Table of Contents
Lost in Transliteration—Fate/Stay Night, Hunter x Hunter, and Final Fantasy VII
Lost in Transliteration?
Hold up. Don’t you mean “Lost in Translation”? You dare post my ol’ tired localization content with a typo?
Nah. I think we’ve all read enough about what gets lost in translation. Most, I think, read enough of that type of localization sloptent for a couple of lifetimes.
So let’s try something different. Let’s talk about what gets lost in transliteration.
Transliteration is the act of transferring the pronunciation of the original word in a different script without actually conveying its meaning, allowing readers or speakers of that script to approximate the sounds and pronunciation of the original word.
As opposed to the act of translation, transliteration is often reserved for foreign names and concepts deemed “untranslatable”.
When localizing media and entertainment, juggling transliteration guidelines, audience expectations, and legibility could very easily become a nightmare. So:
- What happens when the creator tries their hand at transliterating names themselves?
- What happens when the creator doesn’t push back on a subpar transliteration?
In this article, we’ll explore three cases of transliteration leading to three different outcomes. And maybe we’ll learn something new, or not. But it’ll be fun at the very least.
Case #1 - Fate/Stay Night by TYPE-MOON
The Context
Fate/Stay Night is Type-Moon’s genre defining urban fantasy visual novel.
The story follows seven mages participating in the “Holy Grail War” ritual, a battle royale to attain the wish granting Holy Grail. Each Mage (a.k.a “Master”) summons a servant—a heroic spirit from human history and myth—to do their bidding.
The true name of the protagonist’s servant and one of the story’s heroines, a gender-bent King Arthur Saber, is written in Japanese katakana as アルトリア, or “A-ru-to-ri-a”.
Artoria vs. Altria
For years, the English-speaking fandom translated Saber’s name as Artoria (and occasionally Arturia). This made perfect etymological sense—the Roman root for the name “Arthur” is “Artorius”, making “Artoria” its natural feminine form.
Then came the official English localization of the hit mobile game Fate/Grand Order, and with it, a strict corporate mandate from Type-Moon’s Japanese headquarters:
The official English spelling was not to be Artoria, but Altria.
As shocking as this was to most of the fandom, a minority saw it come from a mile away.
Type-Moon—Until very recently—was notorious for not caring about the non-Japanese speaking markets. As a result, all of their Visual Novels hadn’t been officially translated into English until the early 2020s.
TYPE-MOON’s Fan-Translation History
It was kinda miserable being a Visual Novel fan in the early 2000s. Pure Visual Novels (think 95% text with choices sprinkled here and there, and otherwise zero gameplay) didn’t pick up steam in the western market until the early 2010s.
If Ace Attorney, Danganronpa, and Zero Escape weren’t your thing, you had to resort to fan-translations to read even the most mainstream pure Visual Novels—even the ones that had multiple anime and manga adaptations like Fate—simply because very few companies had the means to risk licensing a book for the famously-fond-of-reading Gamers™ at the time.
So if you wanted to read Fate/Stay Night, Tsukihime, or Witch on the Holy Night, you had to import CDs from Japan (or pirate the games) and install English translation patches of rather dubious quality.
All the international Type-Moon fandom had to go off on was fan translations and official DVD releases with no creator input on terminology. However, in Japan, Saber’s name had always been Altria.
So long before FGO’s English localization, Japanese artbooks, character materials, and figure boxes frequently featured the Romanized spellings “Altria” or “Alteria”.
The Rationale
Because Japanese doesn’t naturally distinguish between the “R” & “L” sounds, the “Ar” naturally morphs into the language’s most used approximation, “Al”. From there, dropping vowels for more natural sounding English turns A-ru-to-ri-a into Altria or Alteria.
Because the Japanese language does not naturally distinguish between the “R” and “L” sounds, the “Ar” naturally morphs into the most used sound in the language, “Al”.
The creators weren’t all that concerned with etymology. They were simply transliterating the katakana into whatever looked cool in English.
To a Japanese author used to (and like many, borderline obsessed with) employing double entendres in their native tongue via homophones, kanji puns, and cultural wordplay, it was perfect.
- ”Altria” sounds like a cool name for an “Alternate” King Arthur for a non-native.
- ”Altria” hints at a later event where Saber gets “Altered” when tainted by the Holy Grail mud.
The Result
According to Aniplex’s Fate/Grand Order AX Panel, the translation team mentioned that they wanted to go with Artoria/Arthuria, but after some back and forth with the rights holders, they had to stick with Altria. Though that didn’t go exactly as planned.
This “correction” never truly took off. It just initiated an awkward stalemate that persists to this day.
Ever since, it’s been Altria in every official release, merchandise, and copy. Meanwhile, the fandom nearly universally ignores the official transliteration, maintaining “Artoria” across analysis videos, fan wikis, guides, and fandom discourse.
The reasons vary:
- Too little too late—legacy terminology can quickly become sacred.
- Too confusing a name with another Saber class servant (Altera).
- And putting all that aside: “Altria Alter” just sounds dumb.
”Altria” did end up used by the community though, albeit in a rather ironic way.
The transliteration has been relegated to being an alternate spelling on wikis and guides just to boost SEO.
Case #2—Hunter x Hunter by Yoshihiro Togashi
The Context
One of Shueisha’s biggest series to this day—more than twenty years after its first chapter hit Shounen Jump.
Hunter x Hunter technically has four protagonists, but its star act is the world they inhabit. In one arc it’s a survivalist exam, in the next it’s a battle royale, in the one after it’s a mafia drama, geopolitical conspiracy, even an election.
While this sounds disjointed on paper, the legendary creator behind the series Yoshihiro Togashi (Also of Level E & Yu Yu Hakusho fame) makes it seamlessly work because he’s one Manga’s finest world builders.
Though, he has a little quirk…
Togashi’s official romanizations for character names are so unpronounceable that the whole fandom—official English localizers included—pretend they don’t exist.
Togashi’s Transliterations
It is incredibly easy to dismiss these as another case of a creator letting the rule of cool prevail above all, a la another case of TYPE-MOON, or simply a Japanese creator’s fondness of “Engrish”. But there’s a method to Togashi’s madness.
| Japanese Name | Author’s Official Transliteration | Official English Transliteration |
|---|---|---|
| クロロ＝ルシルフル | Quwrof Wrlccywrlfh | Chrollo Lucilfer |
| イルミ＝ゾルディック | Yellmi Zaoldyeck | Illumi Zoldyck |
| パクノダ | Phalcnothdk | Pakunoda |
| クラピカ | Curarpikt | Kurapika |
| ヒソカ | Hyskoa | Hisoka |
| シャルナーク＝リュウセイ | Syarnorke Ryuseih | Shalnark Ryuusei |
His obsessiveness with world building extends to the smallest details.
The world of Hunter x Hunter doesn’t use Japanese or English as its main language. Both exist, but canonically, the main writing script scattered throughout the Manga’s backgrounds is represented in a rune-like alphabet that functions as a one-to-one visual substitution cipher for Japanese kana dubbed “Hunter Script” or “Hunter Alphabet”.
When Togashi decides to represent character names in Latin script in the manga or its supplementary content (i.e. Artbooks, Databooks, etc…), he leverages that fact to render the names in a foreign yet still familiar manner, just like the world they inhabit.
The Result
The reception to Togashi’s official spellings has been mixed, though not outright negative.
The English translation doesn’t use these names at all, likely due to how confusing they’d be to parse in actual dialogue. As for the fanbase, they treat them more like alternate spellings and the author having some fun with their world.
This is a rare case where a creator’s transliteration adds to a work instead of taking away from it.
Despite Togashi having more singular creative say than any other creative on this list—being the sole copyright holder for his Shueisha published series, something nearly unheard of—he lets his translators do their job while he has his harmless fun. Everybody wins.
Case #3—Final Fantasy VII by Square Enix
The Context
Respectively a genre-defining Role-Playing Game and a term defining spoiler in character, neither Final Fantasy VII nor Aerith need an introduction nowadays.
But Aerith wasn’t always called that. In the original PlayStation 1 release, her Japanese name “エアリス” (pronounced “Earisu”) was initially transliterated into “Aeris”.
Only after an entire generation grew up with the name did Square decide to correct it.
Final Fantasy VII’s Rough Localization
It’s no secret that Final Fantasy VII had a rough localization process.
The entire English script was handled almost single-handedly by Square’s only in-house localizer at the time; and the project had no dedicated editor or LQA, little to no communication with the development team, on top of the era’s limited tools to boot.
That heavily flawed English script, in turn, became basis for all the other localizations pivoted from, under more unfavorable circumstances and even worse deadlines, leading to its EU localizations specifically getting a so bad it’s good reputation.
As a result, Final Fantasy VII’s original localizations are a time capsule of a (thankfully) bygone localization era, like many early Japanese into English localization efforts..
Aeris vs. Aerith
Aerith’s name was always envisioned to be a pseudo-anagram of “Earth” reflecting her connection to the planet, and the correct transliteration was used as early as some pre-release English media previews.
However, since there was little to no communication during the English localization process, the people who needed the memo the most likely didn’t get it, and that’s probably how we ended up with “Aeris.”
The Result
The early correction of Aerith’s name—starting with her appearance Kingdom Hearts 1, roughly five years after the English release of Final Fantasy VII—helped cement the intended transliteration in the fandom, but it could never truly overwrite the original.
Despite being the most used transliteration nowadays, and despite being largely accepted by the fandom due to Square’s two decades long course correction effort, a generational divide still exists between players of the original release and newer generations experiencing the story for the first time through the Remake series.
In Conclusion
Things don’t just get lost in translation, but also in transliteration.
As mentioned in ‘Why Sony Renamed “Knack” in the Arabic Localization’, a more extreme example on what could happen if strict transliteration guidelines are followed blindly, you’re going to hit a wall sooner or later.
The more flexible you are, the more likely you’ll survive the impact.
As these three different cases demonstrate, audiences can have wildly different reactions to “change”. Be it objectively good or bad, it doesn’t really matter.
As creators, and Japanese creators specifically tend to realize the hard way, the death of the author is a much more accepted concept in the rest of the world.
