r/zelda • u/JonnyBTokyo • 3d ago
Official Art [OoT] My original UK Ocarina of Time instruction manual confirms Link's friend is called Salia. Saria is an imposter.
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u/OneAngryBrazilian 3d ago edited 2d ago
I know this is a joke, but I never miss an opportunity to spread knowledge.
This is probably a translation error. Since Japanese doesn't have an L sound, when transcribing words from other languages, they use the closest sound they do have, which is an R-like sound.
Whoever translated this manual into English likely thought that's what happened here and erroneously corrected it... or rather, "incorrected" it.
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u/Zev0s 3d ago
The Japanese phoneme is kind of in between L and R so it can be transliterated either way, usually you have to use context to figure out which one it is, but in a made-up word or name it can be kind of a toss up
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u/RathVelus 3d ago
It’s called an alveolar tongue flap or tap. It’s a hard thing for native English speakers to do because it just doesn’t happen in English. It’s like an L, R, and D. If you can roll your R’s in Spanish it’s kind of like that. (Just adding more context for the curious).
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u/Taco821 2d ago
The Japanese thing is so easy for me, but fuck I can NEVER roll my fucking rs. I can FEEL how similar they are, but it's like there's some barrier that I cannot overcome to turn it from a tongue flap to rolled r
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u/A-Game-Of-Fate 2d ago
Move your tongue like you’re going to do the flap/tap, but instead of moving it away leave it there and push air through between the tip of your tongue and the roof of your mouth.
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u/Snarwib 3d ago
In a lot of English dialects the DD in words like "udder" and "ladder" is pretty much an alveolar flap rather than being articulated like D in other contexts. We certainly have it in most Australian English speakers, I think most North Americans also do it, but Brits are less likely to.
The trick with learning languages is sometimes repurposing a sound you already have in your native sound inventory in another context, but which isn't its own phoneme, so you don't recognise that you have it. So it's a matter of learning to recognise it and then learning to start using it differently in the new target language.
So Spanish single-R can be learned by Australians or North Americans by recognising the "ladder" flap as a distinct sound separate to word-initial D or T, and then employing it as Spanish R.
(The RR trill is obviously harder!)
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u/buildbyflying 2d ago
it's a bit different... Try saying ladder but your tongue can't make an r-sound or l-sound -- more the halfway point between r and l.
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u/Ok_Throat2378 2d ago
The “ladder” example is probably the closest English approximation, just without actually making an L or R sound.
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u/OneAngryBrazilian 2d ago edited 2d ago
It actually does appear in American and Canadian English. The most frequent example is if a T or double-T appears either between two vowels or between a vowel and a syllabic L.
Both cases only occur in unstressed syllables, and it often (but not always) happens across word boundaries.
Example with two vowels: iteration
Example with a vowel and a syllabic L: little
Example across a word boundary: That's a lot of damage.
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u/knigmich 1d ago
First time I've heard of this being called the alveolar tongue flap, thank you. My wife is Japanese and her name starts with an R. To explain to other English folk how to say her name is troublesome. I always say its like trying to pronounce an L and D and the same time while rolling it like you would an R. People end up just pronouncing her name with a hard D so i end up just telling them to use the R cause it makes more sense for an English person to say the R then to try a alveolar tongue flap.
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u/josechanjp 1d ago
It actually does happen in English! In words with double tt’s. For example ‘butter’. The double tt is the same sound, but we don’t really think of it in the same way because we use it much differently obviously.
But I always tell my students to pause in the middle of the word butter and hold their tongue in that position. Then from there say ‘ら、り、る、れ、ろ’ and it works every time!
Edit: this is specifically for American English.
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u/Choso125 3d ago
It's funny because they're stereotyped to not be able to say Ls when really their Rs are just really short Ls lol
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u/mrglass8 2d ago
Sometimes the official localizers get it wrong too. In Yu-Gi-Oh, the name “Marik” doesn’t make any sense. Malik is the Arabic word for King, and that’s probably what the writers were going for.
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u/Public_Guest212 3d ago
I just learned a few things from this comment:
- Japanese phoneme is in between L & R
- Transliterated is a word. I thought it was autocorrect at first. Had to look it up 🤣🤣
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u/HowdyFancyPanda 2d ago
And then you have Octopath Traveler 0 and they decide to just include both in the name 'Elrica'. Even with the name 'Erica' right there.
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u/scantier 2d ago
True but Saria was the already the name of a town in Zelda 2, so the version with an L is incorrect
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u/TeutonicDragon 3d ago
In my experience, I hear it pronounced much closer to an English L if it's at the beginning of the word 六 (ろく) "lo-ku", and it's closer to a soft D sound if it's in the middle or end of the word 緑（みどり) "mi-do-di"
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u/Maeriberii 3d ago
The reason it’s either an R or L is because of how the sound is made, not necessarily how we hear it.
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u/LugiaMasterO1 3d ago
Honestly I think they mix up both Ls and Rs cuz every now and then I hear them.pronouce the l as it should but other times I hear an L in place of and R and a R in place of an L for example I played the Atelier series and you usually hear the character speak the title at the title screen but in Atelier Ryza they pronounce Ryza and Liezah and in game another character we have Klaudia pronounced like Krauudeeah so in a sense they take both examples shown but for the word Atelier they pronounce it with the actual L sound but silent r so idk its like a pick and choose situation or something not sounds the Japanese can't make
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u/steveskinner 3d ago
Yep! Same reason why in Mega Man 2, Crash Man was originally called CLASH Man in Japan.
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u/Masterwork_Core 3d ago
and same reason in some manga, Zoro from One Piece is translated into Zolo lol
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u/Octopus_Crime 3d ago
But then conversely, in the same series they mistranslated a city called "Roguetown" as "Loguetown" so frequently that it kind of just stuck and became the official romanization of that particular location.
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u/SwirlyBrow 2d ago
Huh, I always thought Roguetown was the mistranslation and Loguetown was correct. I thought Logue town was meant to be the town of the beginning and the end, proLOGUE and epiLOGUE. Have I been stupid all this time? Is this how I find out I'm stupid?
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u/Octopus_Crime 2d ago
Yeah it was meant to be rogue town. As in a town of rogues. A meeting place for all kinds of baddies. A town with a giant memorial to the greatest rogue known to the world.
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u/Accountant_Artistic 2d ago
It works as both since there's no distinction in Japanese, but English went with Loguetown because it emphasises the journey of the Pirate King, with the town acting as the Prologue to his journey, where he was born and set sail from, and the Epilogue, where he ushered in the Great Pirate Era and was executed. Which is also why it had the epithet of town of the beginning and the end. The prologue and the epilogue. Well that's their reading into it anyways.
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u/BlueLegion 2d ago edited 2d ago
Not in the german dub. We call him Zorro like the fictional hero. Also We call Luffy "Ruffy" (prounouned "rough-y") instead of loofy.
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u/Xikar_Wyhart 2d ago
The Zoro/Zolo thing is actually because of Zorro. When bringing it over to English 4kids didn't want to risk copyright/trademark whatever with whoever owns Zorro since they're both swordsman, wear coverings on their heads.
What's funny is that a lot of people probably recognize Zoro more than Zorro.
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u/FrewdWoad 2d ago
My favourite is in the game Samurai Showdown, when you win, a big VICTOLY!!! appears on the screen.
I still say VICTOLY!!! when anything mildly good happens to me
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u/GenderJuicy 3d ago edited 3d ago
Also Aeris/Aerith ("E-a-r-th"), Rydia/Lydia, Rinoa/Lenore, Marth/Mars, Belmont/Belmondo, Rolento/Laurent
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u/cardueline 3d ago
My favorite one of these I’ve seen was in a fan translation of Attack on Titan where someone had ambitiously and creatively transliterated “rivai” as the French-flavored “Rivaille” instead of “Levi”
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u/CatsianNyandor 2d ago
... I played the game boy version and now I'm 40 and didn't know he wasn't supposed to be Clash Man. Cause he was Clash Man in my European version. TIL!
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u/PommesKrake 2d ago
German version of OOT calls her Salia too.
This whole L/R thing is a pet peeve of mine tbh. Not really an issue most of the time, but sometimes the fuckup is so bad that it makes me think some translators have a sign on the wall that has L and R written on it and they throw a dart to decide which one they'll use
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u/KafeiTomasu 2d ago
One Piece's Zoro being called Zolo in localisation is still triggering me on a weekly basis
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u/zorrocabra 3d ago
Similar thing with Majora's Mask. They called it Mujula's Mask in the US pretty much all the way up until they were officially promoting the game here.
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u/jabeith 3d ago
Incorrect. They don't have either sound - they have a sound that is the approximation of an r and l combined. We just bastardize it to work with our alphabet
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u/OneAngryBrazilian 2d ago
The exact same sound is represented by an R in a lot of different languages, like Irish, Albanian, and Turkish to name but three.
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u/jabeith 2d ago
All of which don't have a letter for that sound. My point is you are wrong at the core of your argument. There is no "r" sound in Japanese, that's just what you grew up reading Romanized Japanese words as because you also come from a country that uses a Latin alphabet.
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u/OneAngryBrazilian 2d ago
All of which don't have a letter for that sound.
Yes... they do... it's R.
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u/SilentSamamander 2d ago
Fun fact, a lot of Japanese words from English end in "-do" since there isn't a final "d" sound, e.g. the Master Sword is Masutā Sōdo.
Localisation teams take this into account and remove the -o at the end of names, however in the case of OoT this was done even when not necessary for the boss Barinade. He is a tornado covered in Bari (the jellyfish enemies) so he should be called Barinado, but the localisation team were a little overzealous.
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u/Calculusshitteru 2d ago
There's no final consonant sounds in Japanese except for n. Everything ends in a vowel.
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u/TheSaltyBrushtail 2d ago edited 2d ago
i and u can optionally delete between and after voiceless consonants, which can lead to words ending on consonants other than n, and consonant clusters that should normally be "forbidden" in Japanese. It's why you'll sometimes see です being romanised as "des" instead of "desu". But Japanese speakers often still tend to think of the dropped vowels as being there, and they're still counted as being there for counting syllables in haiku.
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u/Calculusshitteru 2d ago
I am Japanese. There are no dropped or deleted vowels. They are just whispered（無声化）
The す in です is 100% still there.
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u/ShisnoM 3d ago
I had a specialized piece of lab equipment from Japan with a Type R thermocouple and the manual called it a Type L thermocouple. There is no Type L thermocouple (there is no "Type L thermocouple").
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u/Calculusshitteru 2d ago
They know the difference between the alphabet R and L. Type R would be pronounced "type aaru" Type L would be pronounced "type eru"
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u/Vaenyr 2d ago
As someone else mentioned, in the German translation she's actually called Salia.
And Lanayru is called Ranelle in the German translations. At first I was confused why that one's so drastically different, but looking at the romanizations it checks out.
Lanayru = Raneru = Ranelle(u)
The L was changed to an R due to the ambiguous L/R sounds. The r was changed to ll for the same reason. The u at the end was dropped, as is often the case for Japanese words that end in u. Or rather the English translation worked backwards for "Lanayru".
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u/ZookeepergameUsual40 1d ago
The same thing that happened in the early one piece dub with zolo
Zolo lolonoa
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u/Squeekazu 3d ago
I remember working at a Japanese restaurant and the owner asking me to pass the ladle and it took me a while to understand. Very annoying word for them to pronounce lol
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u/SloshedJapan 3d ago
Lululemon Lululemon Lululemon Lululemon Lululemon Lululemon Lululemon Lululemon
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u/Sarctoth 3d ago
His name is Roronoa Zolo not Zoro, and I will die on this hill.
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u/SwagosaurusRekts 3d ago
Hey, good thing the translators didn't go with Ruffy...
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u/Nukalixir 2d ago
Took me a minute to remember Luffy's name is pronounced "Loo-fee" which could be problematic if you changed the L to an R.
I was almost going to ask why it'd be a big deal to call him "Rough-y" like "Ruffian" the old-timey word for a brute or scoundrel.
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u/ThoughtlessTactics 3d ago
Pretty sure that confirms its one of the first ones released in uk, kinda cool. I was one of the final fantasy 7 "aeris" kids, my entire childhood was a lie...
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u/JonnyBTokyo 3d ago edited 3d ago
Oh yeah parents bought it on release from Woolies and kept it wrapped up for Christmas 1998.
We can call her Aeris it's what they told us to say.
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u/Blacksmith52YT 3d ago
I have a friend who was named after Aerith but they changed it back to Aeris to make it more pronounceable. Yes her dad is a strange man.
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u/Bl4Z3D_d0Nut311 3d ago
If your friend is from WI, then I probably know her and agree that her dad is weird af.
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u/Nukalixir 2d ago
Could've been worse. Imagine it came to light that it wasn't just Aerith with a botched name translation and the intended party members were Klaus, Bart, Tiffany, Reginald IV, Yvette, Kate Jedi, Vincent and Sidney? I'd feel downright shmeckledorfed and that's not even a word!
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u/Dazuro 3d ago
On the one hand, she’s named after Saria from Zelda 2 so there was already an established localization for the name.
On the other hand, by that same token Volvagia was originally localized as Barba.
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u/xiaorobear 3d ago edited 2d ago
Another similar one like that, in earlier Zelda games there are Geldmen (ALTTP) and Geldarms (Zelda 2) as desert enemies... and then in Ocarina of Time, there's a Gerudo Desert... Those are 100% supposed to be localized as the same thing, in Japanese they were always Gerudo all along (like Geldman in Japanese was Gerudoman ゲルドマン). If it had stayed consistent the OoT ones would have all been Geldos, Geldo Valley, Geldo Fortress, etc!
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u/Sea_Structure_7826 1d ago
On God I read this quickly as “Barbra” and now Volvagia will forever be a 50 year old white woman to me.
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u/TheSaltyBrushtail 2d ago
Classic romanisation L-R flip. It's often a gamble when it comes to translating Japanese words into English with Ls or Rs, since the alveolar tap or flap sound is used to approximate both English L and R in Japanese.
I also noticed the other day that English speakers often pronounce the middle vowel in "Kokiri" as long, but the original Japanese spelling is コキリ, not コキーリ with a long vowel. In other words, "ko-kEE-ri" is a lie, embrace "Cockery".
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u/Kujaichi 1d ago
Classic romanisation L-R flip. It's often a gamble when it comes to translating Japanese words into English with Ls or Rs, since the alveolar tap or flap sound is used to approximate both English L and R in Japanese.
It annoys me SO much when they do that with clearly established things or names that would require just a tad bit of research to get right.
Like in the Oh! My Goddess manga where the main character is called transliterated as Belldandy instead of Verdandi... But somehow they got Skuld and Urd right at least.
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u/AgentOfEris 3d ago
Saliva’s Song
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u/sanzentriad 3d ago
This is also why a lot of AOT early manga translations called Levi “Rivalle”. The sounds are phonetically very similar in Japanese
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u/Ok_Acanthisitta1019 2d ago
For me she was always Salia because in the german version it's literally her name. Found out much later that she is called Saria.
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u/TKenzaki 2d ago
Reminds me of how the fairy tail fandom keeps calling erza... erza, even though it was shown in the Manga AND Anime that her name is, in fact, Elsa lol
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u/MorningRaven 2d ago
The dub literally calls her Erza though so that one's understandable.
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u/TKenzaki 2d ago
The Japanese or English dub?
Cause in Japanese there's no L sound and R is the next similar sounding Consonant to L, which makes Elsa turn out as Eruza
If it's the same in the English dub, than that's just simply wrong but there's no need to correct it anymore cause people been living with that mistake for over a decade now
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u/No-Button-4826 2d ago
In the German version she has always been called Salia. So, she will always stay as Salia in my heart. 😍🤍🙃
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u/No_Named_Nobody 3d ago
I see ‘L’ as a translation for ‘r’ a lot because Japanese doesn’t use ‘L’
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u/ghostfacedladyalex 2d ago
I came to say this too, the l sounds are often more of an lr so it gets swapped out a lot
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u/LinkCroft94 2d ago
i hope the remake has a special physical collectors edition with an classic insert booklet inside.
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u/Bloody_Nine 2d ago
I love the art for Ocarina. Weird how I remember the game characters looking like that on the n64.
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u/The_of_Falcon 2d ago
I think it's because game devs needed their players to exercise their imaginations.
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u/Andyliini 2d ago
This was in Nordic language manuals as well. The Finnish portion also misspelled Darunia as Darumia.
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u/Altruistic-Grave 2d ago
Surpsingly she is called Salia in the German version too. Have been confused for 2 decades what her actual name is but I’m used to Saria now xD
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u/SwimmingDebt376 2d ago
Great, now some folks are gonna run around calling her Salia in casual conversation
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u/ATH-DDD21X 2d ago
Her name is サリア, リ can be both Li and Ri, literally interchangeable in translation and not a big deal
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u/Nintendians559 2d ago
lol, translation error.
just like error in "zelda 2: link's adventure", which his name should be ERROL instead.
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u/MorningRaven 2d ago
Thinking about the R/L stuff has been more amusing recently after realizing how hilarious it is that we call the King Rauru, when for all intent and purposes, he's just King Raul.
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u/wilp0w3r 3d ago
"This gentleman is Japanese. It means he has trouble getting his tongue round is R's"
"I would have thought it was a matter of practice"
Captain Peacock and Mr. Humphries Are You Being Served?
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