Senzanome

(This post was initially meant to be a submission for @eirikrjs, then I realized that making my own post would give me less of an headache with the added pictures, so here it is. This might very well just be my first and last post on Tumblr)

Yesterday some SMT III previews dropped, and since the only thing I care about regarding that game is its localization, mostly the Italian one, I immediately looked at that. There's some interesting stuff, I swear.

First of all, about MegaTen and Italian: if we aren't counting Catherine, Persona 5 Royal was the first game in the series that got translated. French and Germans got "Lucifer's Call" (which afaik didn't have a great translation either), but we weren't so lucky, so the only translations we got are P5R and P5S'. Both of them are definitely based on the English script, even if I wouldn't rule out the chance they actually checked the Japanese script for some minor stuff.

About P5R's translation... it's mostly fine. It's got some typos and whatnot, but for a game that massive it's nothing unusual. As for the "mythological department", it doesn't look like they did much research on their own. The two most interesting things are Alilat which got changed to Allat (and the translated description has an added "also known as Alilat", which is nice) and Thunderbird which got changed to Wakinyan, probably because "Uccello del tuono" didn't fit. One thing I will never get about P5R though is what happened to エル・ジハード, the Electricity skill. It was Narukami in Persona 4, then Jihad in Persona 4 Golden, then Wild Thunder in Persona 5 and Royal... but in Italian it's "Dio del tuono" (God of Thunder). Really, that's still a mystery to me. Plus, Izanagi-no-Okami’s Myriad Truths became Verità letali (Lethal Truths) and the “ARM PC” DLC accessory became DECK. Don’t ask me what that means.

There really isn't much to say about P5S. Since the game is smaller the translation got better, there's just some typos here and there and some minor slip-ups but nothing major. It didn't add much mythologically-wise, so, moving on.

Now, Nocturne is the first mainline SMT game that gets the treatment, so I was pretty interested in how they would change the demon races (or species, as they're called in Italian apparently). I was pretty sure they'd just get the English->Italian treatment and that's exactly what happened, but there's still interesting stuff that happened, such as...

Brute: Orco (Ogre). I'm not sure how I feel about this one yet. It sure is... interesting. It kinda fits, since the onis are "japanese ogres", but at the same time I don't feel like it's "generic" enough to be the name of a whole race of demons. It's basically the reason I'm making this post. Plus, "Orco" is also Orcus’ italian name.

Fiend: Diavolo (Devil). Just like the English term, it's used both for the Devil and, well, devils, mostly of the christian kind.

Night: Oscuro (Dark). This one just missed the point, since they're supposed to be "night demons". Oh well. I guess night is dark.

Yoma: Yoma (Yoma). Yeah.

Wilder: Selvaggio (Wild). Not much to say. I like it better than the English one.

Fallen: Caduto (Fallen). It's the same term we use for "fallen angel" (angelo caduto), so it was pretty much the obvious and obviously correct choice.

Fairy: Fata (Fairy). It's pretty much only used for female entities, personally I think Folletto would've been more fitting. It refers to (mostly) mischievious little creatures (mostly) from european folklore.

Haunt: Spettro (Specter). Works fine.

That's all the races I could find. Orco definitely steals the spotlight for how interesting it is, but there's some more food for thought in there. I didn’t even consider the original Japanese names since the translation is based on the English script and we all know (?) how different the English names for races are from their Japanese counterparts.

Here's some more stuff unrelated to races:

Reason: Visione (Vision). I know it's not kotowari, but it works better than a more literal translation like Ragione would have. It's meant to be Vision as "an idea for the future". If I had to choose a term, I think I'd go with Principio, which means "beginning" and is also used for "moral principles". I really like Visione though.

Will o' Wisp: Will o' Wisp (Will o' Wisp). Dunno why they didn't change its name to "Fuoco fatuo", which is literally "Ignis fatuus" and is commonly used. Pretty weird. Plus, Jack-o'-Lantern has dashes. Will o' Wisp does not. I am going mad.

Demi-fiend: Mezzo-diavolo (lit. Half-devil). Obviously, they thought that the "Fiend" in Demi-fiend is the same as the Fiend race, and who wouldn't, just by looking at the English script? As for the "Mezzo": the "demi" in Demi-fiend comes from demigod, demi+god, which in Italian is semidio, semi+dio. Our "semi", however, is much more commonly used than the English "demi", so Semi-diavolo, Semi-demone or whatever would be nowhere near as "special" as Demi-fiend is. Mezzo-diavolo, on the other hand, loses that mythological appeal, but that "zz" makes it sound kinda derogatory, which I think is pretty fitting. It reminds me of mezzosangue (half-blood). I've seen some Italian fans hating this term with burning passion, but most of them would've probably hated every other choice as well.