NI or Divi Dead ... That's literally the worst translation I ever saw for a VN and it's done by a Japanese company ... It made me wonder "why the hell did they even choose to include English as an option O_O" ... Now that's what I call abysmal.

[Okarin]

Most epic fail I remember for translating Japanese was made in Spanish first version of the Evangelion manga.

They romanized... *drum roll* "Ritsuko" as "Rikko". They mistook the "tsu" for an extension of the following syllable (I forgot how it's called), but one is uppercase where the other is indicated lowercase. A beginner's epic fail indeed.

And what's worse is that I could tell at the time.

[Infernoplex]

2 minutes ago, Okarin said:

And what's worse is that I could tell at the time.

Yeah, that can be an instant turn-off, when you figure out you understand it better than the original translator tried to present it to you.

[Nandemonai]

9 hours ago, Infernoplex said:

That's literally the worst translation I ever saw for a VN and it's done by a Japanese company ... It made me wonder "why the hell did they even choose to include English as an option O_O" ... Now that's what I call abysmal.

Oh, it was a gimmick, to provide a bonus for Japanese consumers to get them to buy another copy of a game that had already come out before.  That's why it's so awful, it wasn't intended for the Western markets at all.  It was intended for Japanese fans - who know at least a little bit of English - to look thru.  Now, key in this is the idea that most Japanese can't actually read English well enough to read the whole game; they'll read for awhile, mostly relying on the fact they already know the story.  Then they'll get bored and quit.  It's kind of like commentary and the trailers on a DVD; people like the fact that they're there, more than they actually use them.

So from that perspective, paying for a good translation is a waste of money.  The intended audience can't really appreciate it anyway, so why spend a lot of time & money when you can spend a little?

[Infernoplex]

5 hours ago, Nandemonai said:

So from that perspective, paying for a good translation is a waste of money.  The intended audience can't really appreciate it anyway, so why spend a lot of time & money when you can spend a little?

Oh, so that was the case. I see. Interesting indeed That makes sense, I thought they were trying to somehow get into the western market by that time but from your post I see I was wrong. Getting into the western market wasn't their intention at all. Thank you for the clarification ...

[Nandemonai]

13 hours ago, Infernoplex said:

Oh, so that was the case. I see. Interesting indeed That makes sense, I thought they were trying to somehow get into the western market by that time but from your post I see I was wrong. Getting into the western market wasn't their intention at all. Thank you for the clarification ...

No, it wasn't intended for Western release.  It was purely a domestic release; the copies floating around are straight-up imports.  The same is true of Casual Romance Club; that was also a gimmick release not actually aimed at Westerners, but the domestic audience.  In that case, the translation is better though (or so I hear anyway, my backlog is legion), so Peter Payne apparently went to the company and bought a whole bunch of copies wholesale, or something.