Japanese language

Borne as it is from the partnership between the American Hasbro and the Japanese TakaraTomy, Transformers has from its inception been a bilingual franchise, split cardinally between English, the language of this wiki, and the Japanese language (日本語 Nihongo). The road between the two does not always run smooth, and many quirks of the Transformers franchise can be ascribed to this friction.

Contents 1 Japanese: a crash course 1.1 Kana 1.2 Kanji 1.3 Furigana 1.3.1 Examples 2 Romanization 3 Lost in Translation 3.1 Causes of translation errors 3.1.1 Romanization difficulties 3.1.2 "Double blind" translation 3.2 Translating the untranslatable 3.2.1 Pun problems 3.2.2 Furigana frenzy 3.2.3 "High concept" names 3.3 Frequent avenues of mistranslation 3.3.1 Because it looks cool 3.3.1.1 Cool Japanese 3.3.1.2 Cool English 3.3.2 Bad dubs 3.3.3 Deliberate mistranslation 3.3.3.1 TakaraTomy 3.3.3.2 Hasbro 3.3.4 Vendor mistranslation 4 Things that are not mistranslation 4.1 Spelling errors 4.1.1 Examples 4.1.1.1 Japanese 4.1.1.2 English 5 References 6 External links

Japanese: a crash course

Kana

"Kana" (仮名) is the colloquial term for the portion of the modern Japanese writing system correlating directly to mouth noises (read: letters, kinda sorta). Kana can be written using two native systems: the "hiragana" (ひらがな) script used primarily for Japanese words, and the "katakana" (カタカナ) script used primarily for loanwords or foreign words, as well as for denoting emphasis. Kana is a primarily syllabic script; with the exception of six kana, each symbol represents a consonant-vowel pair, such as ど do, は ha, ぐ gu, and け ke.

Hiragana (left) and Katakana (right) – k s t n h m y r w a あア かカ さサ たタ なナ はハ まマ やヤ らラ わワ i いイ きキ しシ ちチ にニ ひヒ みミ * りリ ゐヰ u うウ くク すス つツ ぬヌ ふフ むム ゆユ るル * e えエ けケ せセ てテ ねネ へヘ めメ * れレ ゑヱ o おオ こコ そソ とト のノ ほホ もモ よヨ ろロ をヲ

んン (n)

These basic kana are in turn modified by the "dakuten" ( ﾞ), which resembles a quotation mark and transforms a voiceless kana such as "ka" into a voiced "ga" and changes the soft "f-" series into the "b-" series; and the "handakuten" ( ﾟ), which resembles a degree sign and modifies the soft "f-" series of kana into the hard "p-" series.

Examples

• トランスフォーマー (toransufōmā, Transformer in katakana)

ト = To
ラ = ra
ン = n
ス = su
フォー = fō
マー = mā

Kanji

Due to the influence of the Chinese language, Japanese also uses "kanji" (漢字), a kind of script where each character represents an entire concept and can function as a word unto itself. These kanji often have two pronunciations, one the Japanese word for the specific concept (訓読み kun'yomi) and another based on the borrowed Chinese word (音読み on'yomi), but can sometimes have additional pronunciations. Single kanji can then be compounded into more complex concepts; for example, the Japanese word for telephone, denwa, is made up of the symbols "電話", which separately mean "electric" and "talk".

Examples

Kanji

• 生命体 sei mei tai ("lifeform")

生 = "living"

命 = "life force", inochi as a kun'yomi

体 = "body, figure"

• 司令官 shi rei kan ("Commander")

司 = "official" or "director"

令 = "law" or "command"

官 = "governor/bureaucrat"

Kana and kanji

• 超ロボット生命体 トランスフォーマー ("Super Robot Lifeform Transformer")

超 (chō, "super-")

ロボット (robotto, katakana)

生命体 (seimeitai, "lifeform", kanji with on'yomi)

トランスフォーマー (toransufōmā, Transformer in katakana)

Furigana

"Furigana" (振 (ふ)り仮名 (がな)) is a kind of Japanese reading aid that employs superscript, known as "ruby text" (ルビ), to provide a pronunciation guide for particularly difficult words. Now as you can probably guess from reading the above, it is usually used to provide the kana to sound out kanji in educational contexts. What does this have to do with Transformers? In the wider world, furigana see another use: PUNS.^[1] In this context, furigana can be used to impart a sort of "side B" to a phrase in a manner that can be thought of as dimly analogous to comedy footnotes^[2] in English.

Examples

• ブルー偉大なる (ビッグ)司令官 (コンボイ) ("Blue Big Convoy")

ブルー = (Burū, "Blue", katakana)

偉大なる司令官 ("Grand Commander" - standard reading)

偉大なる = (Idainaru, "Grand", kanji)

司令官 = (Shireikan, "Commander", kanji)

ビッグコンボイ ("Big Convoy" - furigana pronunciation guide)

ビッグ = (Biggu, "Big", katakana)

コンボイ = (Konboi, "Convoy", katakana)

Romanization

"Romanization" refers to the adaptation of languages or words that do not use Latin letters to the 26-character Latin alphabet used in English (among other, less important languages). Technically, the English-specific term would be "Anglicization".

Any writing system is, at best, an approximation of the sounds it represents. The modern Japanese writing system distinguishes between fewer phonemes than most, but this does not mean the language lacks those phonemes, merely that different sounds can be represented by the same symbols. English has more than twenty-six sounds denoted by character-combinations (ex. "ch" makes a sound that is not the combination of the mouth-movements for "c" and "h", but a close cousin), but even those combinations are imperfect; the "oo" letter sequence represents different sounds in "cook" and "spook". While Japanese does have official romanization systems, such as the Nihon-shiki, it can still be difficult to romanize a Japanese word to match its author's intent due to the sharing of phonemes and other artifacts of the differences between the English and Japanese languages.

Lost in Translation

Typical causes for friction between languages are mistakes in mechanical process of translation for perfectly straightforward material, wordplay that only makes sense to a native Japanese speaker, and, occasionally, terms with no coherent meaning to be had. In some rare cases, it even appears that mistranslation occurs on purpose.

Recall that from the perspective of an audience that does not speak the language, whether the words fit together at all is usually of no consequence so long as they are pronounceable, catchy, and easy to remember when buying their products.

Causes of translation errors

Romanization difficulties

Romanizing a name isn't always easy.

Actual Japanese people can often have their names romanized in several ways, all of which are, by default, equally valid: For example, the name of legendary Diaclone and Generation 1 toy designer Kōjin Ōno (大野 光仁 Ōno Kōjin) can also be Romanized as "Kojin Ohno" or "Kouzin Ono". Japanese people who frequently interact with the Western world may settle for an "official" version for simplicity's sake; in that case, insisting on using an alternate Romanization would be considered pedantic and ignorant.

Since the vast majority of Transformers names used for the Japanese market are English or English-derived, romanizing them isn't particularly difficult— for example, Megatron's Japanese name (メガトロン Megatoron) is simply a transliteration of his Western name; the same applies to Thundercracker (サンダークラッカー Sandākurakkā). Many characters whose names were changed for the Japanese market are still easy to decipher; for example, Jazz traditionally becomes "Meister" (マイスター Maisutā), Sideswipe becomes "Lambor" (ランボル Ranboru), and Optimus Prime becomes "Convoy" (コンボイ Konboi).

One problem is posed by the Japanese use of the plural, which doesn't use an "s" suffix like it does in English. Thus, the Japanese name for the overall brand is literally "Transformer" (トランスフォーマー Toransufōmā). However, since Takara uses the spelling "Transformers" every time the name is rendered in English, the plural "s" can be assumed to materialize in the transition from katakana to the Latin spelling in much the same way Optimus Prime's trailer appears and disappears every time he transforms. This doesn't always apply, however; some English-derived names with a plural in them may in fact keep the "s" suffix in their katakana spelling, such as Generations (ジェネレーションズ Jenerēshonzu), resulting in an inconsistent appearance in the combination "Transformers: Generations", where "Generations" uses the plural "s" but "Transformers" doesn't.

The Japanese writing system distinguishes between fewer phonemes than most. Foreign words in Japan frequently acquire creative spellings as a result of being rendered "down" into the Japanese spelling system.

In some cases where Takara has put the Latin spelling of the characters' names on their packaging, something was amiss: Whoever was responsible for the romanization screwed up, and the error was not caught in quality control either. The most common causes for bad romanization are a mix-up between /l/ and /r/ (which are approximated by the same sound in Japanese) and /v/ and /b/ (the /v/ sound doesn't exist in Japanese and is usually substituted by /b/). Another common issue is that /n/, if followed by /m/, /b/, and /p/, becomes /m/ in Japanese phonology.

Examples:

• Minerva (ミネルバ) as "Minelba".
• Kraken (クラーケン) as "Clerken".
• Convoy (コンボイ) as "Comvoy", used on the packaging for Transformers: Mystery of Convoy.
• Similarly, various characters from Galaxy Force with "Convoy" in their names as "Conboy" on Takara's website^[3]
• Variations of "Destron" (デストロン), including "Deathtron" and "Destoron".
• Transformers Collection Lambor (ランボル) as "Rambol" on Takara's website^[4] (unlike the "Rijie" case listed below, Binaltech Lambor, released a few months after the Transformers Collection reissue, had his name spelled properly in English on his packaging, making this a definite error).
• Alternity Ultra Magnus (ウルトラマグナス) as "Ultla Magnus".
• Legends Targetmaster Misfire as "Targetmaster Missfire".
• Generations Selects Lobclaw (ロブクロウ) as "Seacons Lobclow".

Also worth mentioning is the lack of spaces for compound names in some cases, such as with the entire Super-God Masterforce line, which had "Superginrai", "Godginrai" or "Kingposeidon", the Galaxy Force line, which had "Galaxyconvoy", "Firstaid" or "Mastermegatron", or Legends "Blue Bigconvoy". This happens because the katakana spelling often does not have any separations between these name components (it is possible to use a "middle dot" ・, called a nakaguro, but its usage is not mandatory), and this structure may be carried over during the Romanization if the people in charge of the packaging design don't pay attention to it.

A particularly unusual case is that of the non-Japanese Generation 1 Action Master Elite "Omega Spreem" toy, which came out at a time when the original Transformers toy line had been canceled for the United States market and was primarily released in European markets. Intended as the same character as the older Generation 1 Omega Supreme toy, both "Supreme" and "Spreem" are possible transliterations of the katakana spelling スプリーム (though "Supreme" is obviously the only one that actually makes sense). Why Hasbro UK would use a nonsensical transliteration of the Japanese spelling of the character's English name is lost in the mists of time; however, a partial explanation can be found in the Transformers Vault book: The design artwork for an unreleased standard (i.e. not Elite) Action Master version of Omega Supreme has his name (correctly spelled) written quite large on the top of the sheet in big black marker. However, there's also an illustrator's note written in very small pen/pencil next to the toy's design artwork, which misspells the character's name as "Omega Spreem", despite the correct spelling being in giant text directly above it (though to be fair, it's possible that the black marker text was added after the fact). When the toy was released, for some reason Hasbro used the nonsensical "Omega Spreem" spelling.

"Double blind" translation

Some times, the romanization is on point, the meaning of each word is more or less correct, and the sentence structure is technically acceptable, but no one in the room is fluent in the language and the wind just isn't at their backs, producing results that are... off.

On occasion, some popular English catchphrases for the brand have been translated into Japanese and then re-translated back into English, producing a particularly brutal contrast with the "correct answer." A prime example is when the tagline "More than meets the eye" was translated into Japanese and then re-translated back into English for the packaging of the Japanese release of the Heroes of Cybertron line, producing the trainwreck, "The truth who the eyes met before!"

Translating the untranslatable

Pun problems

Much like in English, many Japanese Transformer names are corny puns. This becomes problematic very quickly when puns that work in Japanese do not in English:

• The name for Robots in Disguise Ruination's Car Robots counterpart is derived from "Bruticus", whose toy he is redecoed from, by shifting some of the sounds that make up the name. Thus, Burūtikasu (ブルーティカス) became Barudigasu (バルディガス). For years, the correct Romanization of said name was up in the air, with "Baldigus" and "Valdigus" being the most popular fan spellings, until his Unite Warriors toy provided an official Romanized spelling, as "Baldigus".
• Kiss Players "Autorooper" (オートルーパー Ōtorūpā) is a portmanteau of "auto" (オート ōto) and "trooper" (トルーパー torūpā), the latter roughly pronounced "torooper" in Japanese. Any Romanization of the name misses out on at least half of the pun.
• Similar is the upgraded form of Galaxy Force First Aid (ファストエイド Fasuto Eido, Cybertron Red Alert), "First Gunner" (ファストガンナー Fasuto Gan'nā, Cybertron Defense Red Alert for Hasbro). To Japanese ears, "First" and "Fast" sound almost the same, thus making the upgrade a "fast gunner". Takara decided to keep the spelling from "First Aid" consistent in the Romanization, thus ending up with the somewhat nonsensical name "First Gunner".
• Galaxy Force Gagenda (ガゼンダ Gazenda), Cyaana (シアーナ Shiāna), and Sullow (スロー Surō) are named with modifications of their primary colors: magenta (マゼンタ mazenta), cyan (シアン shian), and yellow (イェロー yerō), the former two of which Japanese did not take from English but rather from Italian and Dutch, respectively. (An additional complication is Japanese adaptation of Italian and Dutch having evolved over time. Today, "magenta" would probably be rendered with greater sophistication as majenta (マジェンタ) and "cyaan" as shiān (シアーン).
• Robotmasters "Reverse Convoy" (リバースコンボイ) becomes "Rebirth Megatron" (リバースメガトロン), with the English words "Reverse" and "Rebirth" using the same katakana spelling. This makes considerably less sense in English.

Furigana frenzy

As discussed above, the grammatical construction known as "furigana" doesn't really have a clean analogue in English. Thankfully this particularly elaborate form of wordplay is pretty rare in Transformers media, perhaps due to the younger-skewing demographics of the franchise. Rare, that is, with one prominent exception: the saga of the technicolor warrior monks known as the Primus Vanguard utilizes a truly dizzying array of furigana puns in the names of its major characters, up to and including Optimus Prime himself.

• Each officer of the Vanguard utilizes a classic Transformers title in their rank, with "Commander" (司令官 (コンボイ) shireikan) being "pronounced" as "Convoy" (コンボイ Konboi) while "Marshal" (元帥 (プライム) gensui) becomes "Prime" (プライム Puraimu).
• The puns go even further, as the officers' personal names (sandwiched between their assigned color and rank) are "spelled" as a highfalutin adjective, resulting in configurations such as "Blue Big Convoy" (ブルービッグコンボイ Buru Biggu Konboi) being read "Blue Grand Commander" (ブルー偉大なる (ビッグ)司令官 (コンボイ) Buru Idainaru Shireikan).
• The New Primus Vanguard, evil doppelgangers of the Primus Vanguard made out of Megatron clones, also got in on the pun action, with the classic "Emperor of Destruction"(破壊大帝 (メガトロン) Hakai Taitei) title, a stalwart of Japanese Transformers villains, being paired up with "Megatron"(メガトロン Megatoron).

"High concept" names

And then there are the names that didn't mean much to begin with, or are so baroque that any Romanization would have to be either extremely liberal in order to make sense, or end up nonsensical either way. Accuracy is sometimes a low priority, as English-derived names are generally simply intended to sound "cool", not necessarily make sense to Japanese children. A familiar point of reference might be the atrocities we in the English market regularly inflict upon Latin.

Examples:

• Cybertron Hot Shot's Japanese Galaxy Force name (エクシリオン) is officially romanized as "Exillion". Hasbro later released a redeco as a separate character named Excellion, which makes only slightly more sense.
• Probably the most hotly contested of Japanese Transformers names was that of Deathsaurus (デスザラス Desuzarasu), the dragon-like Decepticon general of Transformers: Victory. Originally Romanized on his toy packaging as "Deszaras," English-speaking fans furiously debated the "proper" Romanization of the name, interpreting it as Deszaras, Deathzaras, Deathsaurus, Death Czarus, Death Czaras, and many others.
  • "Deathsaurus" had a tendency to be the most popular and well-known (on account of it actually meaning something in either language), which led to it being used on the character's first Western toy in 2005, making it his official English-language name. Although, two later toys would give him the English names of "Dessaras" and "Dezarus", respectively, muddying the waters further.
  • At BotCon 2015, after decades of such back-and-forths, the designer of the original toy, our friend from earlier Kōjin Ōno, confirmed that the name was indeed always supposed to have been "Deathsaurus" (in a presentation that spelled his name as "Dethzarasu". Oy vey!).
• Perhaps the final boss of galaxy-brained Japanese Transformer names is, fittingly, the final boss of the Japanese Generation 1 cartoon. The name of Violengiguar (バイオレンジャイガー), the spooky space ghost antagonist of Transformers: Zone, was the source of no small amount of bafflement and a wide variety of interpretations both fan and official including but not limited to "Violen Jiger", "Violen Jygar", and even "Bio Ranger Iga". We finally got an explanation after nearly thirty years in 2019, when cartoon lead writer and overall Generation 1 story architect Masumi Kaneda clarified:^[5]
  • The name is a portmanteau of (deep breath):
    • "Violence" (バイオレンス) + "Giant" (ジャイアント) / "Gigantis" (ジャイガンティス) + "Jaguar" (ジャガー)
      • Both "Giant" and "Gigantis" were cited as the origin for the same "gi" (ジャイ) part of the name.
  • It was constructed to "match the length of" (read: vaguely rhyme with) the word "Transformer" (トランスフォーマー). The way this works is that "Transformer" picks up a couple more syllables in Japanese such that we have:

Transformer → (ト To) - (ラ ra) - (ン n) - (ス su) - (フォー fō) - (マー mā)

Violengiguar → (バ Ba) - (イ i) - (オ o) - (レ re) - (ン n) - (ジャ ja) - (イ i) - (ガー gā)

The idea here was to create a powerful, violent name that presented a sort of "dark mirror" to the Transformers. Real out of the box thinker, that Kaneda.

Frequent avenues of mistranslation

Because it looks cool

We've all seen Japanese characters tacked onto English language goods to "look cool" on solely aesthetic grounds. Did you know that goes the other way too? Unsurprisingly this rarely produces intelligible results in either direction.

Cool Japanese

• The personal website of the singular Dreamwave Productions president Pat Lee featured a header graphic that rendered his name, "Patrick Lee", in nigh-random kana as ミチヤメノテヒ フナナ (Michiyamenotehi Funana). This "translation" very quickly became a sardonic nickname among fans.
  • The source of this gibberish was almost certainly blindly pecking out symbols that "looked cool" with character-replacement font "WordPerfect TrueType Japanese."
  • The correct translation would be パトリック・リー (Patorikku Rī).
• As befitting the brand mascot for Japanophile behavior, Drift has racked up an impressive count of soulful Japanese tattoos.
  • Drift's original IDW character design sported ドリフト (Dorifuto), the katakana for his own name on the doors.
  • The doors of Drift's Generations toy were tampographed with the more sensible kanji 侍 (samurai).
    • These proved to become Drift's most iconic tats, reappearing on his Earth Wars character model and Adventure toy.
  • Shattered Glass Drift's hood was adorned with 定 (tei, "decide") in a vague attempt to approximate "doom".
  • The Generations toy's broadsword was also molded with the rather cocky engraving 天下無双 (tenka musō, "peerless under heaven"), which was naturally passed on to Drift's moldmates Shattered Glass Drift and Legends Deadlock.

Cool English

Snappy English catchphrases of questionable intelligibility are a frequent stalwart of "cool" characters' dialogue in Japanese children's media.

• Star Saber often shouts "Let's say go!" This is a pun on "Let's seigō", where Japanese word seigō (整合), means, broadly, "coordinate," making it more or less his version of Optimus Prime's iconic "Transform and roll out!"
• Energon Cliffjumper is known to pepper his dialogue with English phrases, most frequently "Check it out, yo."

Bits of English often creep their way into Japanese theme songs as well, being something of a staple in Japanese pop music.

• The chorus of Satoko Shimonari's theme for Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers, titled "TRANSFORMER", ends with the English phrase, "We hope the only world!"
• "PRAISE BE TO DECEPTICON", JAM Project's absolute banger of an image song for the Decepticons of Transformers Animated, prominently features a refrain of, well, "Praise be to Decepticon".

Bad dubs

Furthermore, on many occasions, when Japanese Transformers cartoons have been translated and dubbed into English, the translations and scripts have been rushed, resulting in mind-boggling dialogue.

When the Omni Productions dub was produced for The Headmasters, Masterforce and Victory and when the Voicebox dub was produced for Armada and Energon, early, unpolished translations of the Japanese TV series were used for the final scripts. While these translations were (mostly) accurate, they were accurate in a tremendously literal sense, often not being adjusted to fit the English language properly. What resulted were incoherent lines of dialogue which sounded like a Babelfish translation of a web page.

Deliberate mistranslation

In some rare cases, an official instance of mistranslation is both so blatant and so persistent that it appears to be done on purpose, usually for trademark reasons.

TakaraTomy

The prime example is Generation 1 Mirage, who got renamed into "Ligier" (リジェ) for the Japanese market, based on the real life car manufacturer who produced the car the original Mirage toy's alternate mode was based on. While the Generation 1 toy only spelled the name in katakana, with no official Romanized spelling supplied, both the more recent Robotmasters and Binaltech toys have used the official Romanization "Rijie"... which is, as a Romanization of the katakana spelling, about the furthest possible from "Ligier". Curiously enough, the Robotmasters toy's instructions do spell the name "Ligier", thus suggesting legal reasons for the alternate spelling.

A different case is the Generation 1 Constructicon Hook, who was renamed into "Gren" (グレン Guren) for Japan. "Gren" is effectively a mangled version of the English word "crane" (クレーン Kurēn) which didn't originate with Takara, but has been used at least in regional Japanese dialects (mostly in the Hiroshima area) since the Meiji period. So it's basically a reference to a traditional mutation of a loanword.

Hasbro

Around the onset of the Prime Wars Trilogy, Hasbro evidently discovered the quick and easy trademarking joys of aggressively literal Romanization.

• Titans Return Twinferno's Titan Master is named "Daburu" after the Japanese rendition of the word "double" (ダブル), after Twinferno's original Generation 1 name, "Doublecross" (ダブルクロス).
• When the duo of Generation 1 dinosaur cassettes Dile (ダイル) and Zaur (ザウル) (plays on "reptile" and "dinosaur", respectively) finally made their way across the Pacific after some 30 years, they were given the localized names Dairu and Zauru.
  • To add insult to injury, when the pair received evil recolors, they were given these names *backwards* in English spelling, producing the truly bizarre "Uriad" and "Uruaz".^[6]

Vendor mistranslation

Sometimes mistranslations don't originate with Takara or other official parties, but with (mostly Western) online retailers and their vendors. Historically, these vendors often received solicitations of new toys via fax in the era before easy machine translation cross-checks. Depending on the quality of the fax, the legibility of the katakana spelling of the new toys' names, the Japanese and/or English skills of the vendors and their familiarity with the Transformers brand, they may have just come up with very weird interpretations of the katakana spelling of the toys' names. The results can range from minor misspellings (such as "Conboy") to occasional random weirdness or complete gibberish.

Although these spellings aren't "official", they're often the first versions of these names fans read...and some of these names stick, even when the official Romanization is widely available.

Examples:

• United Wheeljack's name got mangled as "Hoilgaru" (with the "garu" half possibly being misapplied from Wreck-Gar's name, who would be listed directly above Wheeljack in a list based on their Japanese ID numbers).
• Adventure Ground Vehicon General was called "Grand Vehicon" by quite a few online stores. The reason for this is that TakaraTomy used the rather uncommon katakana spelling グランド (gurando) for "ground", which also happens to be the katakana spelling for "grand", instead of the more common グラウンド (guraundo). The name is spelled "Ground Vehicon General" in English on the toy's packaging, however.
• Coincidentally or not, Unite Warriors Grand Scourge, which also uses the katakana spelling グランド for the word "grand", was listed as "Ground Scourge" in some places.
• Legends Convobat, a portmanteau of "Convoy" and "bat", was listed as "Combo Bat" by several online retailers.

Things that are not mistranslation

Spelling errors

Mis-romanization should not be confused with honest spelling errors, as those can happen to both native and foreign speakers. For instance, the packaging for MP-01 Masterpiece Convoy reads "More than meets teh eye". This is less an example of bad translation and more an example of poor quality control on Takara's part.

Mild misspellings frequently occur due to poor linguistic replacement, especially when multiple sounds may not be distinguished in other languages. For example, the letters c/s/z and b/v are linguistically indistinguishable in Latin American Spanish. Similarly, the English ɹ, l, and v sounds do not exist in Japanese and are conflated with ɺ and b.

Conversely, a new spelling might be created to represent an otherwise rare sound in that language. For example, Japanese approximates an English rhotic vowel by extending the corresponding vowel sound,^[7] resulting in "Load Zarak". Using "ah" to facilitate the English "uh" results in Roadbaster. (Both cited examples can be found in the 2001 Transformers Generations guidebook.)

Examples

Japanese

• Generation 1 Metroplex is named "Metroflex" (メトロフレックス) in Japan. That minimal difference could be due to a genuine human error, though: the only spelling difference between a Japanese "P" sound and a corresponding "F" sound is an additional small circle, called a diacritical mark (in this case, the difference is プ pu versus フ fu). A poorly-printed paper copy or a simple case of misreading could have been all it took for such a change.
• Similarly, Generation 1 Blot's Japanese name (ブット) is "Boot" pronounced to rhyme with "foot" instead of "hoot". The structure of "Butto" suggests it derives from a typo of "Burotto" (ブロット), leaving out one katakana.
• The peculiarities of English spelling can also cause confusion in Japanese transliteration. In the English word "bomb", the b is not pronounced. An Japanese person ignorant of that would spell it bonbu, as happened to Bombshell (ボンブシェル Bonbusheru). Compare to Snakebomb (スネークボム Sunēkubomu), which properly transliterates the actual pronunciation of "bomb". (Although a trading card Romanizes it as "Snakebom". You can't win them all.)
• A related example to the one above is the differing transliterations for Generation 1 Rampage (ラムページ Ramupēji) and Beast Wars Rampage (ランページ Ranpēji). N before bilabial stops (b, p, and m; see n (kana) for more detail) ends up sounding like m in Japanese, but this was forgotten in the case of the first character, giving him the odd implication of "Ram Page".
• Different pronunciations (and the word itself sometimes) of non-English loanwords in both languages can also cause issues, especially in regards to Latin and Greek. Japanese usually sticks very closely to the original names and pronunciations of figures like Herakles (ヘラクレス Herakuresu), much more commonly known in English as Hercules (ハーキュリーズ Hākyurīzu) thanks to Latin influence, and often sticks to Latinate pronunciation (i.e. "C" is always pronounced like "K", -us is Romanized as us, not as) as opposed to English pronunciation. Sometimes the two different pronunciation systems can even be mixed in the same work, leading to annoying confusion. The long and short of it is that English is not the only language Japanese is trying to transliterate. One example in Transformers is the character Gilthor, a Romanization proposed by his creator. However, the Japanese pronunciation follows modern Nordic rules ("Tor" トール Tōru) rather than English rules ("Thor" ソー Sō).
• Related to the above is enerugī (エネルギー), uniformly always Romanized as "energy". However, this is actually based on the German "Energie"; English "energy" is rendered as enajī (エナジー), which is uncommon, but still sees use. This has also influenced Japanese pronunciation of "energon".

English

There are also spelling errors in background lettering found in the Generation 1 cartoon:

• In "Heavy Metal War", Teletraan I's files on the Decepticons (with the texts lifted directly from the show's production bible) have Rumble's name misspelled "Runble". (It's possible that this was an example of poor Romanization as well; the kana for "n" is pronounced as "m" when it's followed by a b, p, or m sound, so "runble" would have been the correct spelling in directly romanized kana.)
• Furthermore, in "The Burden Hardest to Bear", Galvatron opens an airlock aboard the Decepticon flagship, which has "AIR LOOK" written on it.
• Less certain is an instance in "Hoist Goes Hollywood", where a chair with Tracks's name written on it has it misspelled as "Trucks". This could either be an extension of the recurring joke where the director constantly gets Hoist's name wrong, or a true translation error (presumably stemming from a misunderstanding on the part of Japanese animators, as the English short "a" and short "u" sounds are identical to the Japanese ear). The world may never know.
• Likewise, newtronium from "Only Human" could have very well just been meant to be neutronium.

References

External links

• The Japanese written language at Wikipedia
• Romanization at Wikipedia