Madan no Ou to Vanadis [Light Novel]

[Hemisphere]

No, I don't mean just the major areas identified in the map, but also the "minor" ones like the port towns mentioned in Volume 6, and such. How would you go about naming them, is what piques my curiosity.

[Iskatar]

Originally Posted by sasuke706

Behold the mighty map. Like I said, I actually haven't tried too hard to find most of the names or terminology bases since no one's ever seemed to care before. If I come across territory not on the map, that could be an adventure in itself.


Is Lurie Russian? I see it mostly with American names, and Luriye is exclusively Russian (or at least Slavic). Also, ティッタ ≠ テイッタ. And you'd be surprised how many things get mispronounced regardless; most people in the manga/anime community still can't pronounce much of anything well from Japanese. It's kind of the same as hearing Engrish in an anime. It looks exotic, so people like it, even if they never know they pronounce it horribly, horribly wrong. Kind of reminds me Beethoven's For Elise.

Yeah, it's really obscure, but if you look in Yury Trifonov's biography you get a little snippet that mentions the surname Lurie. In the late 1900s, there was a leading representative of the Soviet "Urban Prose" who almost won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981. His mother, Evgeniya Abramovna Lurie, was an engineer and accountant of Russian and Jewish descent.

Originally Posted by Hemisphere

No, I don't mean just the major areas identified in the map, but also the "minor" ones like the port towns mentioned in Volume 6, and such. How would you go about naming them, is what piques my curiosity.

Guessing. It's like Olga's territory of Brest. It's not on the map, so we make guesses. If the guess is too lewd in nature it's modified to be less lewd, unless the name itself was intentionally made lewd.

[sasuke706]

プシェプス and リプナ, huh? Those are more difficult since they stem from the author's creativity, and especially since we barely know any other names from the country, there's little base. I find it a lot easier to look up people names and then guesswork what a location name would be like in situations like this, but it's still just guesswork.

I'm a lot more uncertain with these, but here's a shot. Lipna/Lipná (it doesn't seem like something that'd have a silent S) match up with one as real locations, but the other port is a mess. Psheps, Pscheps, Pusheps, Przeps (Prze is a Polish equivalent for プシェ), Psseps, among others. None of them really seem to fit in with the other names to me, so it's really up for some discussion.

[Hemisphere]

I see.

Well, names of places aside (and do pardon my insistence if I'm getting annoying), how would you address the terminologies such as the names of the Viralts as well as their Vedas? They seem to have basis for their usage of names (Vernier, for example), and I'm curious as to how you would tackle that.

[Awrya]

Not sure if it was mentioned before, but Leitmeritz (German pronunciation) ,Olmütz (also German pronunciation) are real cities in the Czech Republic. Legnica is in Poland and Brest is a city in Belarus.
I believe Zhcted's city names are all taken from Eastern Europe, so Brest should refer to Olga's land.

[sasuke706]

I basically just look into how they spell it and see what comes up, seeing if anything comes to mind. Like Muma isn't too bad, but it seems too obvious compared to the other weapons. I'm not really sure about any of the weapons at all (if they're based on Dragons, he could just be going for dragon-like names) except Durandal (he made it easy, especially with Roland), so I'll have to look more into it when I'm less tired. I curse authors for not explaining their reasoning or romanizing their terms since Japanese can be so headache-inducingly vague.

[cramped]

The CH use this for Olga's viralt/dragonic tool; 姆玛.

[Iskatar]

Originally Posted by Awrya

Not sure if it was mentioned before, but Leitmeritz (German pronunciation) ,Olmütz (also German pronunciation) are real cities in the Czech Republic. Legnica is in Poland and Brest is a city in Belarus.
I believe Zhcted's city names are all taken from Eastern Europe, so Brest should refer to Olga's land.

Is it? Well, there we go then. Makes me think that Zhcted actually represents many of the surrounding nations, rather than just Russia or Germany alone.

[EnigmaticAxiom]

When I was going through the novels, I put the katakana into google and hope to god it takes me to some random dude's name or a city/town name somewhere. If it does, yay, if it doesn't, shit. That's how I got most of the names and territories. I've found a few that I forgot to change, as well. Whoops >.>;

[Hiyono]

Wow. I must admit I'm rather impressed with both the effort put into correlating story names with real ones and the subsequent results. You guys should really help give chapters 2 and 3 a once-over; no offense to Setsuna, but they need a lot of work.

[cramped]

Haha, the best way is to be on an irc and chat

[sasuke706]

Decided to take a crack at their nicknames.
Elen:
シルヴフラウ. Sylvfrau, as Sylv is actually a complete word for "silver", and frau is also a word in the same language...although I don't know if it still means woman. Might be another word just spelled very differently.
メルティス. I got pretty much nothing on the rest, though. Had one guy who romanized it as Meritis. It's pretty iffy, so I doubt it. It could also be translated as Meltis, Melthis, Mertis, etc.

Mila:
ミーチェリア
Michelya (total guess).

Sofi(?):
ブレスヴェート
Blesveht (again, a guess).

Sasha:
ファルプラム
Falplam? Fahlplam? Farplam?

Elizaveta:
イースグリーフ
Ysgreef? I'm mostly going by イース being the name for the Ys series.

Valentina:
ツェルヴィーデ
Tsélviède?

Olga:
バルディッシュ
Bardiche/Berdysh

My conclusion: He either found very obscure words, mashed words together, found a word he liked and added on to it, or just made it up from the start. I basically just tried to find real words from parts of the titles, which might be how the author did it since the titles are also two unusual kanji thrown together. I find the last unlikely since Elen's nickname fits the kanji and "plam" at least means fire in a language. Olga's seemed way too easy, so I doubt it's the intended spelling. I think they're better off just translated however is seen fit, though. Input is more than welcome, as I can't say I'm happy with the above.

[Iskatar]

Originally Posted by sasuke706

Decided to take a crack at their nicknames.
Elen:
シルヴフラウ. Sylvfrau, as Sylv is actually a complete word for "silver", and frau is also a word in the same language...although I don't know if it still means woman. Might be another word just spelled very differently.
メルティス. I got pretty much nothing on the rest, though. Had one guy who romanized it as Meritis. It's pretty iffy, so I doubt it. It could also be translated as Meltis, Melthis, Mertis, etc.

Mila:
ミーチェリア
Michelya (total guess).

Sofi(?):
ブレスヴェート
Blesveht (again, a guess).

Sasha:
ファルプラム
Falplam? Fahlplam? Farplam?

Elizaveta:
イースグリーフ
Ysgreef? I'm mostly going by イース being the name for the Ys series.

Valentina:
ツェルヴィーデ
Tsélviède?

Olga:
バルディッシュ
Bardiche/Berdysh

My conclusion: He either found very obscure words, mashed words together, found a word he liked and added on to it, or just made it up from the start. I basically just tried to find real words from parts of the titles, which might be how the author did it since the titles are also two unusual kanji thrown together. I find the last unlikely since Elen's nickname fits the kanji and "plam" at least means fire in a language. Olga's seemed way too easy, so I doubt it's the intended spelling. I think they're better off just translated however is seen fit, though. Input is more than welcome, as I can't say I'm happy with the above.

It's Bardiche, considering Muma's a big axe. Also, as for 'Isgrifa'... yeah... If there is a connection between Elizavetta and the mythical land of Ys, I'm not seeing it, even after researching the legend regarding Gradlon, Cornouaille, and Dahut. The only really easy ones are Silvfrahl and Bardiche, as I can't figure out anything regarding the others.

Edit: Going off on a hinge here, but the Sil/Sylv in Silvfrau could be a double reference to the sylphid and 'Isgrifa' could be a bastardization of Agrippa name.

[setsuna86]

does someone know the full name of the King of Zchted?

[eXitus]

Originally Posted by setsuna86

does someone know the full name of the King of Zchted?

Victor Arthur Volk Estes Tur Zhcted

This gets mentioned in v2 c3, pretty much at the start of said chapter. I only did copy-paste, so don't burn me on a stick if it's not accurate... *looks at the experts who discuss the names and/or titles*

Btw. how is your progress? I imagine trying to apply all that constructive criticism takes quite some time and effort, no? Dont overwork yourself.

[Mars Mode]

Originally Posted by setsuna86

does someone know the full name of the King of Zchted?

Originally Posted by sasuke706

You mean that title that's been used a whole once? I've completely forgotten his name was anything other than Viktor and the Japanese wiki doesn't even bother with it.

ヴィクトール＝アルトゥール＝ヴォルク＝エステス＝ツァー＝ジスタート
Viktor Artur Volk Estes Tsar Zhcted
Ironically, I confirmed Rurik's even though I wasn't looking for his. So yeah, seeing as the context is spot on, author does his damn research. As Zhcted is the only thing I can find literally nothing but Madan no Ou stuff on, I imagine he made the name up since original countries and all.

And I meant terrible for like the origins the current Russian names are based off of. Like how I think Aleksandra is an base form of Alexandra, I imagine the others have similar older spellings that I've passed up.

I think this should be more correct specially for the tsar part.

[setsuna86]

Originally Posted by eXitus

Victor Arthur Volk Estes Tur Zhcted

This gets mentioned in v2 c3, pretty much at the start of said chapter. I only did copy-paste, so don't burn me on a stick if it's not accurate... *looks at the experts who discuss the names and/or titles*

Btw. how is your progress? I imagine trying to apply all that constructive criticism takes quite some time and effort, no? Dont overwork yourself.

Well you are right. I have already translate 1/3 of ch4.

[Iskatar]

Originally Posted by Mars Mode

I think this should be more correct specially for the tsar part.

It does seem to be more correct and a quick search-up seems to agree, though why Tsar is second to last name is beyond me. I'm not familiar with Russian nomenclature structure.

[EnigmaticAxiom]

It's good to know others are looking up these names. I spent a lot more time than I should have, and they're a lot wrongererer than I'd like. I used to have a Russian friend, I wish I still had his contact information so I could actually confirm some of this shit.

Edit: Hemisphere: How is Sen Otome? I have it, but I haven't read it. I heard it's more shounen-esque and fan-servicey than Vanadis, but which do you find preferable?

[XenahortCharybdis]

Originally Posted by Nandesuto

Wow. I must admit I'm rather impressed with both the effort put into correlating story names with real ones and the subsequent results. You guys should really help give chapters 2 and 3 a once-over; no offense to Setsuna, but they need a lot of work.

I'll volunteer my editing services to whosoever is doing the base translation once my work finishes at the end of the month. I believe there is already an ongoing effort to polish the chapters up a bit, or am I wrong?

Originally Posted by cramped

Haha, the best way is to be on an irc and chat

If I remember it right we ended up bickering over the translation more than we translated!

Originally Posted by EnigmaticAxiom

It's good to know others are looking up these names. I spent a lot more time than I should have, and they're a lot wrongererer than I'd like. I used to have a Russian friend, I wish I still had his contact information so I could actually confirm some of this shit.

Oh damn. >_>

Originally Posted by EnigmaticAxiom

Edit: Hemisphere: How is Sen Otome? I have it, but I haven't read it. I heard it's more shounen-esque and fan-servicey than Vanadis, but which do you find preferable?

I'm kind of predicting ambivalence in his answer...and then suddenly gushing torrents of love for *something*