Re-Evaluating Some Japanese TF Names
Monzo
sat very well with me. Can't really say why. But, having the Asian
language fonts installed on Windows XP, I got to thinking: "hey, I know
my way around Japanese websites okay. Why don't I just copy the
katakana, paste it in to Google, and see if it spits up real words?"
And so I did, picking a handful of what I thought to be dubiously
transliterated names. Here, then, are my sundry discoveries. Please
note that I do not mean to come off as condescending... I have a vague
sense of the workings of the syllabary, but no skill in the Japanese
language itself. The theories within are my own, but have been
researched to the best of my meager abilities, and I definitely welcome
comments or corrections.
ZETOKA
One of the three individually-released Godmaster engines, he was my
first target. My searches gave me... Zetca.
http://www.starwarstokyo.jp/takaraFolder/zetcaseries.html
http://www.toysrgus.com/index.php?action=disp_item&item_id=47261
Zetca was apparently a Takara "space alloy" used in a diecast Star Wars
subline produced in the late 1970s. The word is an exact match for the
katakana - the line was produced by Takara - and it's the only
non-Transformers item that shows up on Google.
Conclusion: "Zetoka" is Zetca.
BORETTO
I did a lot of legwork to churn out what seems to be... the established
convention. The katakana for "Boretto", the third individual Godmaster
engine, turned up plenty of hits... but I couldn't glean much from
them. A lot had to do with some concert pianist named Bolet. It didn't
SEEM to be "bullet," because the end of Landbullet's name is "baretto".
But then I found this site, which gave me my big clue:
http://www.geocities.co.jp/Playtown/8352/co_machins2.html
Apparently, Captain Harlock (nee Herlock) had a bunch of small ships
labelled "Boretto 1" to "Boretto 4". Given the age of the show, the
vehicles certainly had to have toys... which led to here.
http://toyboxst.inwards.com/phorum/read.php?4,100999
Originally dubbed "Vollet 1" to "Vollet 4" by American fans, the Takara
toys THESMELVES are labelled as... Bullet 1 to Bullet 4.
I guess what we're looking at is an older, outmoded transliteration,
then.
Conclusion: Boretto is Bullet.
JIIKU
The third on my top-three list. One of the three members of the Street
Speed Micron, known as Spiral in the US. One of Doug Dlin's original
postulations for the name was Sieg, "based on a brand of tires used by
Mercedes-Benz". Well, hey. Spiral is based on a Mercedes-Benz C230. And
as bizarre as it seems - "Sieg" IS a viable transliteration of "Jiiku".
Witness these examples, taken from Jeffrey's Online Japanese-English
Dictionary:
jiiku: Sieg
jiikubaruto: Siegwart
jiikuburuku: Siegburg
jiikufuriito: Siegfried
Conclusion: "Jiiku" is Sieg.
(Sieg Micron!)
Others, in rough series order:
HEADMASTER WARRIORS
This is more of a personal discovery than a fandom-specific one. It's
rioone for Lione, the lion Headmaster Warrior, but "raion" is the lion
part of LioConvoy, and it's "reo" for Victory Leo. "Rioone" is said
like the end part of Castiglione. I somehow always skipped over the "e"
in pronouncing it before... when it's meant to be all Italian-y. Go
figure.
The names of the Headmaster Warriors "Kirk," "Loafer," and "Rodney"
appear to be accurate.
"Trizer" (Toraizaa) showed up a lot on pages related to cooking, but I
couldn't figure out the context... this page here, for example, appears
to describe a "diamond tricer" (?), which seems to be some kind of
knife-sharpening device:
http://www.furaipan.com/shouhin/22kiki02/shefuchoisu2/furaipan230.html
Both "trice" and "trise" are actual words (check out dictionary.com to
see), but I'm uncertain if either definition suits a big cat. What's
more, there's a gigantic information technology company called Tricer,
which utterly dominates English-language google hits.
I haven't tried looking up Shuffler as yet, but I can't forsee that
being different from what's in use already...
Conclusions: "Lione" is all Italian-y; Kirk, Rodney and Loafer are
Kirk, Rodney and Loafer; Trizer gives me a headache.
DOWLOS
The Japanese name for the Pretender called Skullgrin is a little
tricky. The katakana is "Daurosu" - and, in Greek, "Tauros" is "bull".
The trick, then, comes from the fact that - in the katakana syllabary -
"ta" is just "da" with a modifier. Does this make him Tauros? No. It's
a Japanese pun name - he's Dauros. Think of it like "Rhinox" or
"Cheetor".
Conclusion: "Dowlos" is Dauros.
LIGHTFOOT
The Japanese incarnation of the Getaway toy. As much as I appreciate
"Lightfoot" - a GIJoe I owned as a kid having had that name - the
Masterforce show revealed the Godmaster's father as being named
"Leftfoot". While I'm not sure if it's what Takara intended - and it's
somewhat dippy besideswhich - I can only take this to mean that he is
Right Foot, son of Left Foot. Which, coincidentally enough, is the foot
you use on the gas pedal...
Conclusion: Rightfoot's got happy feet.
JAN
Not a Transformer, but Star Saber's scion, and what I feel to be a
long-running mistake. If I remember the Victory background currently,
his mother was French... and "Jan", as shown from these examples - also
from Jeffrey's Online Japanese-English Dictionary - can be
transliterated as the French boys' name "Jean".
jan: Jean
janneemii: Jean-Nesmy
jansanpuuru: Jean sans Peur
jansharuru: Jean-Charles
sanjan: Saint Jean; Saint-Jean (Canada)
sanjandoryuzu: Saint-Jean-de-Luz
"But Jean's a girl's name!" one might say. It turns out that the female
form of the name is, in fact, transliterated differently.
je-a-n: Jean (f)
sarajeen: Saraje-n (f); Sarah-Jean
Conclusion: Jan is Jean.
GRASSPIT
The Japanese name for the Micromaster called Greasepit. When I put the
katakana into google, I was hit by a surprise... no instances of
"grasspit," but "Glasspit" seems to be an actual Japanese auto term,
for, from what I can glean, the area of the car surrounded by glass.
Like "cockpit" for a plane.
Someone with a much better grasp of the language may want to
investigate this further.
Current conclusion: Grasspit is Glasspit.
DIIGO & SANDIIGO
This was one I discovered some time ago, but had not gotten around to
presenting. Diigo is a member of the Sixcombiner team that forms
Sixliner. Remember Secret Weapon D-5, the episode of RiD/Car Robots? It
prominently featured an old Japanese steam engine. Diigo is an old
Japanese steam engine... and "Go" is Japanese for "5". Upon further
investigation, I discovered that the D-51 steam train series is a
venerable icon of Japanese culture. Thus, I came to the conclusion that
Diigo was D-Go, or "D-5".
Now this, by itself, is not a problem... the problem is Sandiigo, the
Sixtrain character. Some have postulated that he's "San Diego", but..
that doesn't work so well. The city itself appears to be transliterated
as sa-n-di-e-go; no extender, definite "e". Plugging the Takara
spelling into google gets me 13 pages about San Diego the city -
putting sa-n-di-e-go in gets me 235,000 pages about the city. In fact,
using the Takara spelling only nets me 20 pages total, and the rest of
the hits are about the toy.
I'm of several minds of this. "San" is Japanese for 3, which I thought
could work into the number aspect of the name... but I'm not sure what
3-D-Go could signify. However, given that there appear to be no
webpages containing "sandiigo" that aren't either misspellings or about
the toy itself, I'm inclined to believe that his name is a pun - San
D-Go, combining the name of the city with the initials of the train
series.
Current conclusion: Diigo is D-Go. San Diigo may be San D-Go.
Strike-outs:
Some names, it turns out, just aren't meant to make sense.
Octane's Japanese name - "Okutoon" - didn't turn out any
non-Transformer related hits. He is, thus, still Octone.
The only non-TF-related page I found for Regout/Legout, the combined
form of the Japanese-exclusive Cybertron dinosaur cassettes Dial and
Saur, mentioned a term for someone when someone fouls in tennis ("leg
out"). Inconclusive, unless he's got a mean serve.
The two vehicles that make up Grand Maximus's Cog robot are named
"Onomisu" and "Koka". I couldn't find anything on Onomisu, and didn't
look up Koka.
Mudslinger's Japanese name - "Futtodemo" - didn't turn up any non-TF
hits. He is, thus, still Footdemo.
There's a bunch I still haven't scoured over, but may get to at a later
date...
What do you think, sirs?
Monzo
(Jeffrey's Online Japanese-English Dictionary available here:
http://linear.mv.com/cgi-bin/j-e/dict )
Nevermore
Swoop's Japanese name ("Su-Waa-Pu") often gets romanized as "Swarp". In
fact, however, this is supposed to be "Swoop", since any attempts to
actually spell "Swoop" in Katakana would make it look like "Soup". ;-)
"Metroflex" vs. "Metroplex"... Could be a typo (a "p"-modifying circle
for the "fu" getting added by mistake?) which no-one spotted, and then
it became official? Or maybe someone thought that it'd sound better?
Not sure. The only one who'll probably be able to tell for sure would
be the Takara employee who originally came up with the Katakana
spelling.
"Seibertron"... well, it is spelled differently ("Se-I-Baa-To-Ro-N")
from the faction ("Sa-I-Ba-To-Ro-N"), but according to a native
Japanese, this was originally supposed to be the same word, just
spelled differently in Katakana (probably to avoid confusion over
"Destrons not being from Cybertron originally"). Takara officially
spell the planet "Cybertron" in Romaji.
--
The ultimate Binaltech/Alternators resource page
http://www.binalternators.de/
jimso...@gmail.com
Monzo wrote:
> For a while, transliterations of certain Japanese TF names have... not
> sat very well with me. Can't really say why. But, having the Asian
> language fonts installed on Windows XP, I got to thinking: "hey, I know
> my way around Japanese websites okay. Why don't I just copy the
> katakana, paste it in to Google, and see if it spits up real words?"
>
> And so I did, picking a handful of what I thought to be dubiously
> transliterated names. Here, then, are my sundry discoveries. Please
> note that I do not mean to come off as condescending... I have a vague
> sense of the workings of the syllabary, but no skill in the Japanese
> language itself. The theories within are my own, but have been
> researched to the best of my meager abilities, and I definitely welcome
> comments or corrections.
<SNIP>
> What do you think, sirs?
> Monzo
I think that you raised some good points here, challenging existing
assumptions about the names. Thanks for contributing!
JimS
AlphaOmega
Steve-o Stonebraker
> Why do you need to post this to multiple forums?
Why do you need to ask? I imagine *most* people that read any given
Transformers forum read only that particular forum. There are people that
read all over the place, but I think most pick one and stick with it.
--Steve-o
--
Steve Stonebraker | http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~sstoneb/
sst...@gmail.com | Transformers, astrophysics, comics, games, cartoons.
Nevermore
> Why do you need to post this to multiple forums?
Because Sharing Is Good?
M Sipher
news:1118947644.5...@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> AlphaOmega wrote:
> > Why do you need to post this to multiple forums?
>
> Because Sharing Is Good?
Gods forbid information and understanding be spread around.
M "Can't Have THAT" Sipher
--
King Weasel Productions
Home of the productions of King Weasel!
Original stuff, Transformers, MegaMan/RockMan and more crap!
http://www.fortunecity.com/tatooine/simak/109/
Blaster Master
alt.toys.transformers. What multiple forums are you referring to this
having been posted to?
--
Blaster Master
a.k.a.
Brad S. Russell
"AlphaOmega" <KCG...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1118946146.0...@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Nevermore
> When you look at the original post, it's ONLY posted to
> alt.toys.transformers. What multiple forums are you referring to this
> having been posted to?
Monzo also posted the same at the Allspark.
Which, in AlphaOmega's world, appears to be a deadly sin.
Blaster Master
same message on all of the TF newsgroups, when it only pertains to a few of
them. Shoot, one newsgroup and a fan news site...that's good of him to do.
I see no problem with it.
--
Blaster Master
a.k.a.
Brad S. Russell
"Nevermore" <tab...@t-online.de> wrote in message
news:1118950632.8...@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Switchback
> For a while, transliterations of certain Japanese TF names have... not
> sat very well with me. Can't really say why. But, having the Asian
> language fonts installed on Windows XP, I got to thinking: "hey, I know
> my way around Japanese websites okay. Why don't I just copy the
> katakana, paste it in to Google, and see if it spits up real words?"
>
> And so I did, picking a handful of what I thought to be dubiously
> transliterated names. Here, then, are my sundry discoveries. Please
> note that I do not mean to come off as condescending... I have a vague
> sense of the workings of the syllabary, but no skill in the Japanese
> language itself. The theories within are my own, but have been
> researched to the best of my meager abilities, and I definitely welcome
> comments or corrections.
Really nice post, Monzo, very well thought out. I wasn't getting the
drift that you were being condescending at all, don't worry.
> DOWLOS
> The Japanese name for the Pretender called Skullgrin is a little
> tricky. The katakana is "Daurosu" - and, in Greek, "Tauros" is "bull".
> The trick, then, comes from the fact that - in the katakana syllabary -
> "ta" is just "da" with a modifier. Does this make him Tauros? No. It's
> a Japanese pun name - he's Dauros. Think of it like "Rhinox" or
> "Cheetor".
He means 'da' is 'ta' with a modifier, to be clear.
> GRASSPIT
> The Japanese name for the Micromaster called Greasepit. When I put the
> katakana into google, I was hit by a surprise... no instances of
> "grasspit," but "Glasspit" seems to be an actual Japanese auto term,
> for, from what I can glean, the area of the car surrounded by glass.
> Like "cockpit" for a plane.
That's really interesting. I've been trying off and on to learn the
Japanese language for a while now and that's a neat thing to know.
I kinda like the logic behind it.
> There's a bunch I still haven't scoured over, but may get to at a later
> date...
If you do, I would be very interested in reading it.
Very nice work.
-Switchback ;)
Grebo
especially mesmerizing!
Grebo