Translation of the title "cold steel"

[BeastSlayer]

The more I got into the story, the more I think "cold steel" is a typical case of lost in translation.


If we look at the previous titles, we can see each of title not only has some deeper meaning, but also reference to the most important object in the story. For example, Trails of Sky, the Japanese title is "空の軌跡", the kanji "空" have more than one meaning, it can mean sky, it also means "space"/"empty", which is one of the element that connects to the most important object in Sky SC.


The title for the Crossbell Trail of Zero and Trail of Azure are pretty straightforward, thus can be easily translated into English. However it is not the case for sen no kiseki "閃の軌跡".


The straightforward translation should be something like "Trails of Flash", but it does not sound very cool in English I guess. Personally, I would probably go with "Trails of Blitz", which should go very well with the theme of fast mech warfare.

"Cold steel" is a title that sounds cool, but does not have much deeper connection to the story and lore. Not to mention "Steel" is the nickname of Arianrhod which make it sounds more confusing.


In CS3 Rean recieved a letter from his master, telling him that the sword skill he taught Rean is unique, and it will bring flash of light to the endless darkness

For "Sen", the word must have more connection to the most important plot device in CS4 the final chapter of the arc, unfortunately, most English speaker are not going to find out.

[kraidy117]

Cold Steel or to be more exact Steel does in fact work better, sadly this is a pretty big sen 3 reveal. The Great Power/Great One is also called Steel, the combination of Earth and Fire This is why Falcom planned to use Steel at first and why they endorsed Xseed's title. Also paints their giggling at the pitch in a more amusing light. On a less spoiler take, Cold Steel was the name of the battle theme in sen 1. So it does indeed fit, even if one does not know the true reason for what Steel really means.

[omgfloofy]

BeastSlayer님이 먼저 게시:

Obviously Xseed had no idea how CS3 and CS4 would turn out, so they would have no idea what is the significance behind the word "sen", neither do us.

This would be why Falcom's approval (in the last bit of the original quote) was so important. They *did* say that they almost used 'steel' for their title.

BeastSlayer님이 먼저 게시:

The thing with kanji, or chinese characters, is that they always have multiple sometimes ambiguous meanings, making translation difficult.

These ambiguous meanings are completely intentional on Falcom's end, as well. As was said earlier, we had confirmation from Kondo that Sen (which is generally just a 'root' in Japanese, and is never used in general language on its own, as well.) is meant to be the 'glint of light as a blade is drawn.'

There's also a similar comment regarding Ao no Kiseki, that the kanji for 'Ao' that's being used can also be (though rarely) used for 'green.' Per their twitter account, when one is at a certain extreme depth under water, you get to a point where you can't tell the difference of the light above being blue or green anymore.

[Cneq]

For me personally I saw the names like this:

Trails in the Sky: Used because of the heavy reliance of airships in Liberl and that being that nations kind of kink

Trails of Cold Steel: Used because of Erebonia's militaristic nature and also from some of the dialogue in Trails in the Sky, it was said that Erebonia had the best tanks in Zemuria which could mean tanks are Erebonia's kink.

Which would make sense for the titles "Trails in the Sky" Airships and "Trails of Cold Steel" Tanks

Hope I'm not the only one who saw the titles this way lol

[ComingSoon™]

Trails of Flashing Steel?

sounds cool, might not fit though