Why change Moana's name to Komoana?

[WolkenKatz]

Why?

[RiO]

The really interesting part here?

So much for the "but this is really the only scene we're altering" excuse...

[RiO]

Originally posted by JBeckman:

Originally posted by RiO:

The really interesting part here?

So much for the "but this is really the only scene we're altering" excuse...

Translation inconsistencies are probably fairly common both for fan translations and these official ones would be my guess.

Except this isn't a cultural reference being translated; it's an actual name. This is on the same level of stupid as re-translating Eizen's mystic arte "wasteless mayhem" as "perfect mayhem", where it was already a perfectly fine and understandable name to begin with.

The only thing this kind of quackery does is grind the gears of people playing the game with the original JP vocal work who will notice the mismatch.

[WolkenKatz]

From what I remember, Zesteria was pretty much 1:1, but the translation party couldn't get the rights from Stereopony to play the intro song, which is why every patch tried to remove the it from the Japanese audio (That's the excuse I heard anyways).

There are a few inconsistancies with Berseria, but they're not huge, and they are explained. EG: Videl (Omega-Elixer quest) is called Live in the Japanese version (sounds like Leeve though). It's explained that his name means to live, so calling him Live in the English version is a stupid idea, so the change of the name makes sense.

There's no explanation for Moana to be called Kamoana though.

[Blu Ray]

Originally posted by WolkenKatz:

I'm going to put this down to the same reason why Magilou's name in Russian is wrong; the translators thought to change it for some stupid reason, even though there's a language option there where it doesn't reflect what's being said. She's probably called Kamoana in the English dub, but... I don't listen to that (NPC voices are horrid). There's no Russian dub, so I can understand why the Russians want her name changed to how it's pronounced.

How is she called in Russian?

[WolkenKatz]

Originally posted by JBeckman:

Hmm well they do sometimes change the names slightly but yeah here that would have made it Mona or some such instead of adding two extra letters to it.

Tried looking up the names via Wiki but this character wasn't listed probably since she had a smaller role.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_Berseria
(Interesting edit of Innominat too, rest is mostly about the R - L or simplifying it a bit such as Arutoriusu to Artorius but Kanonushi -> Innominat?)

Kanounushi's translation is the same as Doushi to Shepherd. These are examples of good translations.

Originally posted by Blu Ray:

Originally posted by WolkenKatz:

I'm going to put this down to the same reason why Magilou's name in Russian is wrong; the translators thought to change it for some stupid reason, even though there's a language option there where it doesn't reflect what's being said. She's probably called Kamoana in the English dub, but... I don't listen to that (NPC voices are horrid). There's no Russian dub, so I can understand why the Russians want her name changed to how it's pronounced.

How is she called in Russian?

I can't be bothered looking for the actual posts about it, but it has something to do with an inflection written into her name, when her name doesn't have an inflection in it.

[RiO]

Originally posted by WolkenKatz:

Originally posted by JBeckman:

Hmm well they do sometimes change the names slightly but yeah here that would have made it Mona or some such instead of adding two extra letters to it.

Tried looking up the names via Wiki but this character wasn't listed probably since she had a smaller role.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_Berseria
(Interesting edit of Innominat too, rest is mostly about the R - L or simplifying it a bit such as Arutoriusu to Artorius but Kanonushi -> Innominat?)

Kanounushi's translation is the same as Doushi to Shepherd. These are examples of good translations.

Exactly. These are cases of it being a title and not a name.

[Binnes]

You have to be able to prove in court that ordinary consumers would likely be confused into thinking this was a Disney product based on the name Moana existing in the game, which seems extremely unlikely, so a copyright issue would not exist.

[WolkenKatz]

Originally posted by Binnes:

You have to be able to prove in court that ordinary consumers would likely be confused into thinking this was a Disney product based on the name Moana existing in the game, which seems extremely unlikely, so a copyright issue would not exist.

And in any case, wouldn't using Moana be advertisement for Disney's movie anyways?

[RiO]

Originally posted by JBeckman:

EDIT: Come to think of it I wonder how Zestiria fared in overall translation accuracy or how you'd call it, aside from that bit of the intro I'm guessing there weren't any major changes due to sensitive topics as with a few other games or game franchises.

Zestiria's localization went to great lengths and took liberties to keep Lailah's puns working, but other than that was fairly accurate.

One thing that did stand out as a sore thumb was that little kid thief in Lakehaven that was apprehended by a senior citizen who then tried to talk him out of a life of crime. The kid breaks free and yells back to the old guy that he "smells of old farts" in the localized version. Originally he told the old guy, literally, to drop dead.

[Jeffer'son Airship]

Originally posted by MRK1788:

In Italy, Moana (full name Moana Pozzi) is the name of a famous porn star from the seventies. She's dead now but here in Italy her porn performance is legendary. I assume we are to blame for this :(

Even the disney movie was renamed becuase of this.

This is actually the more likely reason. They changed the main character's name in Tales of Hearts R because it sounded really close to a slur in at least one European language after all.

[Diviance]

Originally posted by Binnes:

You have to be able to prove in court that ordinary consumers would likely be confused into thinking this was a Disney product based on the name Moana existing in the game, which seems extremely unlikely, so a copyright issue would not exist.

There literally couldn't be a copyright issue, you don't copyright names. If anything, it would be a trademark issue... which also wouldn't happen because there simply isn't a trademark conflict here. It is two wildly different things that look nothing even remotely alike, nobody could reasonably confuse them.

Same reason there is a company called Nike that makes shoes and a company called Nike that makes other things. They do different things.

[Sofia]

Why does it matter?

The other way around wouldn't have surprised anyone. If she was called Moana in English, and Komoana in Japanese, people would have just said "oh, it's because ko means girl".

Like... seriously, who cares. Find something better to obsess over. Like the fact they censored the violence against Laphicet for the one scene at the start of the game and then later on Valvet does way, way worse to (SPOILER). THAT'S something to nitpick. Not the addition of one syllable to a name. Komoana doesn't sound that bad.

[Myst]

Moana is too lewd for the west and would increase to the PEGI rating to 18+.

[ICStars77]

Funny thing is if you play with japanese voices they still just call her moana.

[Fategate]

I read that Disney had to change the name of the movie Moana to Vaiana in Spain because a perfume company had that name registered on a product. It may be that here they have also changed the name for that reason