Jan
24th
2018
Lost in translation · 12:04am Jan 24th, 2018
Behold, direct translations (So says Seth) of Chinese pony names.
Twilight Sparkle - 紫悦 (Zi Yue) - PURPLE DELIGHT
Rarity - 珍奇 (Zhen Qi) - RARE
Rainbow Dash - 云宝 (Yun Bao) - CLOUD TREASURE Fluttershy - 柔柔 (Rou Rou) - SOFTLY
Applejack - 苹果嘉儿 (Ping Guo Jiar Er) - APPLE FINE CHILD
Pinkie Pie - 碧琪 (Pi Qi) - PEACH
Princess Celestia - 宇宙公主 (Yu Zhou Gong Zhu) - SPACE PRINCESS
Princess Luna - 月亮公主 (Yue Liang Gong Zhu) - MOON PRINCESS
Princess Cadance - 音韵公主 (Yin Yun Gong Zhu) - PHONOLOGY PRINCESS
Queen Chrysalis - 幻形女王 (Huan Xing Nu Wang) - MAGIC SHAPE QUEEN
Starlight Glimmer - 星光烁烁 (Xing Guang Shuo Shuo) - TWINKLY
Sunset Shimmer - 落日霞光 (Luo Ri Xia Guang) - SUNSET GLOW
Cadance actually doesn't surprise me. She's often misspelled with an e (Cadence) which denotes the word 'cadence' relating to sound, like music or cadence of speech. Looking at it that way, it's not horribly inaccurate.
Pinkie, though... I'm lost.
Tag yourself, I'm PHONOLOGY PRINCESS.
Gives a whole new meaning to Twilight Eats a Peach.
4780377
"Bi qi" is phonetic. It's close (enough) to "pinkie" in sound, while still retaining easy pronunciation
"Dear Cloud Treasure:
Please come to the
castle. I've baked
a cake for you."
Sometimes translation reveals unexpected grace. 'Cloud Treasure' is just wonderful and could very well be a pony name in its own right.
Also I have a linguist friend who's getting called 'Phonology Princess' from now on.
MAGIC SHAPE QUEEN XD
4780385
Makes sense to me.
Ah yes, Phonology Princess, who rules the Etymology Empire with her husband Armored Delight.
Meanwhile, Twinkly broke spacetime again and did unspeakable things to pony naming conventions.
4780377
Beside the abovementioned phonetic correspondence, Chinese artwork typically depicts peaches as having a shade very close to Pinkie’s, if not quite as saturated.
My Chinese is as rusty as the surface of Mars, but I can see:
星 star, 光 light, 烁烁 twinkle. Not far off.
The "ja" part of this is phonetic, as well as meaning fine/good/perfect. -child is a common component in female names. It's actually quite clever.
宇宙 is something like the universe, the heavens etc, which is pretty close.
Er... did G3 ever get translated? Because Cloud Treasure always dresses in style...
碧 blue 琪 jade, which is odd. But it was obviously chosen for phonetics.
Honestly, these look like pretty good translations. Just remember that Chinese and English are completely alien languages to each other.
This part worries me.
I'd totally read a story where Twilight Sparkle meets Purple Delight
4780436
Both peaches and jade have fairly important connotations in Chinese culture as well, don't they?
And going by your description of Celestia's name, sounds like she is basically the ruler of everything.
I approve
I actually love Space Princess. BRB stealing
4780436 Thanks! Also, is this Mandarin or Cantonese?
4780757
Afaict, Mandarin. It looks like simplified Chinese. But I'm not knowledgeable enough to be certain.
Like Latin in the middle ages, written Chinese grew as an interlingua: a common written form for multiple spoken languages. The different dialects therefore shared a lot of their symbols, and travellers in a distant land could use them to communicate enough though they didn't speak a word of the local tongue. The emergence of Mandarin as a near-monopoly, and the great simplification project of the 1950s, shook that up. But still, a lot of the symbols are shared between the Chinese languages, along with Japanese and (to some degree) Korean. Whole sentences are very unlikely to make sense, but a lot of isolated concepts like "Moon" are easy to spot.
4780396
ALL HAIL PHONOLOGY PRINCESS
ALICORN OF PRONUNCIATION
4780895
Verily. ˈblɛsɪd biː ˈhɜː(ɹ) hɔɹn, hʊvz, ænd wɪŋz!
4780903
YES
IPA
THE HOLY LANGUAGE OF PRINCESS PHONOLOGY
I initially read 'Phonology Princess' as 'Phrenology Princess' and was very confused.
As someone who watched the English version MLP Movie with the official Chinese subtitles, I can confirm the list above is correct.
宇宙 actually means "Universe", but "Space" probably works okay in this instance.
4780757
4780760
It's Simplified Chinese, specifically for Mandarin. Written Cantonese has several words that Mandarin doesn't have, due to their different "tonal" vocubulary.