Magi 01 – notes and the like This entry was posted by Vale.
I’m translating Magi for GotWoot. The first episode was slow because of :reasons:, but hopefully next week we can improve on the speed and release first.
I’m not sure if this show is worth writing translation notes for, but in the first episode there are some phrases I should explain.
I can’t read that script. Is it real Arabic or just random crap?
Jinni (plural: jinn), also known as djinn and genies, are supernatural spirits. You’ll see one later.
Aladdin calls Ali Baba お兄さん (onii-san), but in this case it doesn’t mean “brother” (just a way kids call older guys). I’m still not entirely sure about their relationship. After all Ali Baba was trying to cover for him when Bugel caught them, even though Aladdin just introduced himself a few seconds ago. He also let him stay at his place, but they don’t seem to know each other at all. I’m confused.
There are a bunch of mythical names that are written in katakana as Amon (アモン), so I wasn’t sure which one this should be. I’ve seen Ammon refer to both the Egyptian deity and the demon, so I went with that in the end.
Jinn in this world are blue too. Brings back childhood memories.
Bugel says 領主 (ryoushu), which would translate to feudal lord in a western context. During the making of the script we considered baig and sheikh too, but in the end it turned into sharif.
This brought back so many FMA memories…
I have a thing for the word “establishment”.
I’m actually applying this to myself.
… when suddenly tentacle hentai.
It can’t be helped.
The ending isn’t doable with all the talking and noise over it. I could do about half of it, but not the whole thing. Next week.
Suite as in the musical suite. I’m looking forward to it.
Ammon and Amon are not the same. Amon is the Egyptian diety while Ammon is a kingdom if I’m not mistaken.
Yeah, the romanization when it comes to ancient deities and names can be confusing. That’s why I said “I’ve seen it refer to both”. I don’t know which the tower’s name is actually supposed to refer to, so I chose the most ambiguous one.
I see. Since the tower’s name refers to the djinn inside, I personally prefer Amon as the translation. But maybe because I’m used to translation used by manga scanlation team.
I also think Amon should be Amon. Character names are taken from 1001 Nights or the Ars Goetia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_characters_within_One_Thousand_and_One_Nights
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_demons_in_the_Ars_Goetia
Should come in handy 🙂
@Kuroneko
Yeah that’s why a lot of people were confused at GotWoot release because the names got changed. Vale is the name for Alibaba actually Alibaba? pretty sure Ammon is Amon, but genie can go either way I think..?
I don’t know about Ammon, but Ali Baba is Ali Baba for sure. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Baba
I see, the Magi Official anime website has Alibaba as this btw. アリババ
I don’t know japanese and all, but it seems like one word; however, I’ll go with your judgement on this as you know Japanese.
It’d be written as アリババ whether it was one word or two. However, “Ali Baba” is generally written as two words.
The “Arabic” sign isn’t really Arabic. I’m pretty sure it’s just made up.than being any other language.They use څ, which I guess indicates that it’s from Southeast Asia according to wiki, but it mostly doesn’t make sense. There are no spaces to indicate where the words start and end, or actually, it looks like there are spaces between every letter, which is even worse because that would mean it’s obviously no longer handwritten. Who would write a cursive script with spaces between all the letters? Also, a lot of the letters are written with the wrong form or incorrectly. It’s a fairly modern style of Arabic too, which defeats the purpose of trying to make it seem really old.
Also, I’d say Alibaba is probably better. It’s clearly a reference to Ali Baba, but his name isn’t the same. I haven’t read the manga, but many sites such as http://magi.wikia.com/wiki/Alibaba_Saluja say his name is アリババサルージャ or Alibaba Saluja, which is funny because Saluja doesn’t even seem like an Arabic name. It’s Hindi or something. Anyway, with Ali Baba, his first name is Ali and his last name is Baba. In Magi, the character’s first name is Alibaba and his last name is Saluja or whatever.
Oh, I forgot to mention, but “Aladdin” is two words in Arabic as well. So you may as well write that correctly if you’re going to write Alibaba as two words.
The Amon part is funny too. I think they’re just taking random references from everywhere. Amon is apparently Egyptian, I’d guess Balbadd is a reference to Baghdad, and the writing seems to be from Southeast Asia. None of these are even close geographically.
I should really read everything before commenting. Anyway, as for the debate about Sharif and Sheikh, I’d say Sheikh seems better based on the first episodes, but not too much about Jamil is revealed in the first episode. To me, Sharif is more for social status and Sheikh is more for political status. He was sending wine to the leader of another town, so I’d guess he’s doing that on behalf of the town he lives in, but like I said, we don’t know that much about him yet. But then again, I guess Sheikh could have more of a religious connotation, but it doesn’t have to just be religious. Said would mean sir. Baig is not Arabic.
It’s common; a lot of two-worded Arabic names are turned to single word in English so it doesn’t matter. I’d say all of them are valid choices 🙂
The arabic script is clearly the result of someone switching their word processor to some arabic-script language and then pressing random letters. A couple letters are connected like they would be in real writing, but they’re clearly not connected as words but just as happenstance.
Ugh! Where did my other comment go?! I had to re-write it all over again (or what I could recall of it) 🙁
I’m totally impressed, Trieze. Are you by any chance Arab? 😛
>I can’t read that script. Is it real Arabic or just random crap?
Random gibberish crap using real Arabic letters, it’s my first language so I can easily confirm that. They are basically trying to mimic ancient Arabic manuscripts in Kufic style http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kufic
>but in the end it turned into sharif.
LOL at first glance, I thought “Sharif” is the guy’s first name. It’s a legit Arabic name and it’s being used to this day (as a matter of fact, one of my friends is named Sharif).
On a serious note, I don’t know if there is a proper equivalent Arabic title/position for feudal lords, neither I know much about Jamil’s role and if “sharif” is the perfect title choice for him but let’s just hope it’s the right decision, at least for now.
> I’m still not entirely sure about their relationship.
Based on the very first chapters; they only met that day… and Alibaba was clearly over-exhausted to kick Aladdin out.
>http://notredreviews.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/xscreen-00859.jpg?w=1024&h=576
Kudos! Jinni جني is the singular form of jinn as you’ve pointed before.
It was auto-filtered as spam. Sorry about that.
Will you be keeping the names as is in your releases like you did with episode 1 or will you change Ammon > Amon. Lots of people have been saying Amon throughout magi discussion threads, so I’m confused.
Maybe, it’s not like it matters.