The issue of pronunciations, vaguely
Sep. 10th, 2006 02:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
narcasseRamble with coffee this morning afternoon: the Death Note fandom has issues again over the official English translation of that Yagami kid’s name. Though as one Fandom Wank commenter pointed out, the official version does make him sound like a beer and a bad, girlie beer at that.
So the official translation states that he’s Yagami Light but it could actually be Romanised as ‘Ratio’ which is what the fan scanilators had done so plenty of the fandom were used to seeing that, though it was changed when the official translation was announced. All well and good really but somehow people are still fussing over it. There’s talk of the use of ‘Ratio’ as being disrespectful to the artist and accusations that it’s only being done to sound more ‘l33t’. All the usual wholesome stuff. But to be honest, while I’m fully aware that I should be using ‘Light’ if I ever write another Death Note drabble or discuss the matter, I’m still going to use ‘Ratio’ because that’s the name I’m used to and yes, calling him ‘Light’ will make me think of beer. And I do have the argument of it sounding like that in Japanese at least.
Which brings me to my actual point today.
As far as names go, I rather prefer to at least attempt to pronounce them similarly to the way they would sound in their native tongue. Because they’re names, unlike generic objects or actions, sometimes it just seems a little bit more polite to at least try to adapt your pronunciation. As far as that relates to fandom it does throw up one or two problems when listening to dubs depending. The Japanese pronunciation of ‘Eduard’ for example, I can live with but to see that spelt out with the additional vowel on the end tends to irritate me because Meine Liebe is set in a Germanic country and ‘Eduardo’ is not his given name. That said, it took me long enough to stop pronouncing ‘Naoji’ in a Germanic fashion and correct my pronunciation to conform to the Japanese. Likewise my pronunciation of ‘Orpherus’, which occasionally jumps between German and Japanese style pronunciation.
Of course with my attempts at authentic pronunciation I’m not attempting to change the spelling of names to reflect that, which really makes the argument that I should be writing ‘Light’ instead of ‘Ratio’ which almost became ‘Ration’ there anyway. I probably should but then I’m still spelling it ‘Daryoon’ instead of ‘Daryun’ these days and not just because a minuscule amount of poking at Farsi seems to suggest that there should be an ‘o’ or two in there.
I suppose I should be apologising for the fact that I tend to get set in my ways and unlike the appropriate tarot card for my astrological sign, really don’t care all that much for change. So ‘Ratio’ and ‘Daryoon’ it is. And if occasionally poor Naoji’s name gets buggered up when I say it aloud, at least I can spell it correctly. Catch me on a good day and I can’t pronounce ‘Isaak’ the English way either which probably says more about my own personal phonetics than anything else I might have been debating at all. And bearing in mind that I tend to call ‘pikelets’ ‘pickles’ in my head too because I can never remember what they’re called and only that they begin with a ‘p’, I’m probably not the best authority on what anything should be called really.
This track probably doesn’t contain the line “And a little bit fish” either.
So the official translation states that he’s Yagami Light but it could actually be Romanised as ‘Ratio’ which is what the fan scanilators had done so plenty of the fandom were used to seeing that, though it was changed when the official translation was announced. All well and good really but somehow people are still fussing over it. There’s talk of the use of ‘Ratio’ as being disrespectful to the artist and accusations that it’s only being done to sound more ‘l33t’. All the usual wholesome stuff. But to be honest, while I’m fully aware that I should be using ‘Light’ if I ever write another Death Note drabble or discuss the matter, I’m still going to use ‘Ratio’ because that’s the name I’m used to and yes, calling him ‘Light’ will make me think of beer. And I do have the argument of it sounding like that in Japanese at least.
Which brings me to my actual point today.
As far as names go, I rather prefer to at least attempt to pronounce them similarly to the way they would sound in their native tongue. Because they’re names, unlike generic objects or actions, sometimes it just seems a little bit more polite to at least try to adapt your pronunciation. As far as that relates to fandom it does throw up one or two problems when listening to dubs depending. The Japanese pronunciation of ‘Eduard’ for example, I can live with but to see that spelt out with the additional vowel on the end tends to irritate me because Meine Liebe is set in a Germanic country and ‘Eduardo’ is not his given name. That said, it took me long enough to stop pronouncing ‘Naoji’ in a Germanic fashion and correct my pronunciation to conform to the Japanese. Likewise my pronunciation of ‘Orpherus’, which occasionally jumps between German and Japanese style pronunciation.
Of course with my attempts at authentic pronunciation I’m not attempting to change the spelling of names to reflect that, which really makes the argument that I should be writing ‘Light’ instead of ‘Ratio’ which almost became ‘Ration’ there anyway. I probably should but then I’m still spelling it ‘Daryoon’ instead of ‘Daryun’ these days and not just because a minuscule amount of poking at Farsi seems to suggest that there should be an ‘o’ or two in there.
I suppose I should be apologising for the fact that I tend to get set in my ways and unlike the appropriate tarot card for my astrological sign, really don’t care all that much for change. So ‘Ratio’ and ‘Daryoon’ it is. And if occasionally poor Naoji’s name gets buggered up when I say it aloud, at least I can spell it correctly. Catch me on a good day and I can’t pronounce ‘Isaak’ the English way either which probably says more about my own personal phonetics than anything else I might have been debating at all. And bearing in mind that I tend to call ‘pikelets’ ‘pickles’ in my head too because I can never remember what they’re called and only that they begin with a ‘p’, I’m probably not the best authority on what anything should be called really.
This track probably doesn’t contain the line “And a little bit fish” either.
