High School DxD - Names and Terminology

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Hiro Hayase
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Re: High School DxD - Names and Terminology

Post by Hiro Hayase »

Things that were changed recently:

High Class -> Upper Class.
Mid Class -> Middle Class.
Low Class -> Lower Class.

It's been changed in order to better adhere to the sociology terms and conflicts.

When we're referring to social statuses use Upper Class devil. When describing a high quality or exotic object use high class. For instance, high class hotel or restaurant or painting.

Lower class is the social class, although people typically insult people, whom they think are inferior, by calling them "low class mongrels" and etc. It's nothing major. #Sociology 101

I changed the narrative tense to past again, since a number of people were confused about when to use past or present tense. We can always change their edits if necessary.
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Re: High School DxD - Names and Terminology

Post by Misogi »

Quoting something that Hiro Hayse wrote about stuttering.
If the word is a person, place, or title, the stuttered words should be in capital letters.

Example 1: “B-Bucho, what is it?”

If the stuttering occurs at the beginning of the sentence and it is not a person, place, or title, then the first stuttered letter should be capitalised while all the other succeeding letters should be in lower case. If the stuttering occurs in the middle of the sentence, then everything should be in lower case letters.

Example 2: “Eh? B-but, don’t you have to get yourself a husband?”

Example 3: “I've g-got to p-pick up a new b-book on vampires, m-myself.”
Since I hardly found other sources about it, I sent a mail to the Académie Française (the French institution that sets the language's rules).

In their answer, they globally agreed to all the points mentionned above, with one exception. In the case of Example 2, it would be "B-But" instead of "B-but".

Should we change the rules, or is there another source which confirms the current sentence ?
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Re: High School DxD - Names and Terminology

Post by Akuma-Heika »

Just a number of things I have seen with the translations done on this site (which are very good, I have been working on editing them while i was stuck on a bus for awhile only had to do some small touch ups...then found out some of the rules for the translations and now have to redo some bits and fix where other people screwed up and didn't follow the rules). Ma is magic or demon mattering the terminology. Mazoku would be mean Demon Clan but would refer to a demon. Akuma translates as Evil Demon and thus means a Devil. Demon, from the Greek Daemon/Daimon, refers to spirits and not necessarily evil ones. While Devil comes from the Greek Diabolos (or as BT has translated it Diabolus) and translates as Slanderer or Accuser. The words have different meanings. The Holy Ghost, part of the Trinity of God, could be called the Holy Demon. This is just to give people some understanding of the differences of the words and their JP equivalent.

Another thing is the House of Phenex is spelled that way. The author meant for the names to be similar but that there were actual Phoenixes in his Mythos/Universe that were Sacred Beasts. The fact Riser was hurt by Holy Water should show he is not a sacred beast...
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Re: High School DxD - Names and Terminology

Post by denormative »

Akuma-Heika wrote:Another thing is the House of Phenex is spelled that way. The author meant for the names to be similar but that there were actual Phoenixes in his Mythos/Universe that were Sacred Beasts. The fact Riser was hurt by Holy Water should show he is not a sacred beast...
Yes and no. The question is whether you refer to The Lesser Key of Solomon or the de Praestigis Daemonum's Pseudomonarchia Daemonum (... I think I spelt that right...) for the spelling as they're spelt differently in each.

In any event, the ED has all the girl's names spelt out, and it's "Ravel Phoenix" not "Ravel Phenex". Code-Zero posted a screencap: viewtopic.php?f=62&t=5932#p192066 the girls are hiding it a bit, but it's definitely spelt with the 'oe'.

So that's why there's been a recent renaming of everything since it seems to be the only authoritative source.
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Re: High School DxD - Names and Terminology

Post by Akuma-Heika »

Yes and no. The question is whether you refer to The Lesser Key of Solomon or the de Praestigis Daemonum's Pseudomonarchia Daemonum (... I think I spelt that right...) for the spelling as they're spelt differently in each.

In any event, the ED has all the girl's names spelt out, and it's "Ravel Phoenix" not "Ravel Phenex". Code-Zero posted a screencap: viewtopic.php?f=62&t=5932#p192066 the girls are hiding it a bit, but it's definitely spelt with the 'oe'.

So that's why there's been a recent renaming of everything since it seems to be the only authoritative source.
Cannot see the screen cap so i will ask you but was it from the novels or anime?

I am pretty sure on Riser being Riser and not Raiser because of the pronunciation of the romanji. It is Ri as in rise not Rai as in raise. With how the author wrote it out in volume 2 it still sounds like he was trying to make a difference since he says their are sacred beast phoenix's. If he had written that the Devil Clan was mistaken for a divine Beast that would be different. Would a Devil admit to being lower than another by assuming there name instead of making there own the true name?

Another thing I saw on terminology
Youjutsu (妖術, Yōjutsu) - Youkai power.
jutus is art or technique not power. Power would be chikara. Youjutsu would be Ghost Art/Technique.
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Re: High School DxD - Names and Terminology

Post by Code-Zero »

Akuma-Heika wrote:Cannot see the screen cap so i will ask you but was it from the novels or anime?
Click the link and scroll down. Then you will be able to see it. Denormative also said that I got the spelling from the ED. ED means the ending song by the way, so its referring to the ending song from the anime.
Akuma-Heika wrote:I am pretty sure on Riser being Riser and not Raiser because of the pronunciation of the romanji. It is Ri as in rise not Rai as in raise.
It's ライザー, and the romaji for it will be Raizā. If we are talking about how it should sound like based on Romaji, then "Ri" will be wrong. Romaji for り is "Ri" after all. Though, I think funimation used the spelling Riser for their subtitle. You can use Raizer and even Raiza if we are simply talking about pronunciation for his name.
Though, the reason we used the spelling "Raiser" for his name is because there are dozens of characters that got their name from the "Gundam series". And there is a mech from Gundam 00 with the name "O Raiser". The hiragana for it is also ライザー.
http://gundam.wikia.com/wiki/GNR-010_0_Raiser
Akuma-Heika wrote:With how the author wrote it out in volume 2 it still sounds like he was trying to make a difference since he says their are sacred beast phoenix's.
Oh. You mean this?
Vol.2 Life.3
“The humans gave a different name to the Devils' Phoenix to distinguish it from the mystical beast Phoenix. They gave them the name “Phenex”. But the mystical beast phoenix has the same ability as Raiser’s clan. In other words immortality. We need to fight someone like that.”
Yup. That was included. I will be repeating myself again, but we are using the actual spelling the author gave unless it has a major spelling error. We originally used the spelling from the 72 solomon but there has been English spelling for certain characters. Like we originally used "Baal", but the author used "Bael" which is the alternative spelling.
Akuma-Heika wrote:If he had written that the Devil Clan was mistaken for a divine Beast that would be different. Would a Devil admit to being lower than another by assuming there name instead of making there own the true name?
Well, Sirzechs did say this.
Vol.2 Life. ∞ vs Power ∞
“Father. I want to make my cute little sister’s engagement party into a flashy one. Dragon versus Phoenix. Don’t you think it’s the ultimate event? To stir up the party by having a battle between legendary creatures. There aren’t any entertainment which can surpass this.”
And even Raiser said this.
Vol.2 Life. ∞ vs Power ∞
“Fire bird and Fenghuang! The hell fire of our clan that was praised as being that of a Phoenix! Taste it with your own body and turn into ashes!”
The quote above basically proves that being called the "Phoenix", and their fire to be strong as the mythological beast will be a praise for them. Phoenix is a legendary creature after all.

Akuma-Heika wrote:Another thing I saw on terminology
Youjutsu (妖術, Yōjutsu) - Youkai power.
jutus is art or technique not power. Power would be chikara. Youjutsu would be Ghost Art/Technique.
About the "Jutsu" being "technique", there was already a reference for it on Volume 7.
http://www.baka-tsuki.org/project/index ... te_note-27
And the proper translation for "Youjutsu" according to the dictionary would be;
Volume 5 reference
↑ Translated literally as the "Black Magic" or "Sorcery" in English, youjutsu is a kind of magic that is almost exclusive to youkai.
However, in this series the Youkai are the only one capable of using Youjutsu. "妖(You)" can mean "mysterious", but it would usually stand for "Youkai" when Youkai are involved. So it basically means the technique/ability/power that Youkai uses.
But yeah, we can change it to "Youkai Technique" for the terminology page. Though we have been using "Youjutsu" for our translation.
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Re: High School DxD - Names and Terminology

Post by DarklingNinja »

Sekiryuutei translates to "The Red Dragon Emperor" right? I think it sounds cooler than Sekiryuutei, so I go into a word document and replace all instances of Sekiryuutei with "The Red Dragon Emperor". Want to make sure I am doing this right, because it would be a shame if I was reading it wrong.
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Re: High School DxD - Names and Terminology

Post by Code-Zero »

DarklingNinja wrote:Sekiryuutei translates to "The Red Dragon Emperor" right? I think it sounds cooler than Sekiryuutei, so I go into a word document and replace all instances of Sekiryuutei with "The Red Dragon Emperor". Want to make sure I am doing this right, because it would be a shame if I was reading it wrong.
Yeah it does. Actually,the correct/official English name for it is "The Emperor of the Red Dragon" according to the author.
You also have to remember that its not only used as a title/alias, but also used as a actual name in some parts of the novel.
For that reason, we changed from using Red Dragon Emperor to Sekiryuutei(We were using Red Dragon Emperor before).

So dont change it to Red-Dragon Emperor on B-T. Or if you are planning to use the B-Ts script.
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Re: High School DxD - Names and Terminology

Post by DarklingNinja »

Code-Zero wrote:
DarklingNinja wrote:Sekiryuutei translates to "The Red Dragon Emperor" right? I think it sounds cooler than Sekiryuutei, so I go into a word document and replace all instances of Sekiryuutei with "The Red Dragon Emperor". Want to make sure I am doing this right, because it would be a shame if I was reading it wrong.
Yeah it does. Actually,the correct/official English name for it is "The Emperor of the Red Dragon" according to the author.
You also have to remember that its not only used as a title/alias, but also used as a actual name in some parts of the novel.
For that reason, we changed from using Red Dragon Emperor to Sekiryuutei(We were using Red Dragon Emperor before).

So dont change it to Red-Dragon Emperor on B-T. Or if you are planning to use the B-Ts script.
Interesting, thank you for the information, I will have to change it than
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Re: High School DxD - Names and Terminology

Post by denormative »

Code-Zero wrote:Yeah it does. Actually,the correct/official English name for it is "The Emperor of the Red Dragon" according to the author.
You also have to remember that its not only used as a title/alias, but also used as a actual name in some parts of the novel.
For that reason, we changed from using Red Dragon Emperor to Sekiryuutei(We were using Red Dragon Emperor before).
Yeah, that'd be painful. Especially since you'd have to translate all the honourifics too (either that or extreme hyphenation of the name/title) and it'd start to sound quite silly after a while.

"Mr Red Dragon Emperor" (-san)
"Sir Red Dragon Emperor" (-dono?)
"Honourable Red Dragon Emperor" (-sama?)
"Little Red Dragon Emperor" (-chan)
" 'Lil Red Dragon Emperor" (-chin)

No idea what you'd do for '-kun'. What a mess. :P

Speaking of which, I wish there was a better solution for this phrase as well: "More than that I’m glad to see the face of Hime-sama and Sekiryuutei-dono who is the Waka." (v8 Extra Life)

Maybe it just needs a footnote as to what it implies. :?
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Re: High School DxD - Names and Terminology

Post by Code-Zero »

True. That certainly is a hard to read....
Maybe I should change waka to young master.

"More than that I’m glad to see the face of Hime-sama and our young master, Sekiryuutei-dono."

Hmm, but master refers to their King in DxD, so.... Damn, I wish there were more vocabulary in English which I can use for such cases:(
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Re: High School DxD - Names and Terminology

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Code-Zero wrote:True. That certainly is a hard to read....
Maybe I should change waka to young master.

"More than that I’m glad to see the face of Hime-sama and our young master, Sekiryuutei-dono."

Hmm, but master refers to their King in DxD, so.... Damn, I wish there were more vocabulary in English which I can use for such cases:(
Yeah. "Master" is a little excessively overloaded in English, there's, what, four or five different definitions just when using it as someone's title? Given that I usually see "waka-dono" translated as "Young Master", the lower case variant feels fine there, the 'young' there should be enough for people to realise it's referring to the 'title' for young males, rather then the 'title' for head-of-household/head-of-group.

Which reminds me, I need to fix where someone's gone through and lower-cased 'Sister' (used as a title) in a number of places too. :?
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Re: High School DxD - Names and Terminology

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Went through and fixed all the 'sisters', related to 'Sisters' and so forth.

There's a bunch of other terminology that seems wonky ("Sister's clothes" should be "nun's habit", "this Sister" really should be "Sister <name>", there's a reference to "Sister Asia" in a volume where she's definitely an "ex-Sister Asia" or "former Sister Asia" (though that might have simply been politeness), and so forth), but I suspect it's mostly a side effect of the original author not being familiar with the correct terminology/forms of address/etc, so I didn't think it was worth correcting it. (I bothered to try and fix some of the mess of 'Saint' references in Seikoku no Ryuu Kishi, but I suspect the problem with that one was it looks like it's being translated from Chinese and lacking appropriate honorifics. :? )
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Re: High School DxD - Names and Terminology

Post by chancs »

denormative wrote:Went through and fixed all the 'sisters', related to 'Sisters' and so forth.

There's a bunch of other terminology that seems wonky ("Sister's clothes" should be "nun's habit", "this Sister" really should be "Sister <name>", there's a reference to "Sister Asia" in a volume where she's definitely an "ex-Sister Asia" or "former Sister Asia" (though that might have simply been politeness), and so forth), but I suspect it's mostly a side effect of the original author not being familiar with the correct terminology/forms of address/etc, so I didn't think it was worth correcting it. (I bothered to try and fix some of the mess of 'Saint' references in Seikoku no Ryuu Kishi, but I suspect the problem with that one was it looks like it's being translated from Chinese and lacking appropriate honorifics. :? )

Sister's clothes ---> Nun's habit ? So is this a TLn error, or... ?

On second thought, what's the difference between a 'Sister' and 'Nun'?
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Re: High School DxD - Names and Terminology

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chancs wrote:Sister's clothes ---> Nun's habit ? So is this a TLn error, or... ?
Unsure. But given that there is actually a Japanese word that translates to 'habit' (修道服; a garment worn by nuns, monks, friars, etc) I would assume if it wasn't translated literally, the word wasn't used.

But what Asia wears is a pretty classic (if cute) look. (Though she has a mysterious gravity-and-wind defying coif.)
chancs wrote:On second thought, what's the difference between a 'Sister' and 'Nun'?
Depends upon the doctrine, but really nowadays there's no real difference. In the Catholic doctrine, technically 'nuns' take stricter religious vows and are more akin to 'monks' (live in a cloister away from the world, all property is owned by the community not by them, etc), whereas 'sisters' are more like 'priests' where they can own personal property and tend to evangelise.

Both nun's and sister's titles are "Sister" though. Though I can't remember ever really using the title formally except for introductions, but for that matter using "Father so-and-so" for priests except in formal situations has been pretty passé as well, at least in Australia anyway; but we're probably a bit more relaxed about this then a lot of places.

In practice (and I think according to a doctrinal change in the 80s), as I said they're basically the same nowadays. No one really lives in convents in Australia (though they might still in the old world) I haven't seen my aunt (who's a Sister of Charity if I recall correctly) wear the full habit (head covering, gown, etc) in 25 years or so.

... now that I think about it, were Irina/Xenovia ever identified as 'Sisters'? Or were they just the generic holy-women archetypes.
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