First game to have no name changes (so far)!

[VincentASM]

14 hours ago, Siskan said:

Is that how people would have seen it 25 years ago (when the translation happened) as well though?

I don't live in a country where it's a common name (for any generation), so I wouldn't have a clue.

Yeah, I dunno about FF, but Tina is a pretty common name. Obviously, in Japan, it's not and is thus considered an exotic name.

Similarly, for them, Demon Lord Dave would probably sound really cool xD

[Siskan]

3 minutes ago, VincentASM said:

Tina is a pretty common name. Obviously, in Japan, it's not and is thus considered an exotic name.

I can understand that part and was aware that it's a common name in English speaking countries. I thought it was a generational thing reading that post though. I mean we have a lot of names here for example which are very common but mostly among the older generations. But trends come and go, some were popular 30 years ago but not anymore. While some of the names popular maybe 60 years ago are starting to become popular again.

Though English names have been dominating for quite a while and continue to do so, so I can imagine a lot of parents making the same mistake here (being that they name their children English names they think sound cool but which may be seen as very out of date in the UK, US etc.)

At the same time traditional Scandinavian names are quite popular in games including Fire Emblem, but not so over here.

But yes even I can totally see that Demon Lord Dave would sound ridiculous. : D

[CelestialContrail]

7 hours ago, Siskan said:

I can understand that part and was aware that it's a common name in English speaking countries. I thought it was a generational thing reading that post though. I mean we have a lot of names here for example which are very common but mostly among the older generations. But trends come and go, some were popular 30 years ago but not anymore. While some of the names popular maybe 60 years ago are starting to become popular again.

That poster was correct - Tina is a name that is mostly used by older people at this point.  This graph shows that the name's popularity in the US peaked in the late 1960s and that it has largely fallen out of use in the current day.

[Siskan]

1 hour ago, CelestialContrail said:

 This graph shows that the name's popularity in the US peaked in the late 1960s

In other words most of those people were in their mid or upper 20s back in 1994. Doesn't seem to explain the change at all.

[VincentASM]

I kept forgetting to do so, but I finally updated the first post with all the officially revealed names. There's also a page on the main site (which I'll probably update more frequently).

[CelestialContrail]

2 hours ago, Siskan said:

In other words most of those people were in their mid or upper 20s back in 1994. Doesn't seem to explain the change at all.

That's true, but the name had already dropped significantly in popularity for naming newborns by then.  Also, at that time (1994) an American singer named Tina Turner was quite well-known (to the point where she's still the first person that comes to mind when I hear the name Tina, and I was a teenager then and so in the general target audience for the game) and that may have influenced the decision to rename Terra as well.

[Siskan]

10 minutes ago, CelestialContrail said:

Also, at that time (1994) an American singer named Tina Turner was quite well-known (to the point where she's still the first person that comes to mind when I hear the name Tina

Yes me too. Perhaps a more plausible explanation, although one that I cannot approve of. I think all these changes just go to show how games are valued compared to novels etc.

In any case I'm pleased that they've finally come to their senses regarding Fire Emblem. Now I've forgotten, was it Treehouse this time around? They've been one of the biggest offenders in the past with some quite extreme localisation practices when it comes to some other games.

[Azz]

I don't know if this was pointed out or not but fighting was localised to brawling. You can see it here at 8:27

Spoiler

 

 

[VincentASM]

@Azz

Yeah, or rather they localised the Japanese term to something slightly different. It seems the E3 2018 English build was still a work in progress.

They recently changed Skill to Dexterity, Professor Levels to Skill Levels, Skills to Abilities and so forth.

I think Brawling is a pretty interesting choice. I guess Fighting was too generic and could be confused with the Fighter class. Whereas there's a Brawler with Brawling.

[Matroska]

On 7/1/2019 at 9:17 PM, Siskan said:

Is that how people would have seen it 25 years ago (when the translation happened) as well though?

I don't live in a country where it's a common name (for any generation), so I wouldn't have a clue.

Well for what it's worth, I was born in 1983 and I didn't know anyone called Tina growing up - either as a person "in real life" or as a character of a similar age to mine on TV or in movies. It has always been (within my lifespan) a name for an older woman, and furthermore a pretty working class/blue collar kind of name, so the opposite to exotic, as unfair as that might sound. Again, it's kind of like having God King Barry or something like that.

On 7/2/2019 at 10:08 PM, Siskan said:

In other words most of those people were in their mid or upper 20s back in 1994. Doesn't seem to explain the change at all.

Tina Turner was born in 1939. She was 55 when FFVI came out. Also, and this is a road I really don't want to go down because it unfortunately feels somehow controversial since it's dealing with stereotypes, but African American, as well as black British people, regularly have names from previous generations. Winston is a stereotypical name of a black guy in the UK, yet that name was most commonly given in about 1900 or even before. Another stereotypical black name in the UK or US is Leroy, and that peaks in around the 30s. Putting that kind of thing aside, there are just certain names that have this really "common" feel to them, like Dave, Colin, Steve and so on, and it sounds really damn weird to have a hero in a fantasy setting (or most other settings) called that unless it's meant to be a Python-esque joke.

Edited July 5, 2019 by Matroska

[bufkus]

why are people going on about the Tina thing? that localization change only happened because Ted Woolsey is one of the worst localizers of all time. He ruined a lot of the gags in FF6, replacing porno mags with more sanitized things, etc. Cutting out whole dialogues. 

They absolutely could have kept her name as Tina but chose not to for the same stupid reasons the previous Fire Emblem translation teams changed perfectly valid western names. 

[Druplesnubb]

Do you seriously not understand the problems with having a porn magazine in a kids game in America the nineties? Also lol at you using Marth as an example of good localization earlier in the thread when he was obviously supposed to be Mars before the Smash translators fucked up. Even the guys who dubbed that old anime OVA got that one right.

Edited July 16, 2019 by Druplesnubb

[FoliFF]

It's called Woolseyism for a reason. Localisation is a tricky business depending on how you want to localise your games.

[Kanethedragon]

On 6/27/2019 at 9:24 AM, VincentASM said:

A friend of mine was moaning how it's hard to talk to English FE fans because half the cast had different names.

This except for Pokemon. Imo no amount of localization will top the name changes in that franchise. Still bugs me with games like FE though. But Pokemon is the absolute worst offender.

[Hauke]

2 hours ago, Kanethedragon said:

This except for Pokemon. Imo no amount of localization will top the name changes in that franchise. Still bugs me with games like FE though. But Pokemon is the absolute worst offender. 

Eh... for Pokemon the reasons are pretty clear WHY they do it. They want the puns in the names working for all involved languages. You can't compare that to FE. Would you prefer it if Bulbsaur was called Fushigidane? Who would understand the pun behind it?

[timon]

2 hours ago, Kanethedragon said:

This except for Pokemon. Imo no amount of localization will top the name changes in that franchise. Still bugs me with games like FE though. But Pokemon is the absolute worst offender.

God no, having Pokemon with the japanese names would be hell on earth, and the english names are actually good most of the time. On the other hand I don't really understand the european localization of Pokemon names, only some countries do it (Germany and France do, Italy doesn't, wtf) and it creates a lot of confusion.

There's some weird stuff in FE as well, I remember in the italian version of Awakening Cherche was randomly changed to Zelcher (which is not remotely close to anything similar to a name in italian) and Lon'Qu was Lon'Zu, the hell? Sometimes I think it's just some bored localization guy that just wants a twist in his day really.

Edited July 24, 2019 by timon

[Hauke]

17 minutes ago, timon said:

There's some weird stuff in FE as well, I remember in the italian version of Awakening Cherche was randomly changed to Zelcher (which is not remotely close to anything similar to a name in italian) and Lon'Qu was Lon'Zu, the hell? Sometimes I think it's just some bored localization guy that just wants a twist in his day really. 

Zelcher and Lon'Zu were the names in whole Europe, not just Italian. So that was a shared decision by Nintendo of Europe most likely. Her Japanese name ist Serge and is spelled Seruju.So from Seruju Cherche and Zelche are close. Cherche isn't a real name either, or?

[timon]

4 minutes ago, Hauke said:

Zelcher and Lon'Zu were the names in whole Europe, not just Italian. So that was a shared decision by Nintendo of Europe most likely. Her Japanese name ist Serge and is spelled Seruju.So from Seruju Cherche and Zelche are close. Cherche isn't a real name either, or?

I thought it was in french? Maybe not idk. I wasn't aware that the localization was the same for all non-english european, though I still don't get it, maybe there's some problem in some language with the word "Cherche", but changing one letter in Lon'Qu's name is just bizarre.

Also you just made me realize the correct way to pronounce Zelcher (something like cell+share right?), because I always read it the italian way (something like Tsaelker), and that's closer to a mass destruction weapon than it is to a name.

[Tharne]

6 hours ago, timon said:

I thought it was in french? Maybe not idk. I wasn't aware that the localization was the same for all non-english european, though I still don't get it, maybe there's some problem in some language with the word "Cherche", but changing one letter in Lon'Qu's name is just bizarre.

Also you just made me realize the correct way to pronounce Zelcher (something like cell+share right?), because I always read it the italian way (something like Tsaelker), and that's closer to a mass destruction weapon than it is to a name.

Both of those are probably because of french.

Chercher means to search : Je cherche -> I search.

And Lon'Qu, if you pronounce Qu with the same sounding u as in supply, it sound like "cul" (silent l) = ass.

[Kanethedragon]

In response to Haukke and Tim, I'm more so referring to the character names (E.G. Green vs Blue, Blue/Leaf vs Green, and the inconsistencies from games vs manga vs specific manga region releases vs anime etc.) But that's basically my take. There's also the fact that every in game trainer has names that are different in each version too, when some of those (particularly for certain trainer classes) would be perfectly fine sticking. It did give us youngster Joey memes though so I suppose I could let it off easy. In any case it's pretty much similar reasons on questioning why some name changes happen in FE with some fitting the characters to be changed to something completely unrelated, or a perfectly fine western name that didn't need adjustments (such as Harold to Arthur.)