Comments | fandom_grammar: Feature: Transliteration 101

lady_ganesh in fandom_grammar

Feature: Transliteration 101

May 15, 2009 21:41

Hanukkah vs. Chanukah? Mohammed or Muhammad? Why do some people call Light Yagami "Raito?" And what the hell is "Arucard" doing in the first Hellsing translation, anyway?

Welcome to the wonderful world of transliteration!

( It's all about the alphabet... )

foreign language:translation, usage:non-american, author:lady_ganesh, !feature

Comments 3

(The comment has been removed)

lady_ganesh May 16 2009, 01:57:47 UTC

With as many 'czars' as we have in the American political cabinet, I can't believe I forgot that one!

Yeah, I'm glad to just be a reader/writer sometimes.

lady_lirenel May 16 2009, 02:45:22 UTC

Then there's transliteration versus, well, translation for lack of a better word. When talking about the ancient Greeks you can go both ways:

* transliterated: Hektor, translated into the Latin version: Hector
* Hekabe/Hecuba, Helenos/Helenus, Menelaos/Menelaus, etc

Either works, though I prefer transliteration personally despite most people using the Latin translation.

lady_ganesh May 16 2009, 02:50:00 UTC

Oh, yes. Gensomaden Saiyuki gets into this a bit, in that the author-- who's based her characters on the classic novel Journey to the West-- uses the Japanese, not Chinese names for her characters. As they're not super-well-known in the West it's not as much of a conflict but if you go back to the original source you do have to remember that Cho Hakkai is Pigsy is Zhu Bajie.