Japanese Translators Needed: Mega CD Manual (April 15, 2017)

Bandit LOAF

Long Live the Confederation!
Remember Lyle Starbuck? That's the name used for the player character in the Mega CD port of Wing Commander I's manual! It's one of at least three original Japanese-language Wing Commander publications that we'd love to explore further. Like the Super Famicom manual, the Mega CD (the Japanese name for the Sega CD) version is not Claw Marks. Instead, it's a new, full-color booklet that contains much of the same information. Are there new events in the timeline, new background about the Tiger's Claw crew? If you're familiar with Japanese and would be willing to donate your time, please contact us to help the community find out!

Want to take a look at the manual? Even if you can't read it, it still features original Wing Commander art (including a new version of the Vega Sector map and a full-color decoration chart! Pix has scanned the entire manual and it is available for download here at his site.









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Original update published on April 15, 2017
 
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I sent an e-mail saying I'd be willing to try my hand at it (I know there is at least one other japanese speaker who did a previous translation and my Japanese is far from perfect) but responses are usually slow by mail so I'll try here.

As an example of the quality (or lack thereof) of my translations I'll do a bit from each posted page.

CD cover:
For the Mega CD. Fighting pad 6B supported. You can also play with the traditional pad.

Page 24:
Standard dog fighting techniques

In a dogfight, more than shooting down enemies not getting shot down by enemies is more important.
Here we techniques for pursuing and evading enemy planes, as well as anti-cap ship attack examples.

Hard break:
1) Sharply drop your speed
2) Before the enemy plane can slow down let it over take and appear at your front
3) Accelerate, holding behind the enemy plane and attack from the rear

Page 28:

An introduction to the mechanisms of the kilrathi army:

Light fighter: Salthi

Full length: 24m Weight: 12 tonnes
Maximum speed: 480km/s Maneuverability: Excellent
Weapons: Laser canon x 2, DF, Mx1
Maximum shield thickness: 3.5cm Maximum armor thickness: 3cm

Page 30:

Introduction to the pilots of the confederation of Earths forces

Sprit (Tanaka Mariko, 1st lieutenant)
Spirit is a liberal translation of the Japanese word 'Kami' (eng: God) . Her flying and marksmanship techniques are truly divine (Pedro: note the first kanji for divine is the same as the kanji for god). Her father died in the 2634 battle of McAuliffe. Her place of origin is Hokkaido, Japan.

Rear page of manual I'm guessing:

The medals of the confederation of earth. Badges. Rank insignia.

Medals:
Bronze star
Silver star
Gold star
Golden sun
The confederation of earths medal of honour

I have time some time on my hands, should I keep going or is someone with better skills already taking a crack at it?
 
That would be fantastic! I have not seen any offers to translate yet.

There are three interesting 'Japan only' Wing Commander documents that I'm aware of:

Mega CD Manual: http://www.pixsoriginadventures.co....CC%94%E8%C2%9Fg%D7%A8%9D&v=%D4%E8%C6%CD%D4%89

Super Famicom Manual: http://www.pixsoriginadventures.co....%B2%AC%98%D0%A1%D4%C5%D1&v=%D4%E8%C6%CD%D4%89

Playstation Official Guide: http://www.pixsoriginadventures.co....%DC%AD%9B%9C%92%E3%C8%C7&v=%D4%E8%C6%CD%D4%89

Obviously anything you can help translate in there would be appreciated! I think the most valuable thing would be if you were able to read through them and see if you notice anything especially different from the PC version. For example, I know the Super Famicom timeline has extra events that aren't listed in the PC release... and the MegaCD one names the character Lyle Starbuck (Kyle Starbuck?) - stuff like that would be the most valuable thing to find!
 
Ok I'll give it a go. I have a feeling I looked at the main characters info before but I'll start off with his details from the MegaCD.

Mega CD:

Yeah the main character is Rai-ru Starbuck, callsign eagle. It probably is supposed to be Lyle, but offically that should be written without the long i sound. The only foreign name that comes up as being written as Rai-ru that I can find is Rale (apparently it is a boys name, albeit one I've never heard of).

Rale Starbuck graduated from military Academy this year with excellent grades and has just been assigned to the tigers claw. There are high expectations for his performance from now on.

The introduction focuses on the 2629 encounter with the Kilrathi. It's less detailed than clawmarks, it's basically just a brief digest of the important information, only new detail I can see is that the Kilrathi opened fire with laser canons as opposed to torpedos.

Hunters description is a little differect to claw marks, here he is accused of going off on his own and actually being frequenlty written up for violating military regulations.

Really the players name is the only big difference on the mega CD version.
 
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That's awesome! I know it seems like small things, but these little facts absolutely fascinate me.
 
I've always wondered if the 'translation' of "Lyle" got the whole K vs. L... thing mixed up and he was supposed to be Kyle Starbuck...

I.E.... for example in Castlevania...

Reon Berumondo (Leon Belmondo/Leon Belmont).
 
I've always wondered if the 'translation' of "Lyle" got the whole K vs. L... thing mixed up and he was supposed to be Kyle Starbuck...

I.E.... for example in Castlevania...

Reon Berumondo (Leon Belmondo/Leon Belmont).

K doesn't tend to get mixed up, only L and R.

In the castlevania case it's just a case of converting from romaji (roman alphabet) to katakana (45 or so character phonetic alphabet).
レオンベルモンド - Japanese doesn't differentiate between L's and R's and consonants (except for n, although no word can begin with n on it's own - hence the rules of shiritori) only exist when followed by a vowel to form a single letter - so you can't actually get any closer to Leon Belmont than what is written (well except for why the last sound is do rather than to).

ライール is harder to explain away. My best guess is that, as this is the only new information in the manual, that rather than being a typo it is just a non-English speaker picking a random name out of a hat, hence my leaning toward Rale rather than Lyle as the correct translation - but I wouldn't put any money on it. Lyle would mean one typo, Kyle would mean two.
 
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Well Lyle is a normal English name, I mean with many historical figures having the name.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyle

Can't think I've ever heard the name "Rale" before though..

Neither had I (and actually it seems Rael is the more common way of spelling it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rael), but Lyle just isn't written like that in Japanese. Granted these were pre-internet days when that information was not at your finger-tips so I wouldn't rule it out. Neither name is common, neither have I met anyone with. A quick google puts them both outside the top 1000 names, although Lyle is admittedly far more common.
Either choice seems odd to me to be honest.
 
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Either choice seems odd to me to be honest.
Well, these choices seem rather... idiosyncratic. As if somebody decided on the name just because they personally liked it, rather than for any deeper reason. I mean, how else to explain the choice of Starbuck as the surname, when to most of the Japanese audience, this would have been entirely meaningless, while to those who happened to be familiar with the 1979 BSG, it would have seemed like a cheap rip-off?
 
Well, these choices seem rather... idiosyncratic. As if somebody decided on the name just because they personally liked it, rather than for any deeper reason. I mean, how else to explain the choice of Starbuck as the surname, when to most of the Japanese audience, this would have been entirely meaningless, while to those who happened to be familiar with the 1979 BSG, it would have seemed like a cheap rip-off?

Interesting thought, I decided to follow up on it and it gave me yet another option. Trawling through japanese language sites I found the nickname La Hire, rai-ru in katakana, has been used as the actual name of a couple of anime characters - and even a type of mech.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Hire
I'd initally overlooked it despite it being the first google result of ライール as it wasn't an actual name and was written as ラ・イル but it does seem to have been adopted as a name in some pop-culture, and when used there written as ライール.
 
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