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Hiya. Glasskatana here. Just wanted to tell you that this has now become the thread for any words people want pronunciation or translation help for in FMA. First and foremost is the word Ishval as explained below by Hisshouburaiken. So ask any questions about certain words, or names, translations etc. And without further ado...
Okay, first and foremost is the katakana writing of Ishval. It is as follows: イシュヴァル
The important characters are 4 and 5: The japanese language does not have a "V" sound, so they use character 4 to represent the "v" part and the smaller 5th character to add the vowel sound.
Now, the reason all the original fansubs (and I supposed the English dub? I haven't seen it.) used "Ishbal" is because, since Japanese doesn't have a "v" sound, the closest approximation is the "b" sound. Since the translators obviosly hadn't read the manga (and unlike me, didn't live in japan and see fighting game ads featuring "The man from Ishval"), they went with what they heard.
If you look in the Perfect Guides, you'll see it romanized as "Ishval". In addition, their God/Goddess is named "Ishvala", probably after the Indian deity of the same name (FMA tends to mix & match religious stuff pretty freely).
When talking about race, one appends the word "jin" to the end of the country, race or planet to refer to the race rather than the geographic location. So American is America-jin, Saiyan is Saiya-jin, and someone from Ishval is an Ishval-jin.
Given the religious persecution thing, I used Israel as my template and dubbed them "Ishvali" (like Israeli), although Ishvalian or Ishvalan is acceptable too.
Now, given that I am but one man, the FMA community here at MH is small, and I can't stand seeing incorrect shit, I want everyone to help me. Spread this message of correctness across the world wide web and all the big FMA communities. Place it as a bonus page in your scanslations. Help me educate the legions of FMA fans!
The main characters' names have been nicely romanized for us in the Perfect Guide Books. Most have been done correctly by fansubs/scanslations/Viz, but there are several that get misspelled a lot because people romanize them directly from katakana. Here is a handy chart:
If you've seen: It should be:
-------------------------------------------------------
Ishbal(a) Ishval(a)
Shin Xing
Ling Yao Lin Yao
Mei-chan or May-chan May Chang
Ranfan or Lanfan Ran Fun
Fuu or Fu Who
Shaomei Xiao Mei
-----------------------------------------------------
If there are any other characters you want to double check on, post here.
***
Okay, first and foremost is the katakana writing of Ishval. It is as follows: イシュヴァル
The important characters are 4 and 5: The japanese language does not have a "V" sound, so they use character 4 to represent the "v" part and the smaller 5th character to add the vowel sound.
Now, the reason all the original fansubs (and I supposed the English dub? I haven't seen it.) used "Ishbal" is because, since Japanese doesn't have a "v" sound, the closest approximation is the "b" sound. Since the translators obviosly hadn't read the manga (and unlike me, didn't live in japan and see fighting game ads featuring "The man from Ishval"), they went with what they heard.
If you look in the Perfect Guides, you'll see it romanized as "Ishval". In addition, their God/Goddess is named "Ishvala", probably after the Indian deity of the same name (FMA tends to mix & match religious stuff pretty freely).
When talking about race, one appends the word "jin" to the end of the country, race or planet to refer to the race rather than the geographic location. So American is America-jin, Saiyan is Saiya-jin, and someone from Ishval is an Ishval-jin.
Given the religious persecution thing, I used Israel as my template and dubbed them "Ishvali" (like Israeli), although Ishvalian or Ishvalan is acceptable too.
Now, given that I am but one man, the FMA community here at MH is small, and I can't stand seeing incorrect shit, I want everyone to help me. Spread this message of correctness across the world wide web and all the big FMA communities. Place it as a bonus page in your scanslations. Help me educate the legions of FMA fans!
The main characters' names have been nicely romanized for us in the Perfect Guide Books. Most have been done correctly by fansubs/scanslations/Viz, but there are several that get misspelled a lot because people romanize them directly from katakana. Here is a handy chart:
If you've seen: It should be:
-------------------------------------------------------
Ishbal(a) Ishval(a)
Shin Xing
Ling Yao Lin Yao
Mei-chan or May-chan May Chang
Ranfan or Lanfan Ran Fun
Fuu or Fu Who
Shaomei Xiao Mei
-----------------------------------------------------
If there are any other characters you want to double check on, post here.
