New Theories on Old Questions

Shiva Indis · Sat Dec 26, 2009 12:47 am

I have a strong theory now on why the location box in the Watermia gambling house says 'Desert'. In Japanese, the location name is tobaku-jou, meaning gambling house. I think the translator(s) mistook the 'tobaku' part for a different word, 'sabaku', which means desert. In kana, 'sabaku' and 'tobaku' look kind of similar to each other. さばく (sabaku) - とばく (tobaku). Most unimpressive translating.

Also, I came up with a new theory on the thematic inspiration for Mt. Kress. I noticed that the Japanese name and the English one don't quite correspond with each other. The Japanese name is ケレス山 (keresu-san), and you have to break rules of romanization to get Mt. Kress out of that. As it turns out, keresu is used to refer to Ceres, the dwarf planet and/or Roman goddess. As a goddess, Ceres is patron of growing plants (among other things). And of course, you grow plants on Mt. Kress.

I've been replaying the game and writing more notes, so more to come.

tay120n64 · Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2009 1:16 am Post subject:

Awesome! Looking forward to it!

Mt. Kress was always a headache for me growing up. When I was in sixth grade I researched information on the inspiration for every locale in IoG, but Mt. Kress was the one that left me most stumped.

Mantaray · Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2009 3:44 pm Post subject:

i thought they made up mt. kress o: and then i thought that it was real but the internet had no info on that.

the kana 'sa' and 'to' dont really look that much alike. the translators probably got cocky, or they just might have rushed.. shoulda checked back on their work, huh

keep it up

tay120n64 · Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 11:46 pm Post subject:

Well, Jason had a theory on it, but it was the English version, not the original Japanese. (I think)

Anyway, here it is...

Jason Tandro · Posted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 9:29 am Post subject:

tay120n64 wrote:Well, Jason had a theory on it, but it was the English version, not the original Japanese. (I think)

Anyway, here it is...

Well more specifically it's here, but I wonder now if there's any basis to my theory, as after all my only evidence was assuming poor translation into English (which isn't a completely wrong idea as we see).

If you're too lazy to read the post, I theorized that it was supposed to be Mt. Kailash, a holy place for Shinto and other religions which has never been touched because of its religious significance. My theory was Kailash was prounced kairesu or something like that, and the American translators turned it into Kress.