Sword Art Online - Names and Terminology

[BeginnerXP]

Seemed no one is against changing 'Knights of the Blood' on wiki to 'Knights of Blood', so I think we can go ahead with that, for someone who is going to do it, please change Cradil in volume 1 to Kuradeel too.

[Misogi]

Related to KoB's name and translation. Quoting a part of one of my earlier posts :

"Knights of Blood" ("Chevaliers du Sang" in French) was translated as "Confrérie des Chevaliers" ("Brotherhood of Knights" in English).

I would like someone to give me an explanation of KoB's kanji name, because it's really strange that it was translated and adapted like that. Thanks in advance.

[BeginnerXP]

血盟騎士団:
- 血盟: blood pledge; oath signed in blood
- 騎士団: order of chivalry; chivalric order

Considering the official abbreviation is KoB, there's not much we could play with the name from kanji, so Knights of Blood.


Now I want to raise another issue. In volume 9 I use the term Fluctlight, but recently it was changed to Fluct Light due to the FLA abbreviation, which I also agreed to the change. But in SAO main thread, a few people started using Fluct Light and I feel it looks very odd to me, so I want to ask the opinion from readers here; which one looks better? Fluctlight or Fluct Light? Back when was I translating Prologue II, I probably chose Fluctlight without space in between because it looks more natural to me. Like flashlight or spotlight.

FLA no longer stands, for example:
ALfheim Online = ALO
Mmo STream = MST (volume 5 prologue)

so imo, FLuclight Acceleration = FLA, but of course I won't use that oddly capitalized L, just like how it'd look very odd in MST case.

[Tap]

血盟騎士団.
Literally, "blood oathed chivalric order". Or a "chivalric order pledged by blood".
Essentially, they got the "brotherhood of knights" part right, but abandoned the "pledged by blood" bit.
KoB was always written with a small "o", so it's probably a particle.
Something like "Knight-order of Blood" might be more accurate, but I don't think "Knight" and "order" was ever linked like that...

As for FL, as mentioned by someone else, it's short for a fluctuating light, right? (and separated by a ・, I believe?)
It was two words from the start, so FL likely refers to two words as well, rather than the first two letters.
It's used separately in JP wiki as well, but that's probably lacks a source as much as ours.
Additionally, though it's kindda totally pointless, FLA was STRA on the web novel. "Subjective Time Rate Acceleration".

...Anyone wants to go ask Kawahara Reki on Twitter?

[A525]

+1 for Fluctlight

[Pryun]

No twitter account. If you do, please go right ahead.

No preference for Fluctlight.

Knights under Oath of Blood(frankly, easier to be Knights of Blood-pact or something. or maybe Knight-order of blood-pact.[fine, so the latter looks clumsy.])

[M.A.D]

Could the "order" part simply referring to it as a guild? With that, the name could be "Knights of Blood-oath"

Personally, I think Knight Order of Blood sounds good too, since particles could be omitted in abbreviation

[Pryun]

the order part is just to tell you that it is not just a knight working alone, probably.Knights would be sufficient to replace order of knights. the blood oath/pact part is the part that might be confusing...

[Misogi]

Thanks for the help, I'll stick with "Knights of Blood" for KoB.

[Zero2001]

血盟騎士団 (Ketsumei Kishi-dan) basically a group/clan of Knights.

It was probably translated as Knights of the Blood so as to show the strength of bonds that the name implies.

血盟 = Blood Oath (according to WWWJDIC).

An oath pledged/signed in blood (often by spilling ones own blood to use as the ink).

Known as an extremely extremely strong oath.

Knights of Blood seems incomplete to me.

Or rather, it sounds more like Bloody Knights that way. (That's not nice)

Or Knights made out of Blood. Blood taking the shape of knights? Seriously?

An amusing thought. But, I don't think Knights of Blood is a good idea. Ruins the inherent meaning.

[Pryun]

... It is just a guild's name, they didn't actually have to make a blood pledge(At least, I don't think they did). Plus, you shot it down, but didnt give any suggestions whatsoever...

[Zero2001]

I know that it's a cool name for the guild and they didn't have to actually make the Blood-oath. What I'm saying is that the name showed the spirit of the guild. Their determination.

The main reason the blood-oath was considered as so strong because one would demonstrate his willingness to spill his/her own blood to accomplish the pledge.

Those were the feelings the guild personified. That's what the name suggests.

Suggestions:

Knights of the Blood-Oath (Still remains abbreviated as KoB) (I prefer this)

Blood-Oath Knights

[BeginnerXP]

More than 24 hours has passed after I asked for opinion about Fluctlight vs Fluct Light.
- Fluctlight : 2 votes
- Fluct Light: 1 vote
- Don't mind either way/no comment: 3

So I'll change the term back to Fluctlight until author shows the term in English some day down the road. (I don't think asking him directly is a good idea considering what we're doing without his permission in the first place.)


About the guild name, it's KoB, not KotB, so no 'the' please. Blood-oath/blood-pledge with '-' look odd when you're forcing '-' in just to avoid the abbreviation issue. Without official abbreviation given by author, I'll support any cool name you come up with, but with KoB, there's not much we can do.

[Zero2001]

Dude, Japanese miss things when they try naming in English. You know that don't you?

[BeginnerXP]

Yes, I know that, but it's not our job to correct the mistakes in the original version. Our target is to accurately translating the original works to English.