Random: On Translation

[nebroadwe]

Occasionally people ask me -- actually, they tend to pop up, red pen in hand, and point it out as an error -- why I write the name of Edward Elric's hometown as "Riesenbuhl" in my fanfiction. Well, it's not an error; it's a deliberate choice. Here's why I made it:

The katakana Arakawa uses to represent this name are リゼンブール (i.e. RI ZE N BUU RU, roughly pronounced [leezenbool]). Already the would-be translator is in trouble, because the Japanese liquid consonant isn't quite an "r" or an "l" as we Anglophones pronounce them, but sits somewhere between the two. As anyone who's read the manga Death Note knows, for instance, the English word "killer" and the Japanese onomatopoeic word キラ (i.e KIRA -- bright, shiny) are all but homophones to Japanese speakers. That said, final ル (RU) frequently transcribes a terminal "l" when moving from western languages like English to Japanese -- e.g. "Al" becomes アル, ARU. Arakawa tends not to invent names for her characters and settings, but to borrow them from Indo-European languages (e.g. Van Hohenheim, Amestris). And Riesenbuhl happens to be a German place name which is roughly pronounced [reezenbool] and would, therefore, logically be transcribed into Japanese as ... リゼンブール. As they say in my neck of the woods, "Bingo!"

I can't take credit for this idea; I remember seeing it in someone else's 'fic, probably on Scimitar Smile somewhere, back when I first began poking about in the Fullmetal Alchemist fandom. By then "Risembool" was established in Funimation's subtitles and in most print translations I ran across (fannish and official). But I stuck with "Riesenbuhl" because it's a) linguistically defensible; and b) aesthetically much more pleasing -- "Risembool/Resembool" just looks like a random collection of sounds to me, not a likely name in a milieu with places called "Rush Valley" and "Central" and "Briggs". But I am not a professional translator, so I don't insist on the correctness of my conclusion -- and would be happy to hear from anyone who has more expertise in this area than I. Always eager to learn, me.

ADDENDUM: I don't have a full etymology for Riesenbuhl -- the first element probably means "really big" (from Riese, giant), but the second element is trickier. I'm inclined to think it means "hill", but I'm not sure. Anyone who can help out with this one is also welcome to leave a comment.

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[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

And knowing is -- yeesh, no, let's not go there. :-)