Why are you combining the names of all characters into one name?

[Froggyman]

About halfway through blade and soul for the first time, I began to notice the very strange pattern of characters having only one name, or having a name that wasn't anywhere close to what I knew their name to be in other countries blade and soul is released in. Reading a bit more into it, it seems that NCSoft has made the decision to combine all the surnames of all of the characters into one name.  For example, that would be like taking Peter Parker's name, and calling him Peterparker.  In this case, Do Chun becomes Dochun, or Jung Hado becoming Junghado.

 

I am aware that there are other translation anomalies and censorship questions that are already being raised, but at least for some of those other concerns like changing the story elements or removing certain content entirely I can see WHY they decided to do it, and REASON can be placed in certain decisions and you can relate to that. That's how people generally come to understand or accept something that might be tough too, but isn't necessarily terrible.

 

THIS, mashing character's names together to form one name, is 7 different kinds of wrong. It isn't accurate to the source material, it's racially AND culturally insensitive, it makes the characters sound weird, it looks awful, it confuses the hell out of people who have SEEN the source material before, and to top it all off, there is no reason to have done it. No logical reason exists for this change.

 

So I'd like to know why? You couldn't have had to fight copyright law, as you can't copyright a name. You have full IP privilege, so you wouldn't need to alter the names. You couldn't have done it to try and make more sense of the names because if you think these are easier to understand you've lost it. I can't imagine anyone was named anything offensive, or even if they were you could have just changed that ONE NPC, and you could have then just given them two different names. If I couldn't use Jack Kirby, I could call him Stan Lee, I don't have to call him Jackkirby.

 

I really am not trying to be rude, or really harsh. I know how hard it is to work in translation and localization, I tried to make a carrier out of it at one point. But this is almost beyond insensitive. I can't see honestly, without exaggerating at all, how enough people thought this was a good idea to even get CLOSE enough to doing it, let alone RELEASE the game like this.

 

This isn't okay. Fictional or not, you can't just jam two names together and call it good, people have first and last names for a reason. It's dumb. I'm sorry, but it is. It's just...really dumb, and it needs to be fixed.
 

[Trinket]

Their localization team probably doesn't care. Pay attention to some of the mobs - we got Timon and Pumbaa, Yogi, and other random reference names. 

 

That's what names mean to them.

[Froggyman]

Just now, Trinket said:

Their localization team probably doesn't care. Pay attention to some of the mobs - we got Timon and Pumbaa, Yogi, and other random reference names. 

 

That's what names mean to them.

 

That kind of thing makes sense to me though. If in the game the bear is named something funny, but we wouldn't understand the reference, and they change it to something we might understand, I GET that. (I don't actually know if that's the case, and if they had perfectly fine names that weren't meant to be funny before and they were changed, that's kinda dumb too)

 

What I really can't get is smooshing two names together. I just...why?

[UnitedStrafes]

The characters have names? Why? Am I supposed to be engaged enough in this mediocre story to care?

[Promestein]

Although I can see your point, OP. I agree with Strages, the story and characters are medciore and quite frankly, I couldnt care less about them nor would notice if they changed Yura's name to "Breast Mcjuggins Boobers"

[Teisho]

This was discussed at length in closed beta and they, up to now, have yet to demonstrate that they even care about player opinions on this. The decision was made to make the names more "iconic" or whatever.

 

I sit on the middle ground with this. I don't particularly care about most of these changes but I'm really not for them and don't understand why they were made but... whatever.

 

I can understand changing names like Geo Geo Bong, Do Cheonpung and Jin Seo Yeon to make them easier to phonetically pronounce. Many (Western) people don't really understand the way Korean names are supposed to be pronounced, so changing their spelling to what they would sound like phonetically definitely makes sense. It's like Pohwaran -> Poharan. I can understand changes like that; people are less likely to butcher the name.

 

I don't quite understand the logic behind conflating names that aren't hard to prononce.. or even names in general like Do Danha -> Dodan. "Dodan" is an awful, silly sounding name. "Danha" sounds pretty dank IMO. Is mashing the names together really creating that "iconic" feeling? I highly doubt it, especially not when most characters have two names (given and family) and then main characters just don't.

 

Oh well...

[Ethria]

12 minutes ago, Teisho said:

Do Danha -> Dodan. "Dodan" is an awful, silly sounding name. "Danha" sounds pretty dank IMO.

Dodan sounds perfect for a dog though! Hmmm.... 

[AttacKat]

1 hour ago, Froggyman said:

THIS, mashing character's names together to form one name, is 7 different kinds of wrong. It isn't accurate to the source material, it's racially AND culturally insensitive, it makes the characters sound weird, it looks awful, it confuses the hell out of people who have SEEN the source material before, and to top it all off, there is no reason to have done it. No logical reason exists for this change.

 

So I'd like to know why?

 

Why? When was the last time you heard an non-Asian language speaking person pronounced Asian names correctly??

 

I played on CN/TW, and there are differences in NPC names between between those two, and yet, they both speak the same Chinese.

 

The localization of those NPC names isn't about a direct translation for players like you and me who have played in another region before, it is about making them easier to the NA audience to even say the names.

[Dowra]

15 minutes ago, AttacKat said:

 

Why? When was the last time you heard an non-Asian language speaking person pronounced Asian names correctly??

 

I played on CN/TW, and there are differences in NPC names between between those two, and yet, they both speak the same Chinese.

 

The localization of those NPC names isn't about a direct translation for players like you and me who have played in another region before, it is about making them easier to the NA audience to even say the names.

The game is voice acted, though lol.  When it comes to the main cast, at least, changing the names does seem rather pointless.

[MadBlue]

1 hour ago, Trinket said:

Their localization team probably doesn't care. Pay attention to some of the mobs - we got Timon and Pumbaa, Yogi, and other random reference names. 

 

That's what names mean to them.

 

There are names that are based on pop-culture references in Korean, and in the Chinese version as well.  It's not like B&S is all serious in Korea, China and Japan, and puns, memes and pop-culture references were only introduced during Western localization. You can be sure that when WoW was localized for China, many of the Western memes, puns and pop-culture references were replaced with ones Chinese players would be familiar with.

[VRock]

we(cbt testers) had long discussion about that and THEY DON'T CARE.
you can see all this discussion in this old thread of cbt forum
Open Discussion with English Localization

 

[AttacKat]

3 hours ago, Dowra said:

The game is voice acted, though lol.  When it comes to the main cast, at least, changing the names does seem rather pointless.

 

They are voice acted, but that doesn't mean those were done correctly either. Believe me, many aren't. 

 

Unless you are Korean/Chinese, most Western people won't be able to tell the difference anyway. In the survey, the names is one issue I always had indicated that NA did a lousy job on, because there is just no way they can keep the "sound", and yet offer the meaning of those names in the translation. That is like trying to tell a Chinese student learning English a British pun and it will fly over their head so quick.

[Yancha]

On 2/13/2016 at 3:06 AM, Trinket said:

Their localization team probably doesn't care. Pay attention to some of the mobs - we got Timon and Pumbaa, Yogi, and other random reference names. 

 

That's what names mean to them.

Honestly

 

I thought the reference names were really cool

[Eckin]

I'm less concerned about accuracy and more about consistency.

 

While playing from 1 to 45 I noticed many times quest items, npcs and monsters having different names accross the dialog. It lead to confusion every now and then.

 

I'm certain by now that the localization team didn't give enough attention to the job done but I'm also inclined to believe it was either done by individuals who did not ask each other how they were translating certain words, or someone who forgot what word was used on the last dialog.

[Oracle]

The reason for this maybe is because in Alpha, the players had been asked if the names are easy to remember and easy to identify. The majority may have said no as I have voted for no myself.

[N3ph1lim]

I strongly agree with this.

 

With the setting, it's kinda breaking immersion when you see Dochun instead of "Do Chun". They should have just kept it as traditional format.

 

I mean you don't see Tecmo-Koei changing their characters name from Lu Bu and Zhao Yun to Lubu and Zhaoyun in their NA localization.

 

I swear sometimes I wonder if they do their market research whatsoever before releasing the game to the west. 

[Cesura]

1 hour ago, N3ph1lim said:

I strongly agree with this.

 

With the setting, it's kinda breaking immersion when you see Dochun instead of "Do Chun". They should have just kept it as traditional format.

 

I mean you don't see Tecmo-Koei changing their characters name from Lu Bu and Zhao Yun to Lubu and Zhaoyun in their NA localization.

 

I swear sometimes I wonder if they do their market research whatsoever before releasing the game to the west. 

 

As someone who has not played the original, I think I actually prefer it smashed into Dochun, if that is closer to the proper pronunciation.

 

If I see it separated into Do Chun, then my inclination is to say "Do" with a long o sound just like the word do, making his name sound like Doo-Chun, but if it's combined into one word my instinct is to shorten the o a short sound, which is the way it is voiced by characters in game, which sounds much better to my american-English ears honestly. Really short 2 letter names, especially in the case of Do Chun where one of them is a word with a different meaning and pronunciation can confuse people. It sounds like a euphemism for having sex with someone named "Chun".  

 

Otherwise to keep the pronunciation, I would need to see a different spelling, such as Dou Chun. So which change is more "disrespectful" then? 

[TrueFriday]

Okay first of all, I am Korean and I am way more fluent in Korean language than English. Reason why they put names together is because thats the way how we write down our names in Korean. We dont put space between our first and last name which is why Jung Hado looks so weird way of putting down name. Junghado IS the accurate and traditional way to spell Korean name as well as Dochun. I am not sure why you think putting names together is culturally and racially insensitive, but as Korean, who has similiar name to all npcs in game, Nc is doing great in terms of naming. To be honest, it is more likely you that is insensitive culturally since you were completely judging from western way of naming.

[TopKEK]

3 minutes ago, TrueFriday said:

Okay first of all, I am Korean and I am way more fluent in Korean language than English. Reason why they put names together is because thats the way how we write down our names in Korean. We dont put space between our first and last name which is why Jung Hado looks so weird way of putting down name. Junghado is the better way as well as Dochun. I am not sure why you think putting names together is culturally and racially insensitive, but as Korean, who has similiar name to all npcs in game, Nc is doing great in terms of naming. To be honest, it is more likely you that is insensitive culturally since you were completely judging from western way of naming.

Finally a person who understands. 

 

I would have found it weirder if Jinsoyun was spelled Jin So Yun or something... At best, my biggest pet peeve on this game is the voice acting and subtitles... It's painful to listen to the VA of this game, especially during Ilsim's scene... and subtitles with spelling errors or not matching with the actual VA's script lines makes it worse. 

[Dowra]

The reason they have spaces is so Americans realize that its their full name and not just their "first" name. How you write a full name, and how we traditionally write a full name, seems to be different.  With it all combined it looks like her first name is Jinsoyun.  It isnt right? Im legitimately asking, lol.

[TrueFriday]

In Korean, we put our last name first. So in "Junghado" Jung is last name and hado is first name. Same for Jinsoyun too, Jin is her last name and Soyun is her first name. NC is completely putting all names in Korean way. If you were to put Jinsoyun in English rule, it will be Soyun Jin. Only reason why NC might have thought about using Jung Hado is because English speakers will find it easier to recognize it and pronounce it. It is not really easy to read Jinsoyun or Iksanun unless you are familiar with Korean names.

[skyy]

8 minutes ago, TrueFriday said:

In Korean, we put our last name first. So in "Junghado" Jung is last name and hado is first name. Same for Jinsoyun too, Jin is her last name and Soyun is her first name. NC is completely putting all names in Korean way. If you were to put Jinsoyun English way, it will be Soyun Jin. Only reason why NC might have thought about using Jung Hado is because English speakers will find it easier to recognize it and pronounce it. It is not really easy to read Jinsoyun or Iksanun unless you are familiar with Koean names.

 

^ everything he said. I think NC Soft just wanted to make it easier, although inaccurate, facilitates the pronunciation :P

[NueHoujuu]

yeah! why don't we see Jin Varrel or Hazuki or Karen??

 

 

 

 

Nah, I don't really mind.

[LagIncarnate]

To be honest I don't think the reason is solely because of pronunciation. a lot of American games are based around single-name systems (Jack instead of Jack Daniels for NPC's, normally long names are reserved for titles like Jack The Drunkard).

Additionally it would be weird for a lot of players since the names aren't exactly ordered the same as English names, a general English speaker would read Jin Soyun, and question why the obviously female character is named Jin which is clearly a male name, even though someone knowing the other language would be oblivious to the fact that that's wrong. Other things like Do Chun and Do Danha, the chance many people wouldn't make the familial connection is higher than you might think.

 

Generally when thinking over a topic like this it's best to think of it from an oblivious standpoint, most Americans would have more trouble with understanding separated names that aren't in traditional order. Having them pieced together may not be true to the source but it feels a lot better to purely English readers, and that's what the game is targeted at.

[Dowra]

8 minutes ago, LagIncarnate said:

To be honest I don't think the reason is solely because of pronunciation. a lot of American games are based around single-name systems (Jack instead of Jack Daniels for NPC's, normally long names are reserved for titles like Jack The Drunkard).

Additionally it would be weird for a lot of players since the names aren't exactly ordered the same as English names, a general English speaker would read Jin Soyun, and question why the obviously female character is named Jin which is clearly a male name, even though someone knowing the other language would be oblivious to the fact that that's wrong. Other things like Do Chun and Do Danha, the chance many people wouldn't make the familial connection is higher than you might think.

 

Generally when thinking over a topic like this it's best to think of it from an oblivious standpoint, most Americans would have more trouble with understanding separated names that aren't in traditional order. Having them pieced together may not be true to the source but it feels a lot better to purely English readers, and that's what the game is targeted at.

Also to add to that most Americans wouldnt know, Korean names generally have 1 syllable so Jin Soyun looks like a reasonable name.  So yeah, I still think its weird for main cast members to have them put together, while others have spaces.  Jinsoyun Id likely just read as a "japanese", single name, while Jin So Yun Id automatically  read it as 3 different names.