On Genshin's use of Latin
Dec. 22nd, 2024 09:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
incompleterulerThis is a post I've been wanting to make for some time now and that I will most likely come back to in the future. The more I see, the more I feel the need to talk about... Genshin's use of Latin.
I am well aware that using Latin (and sometimes Ancient Greek too) really adds to a fantasy setting to the public eye. It's recognisable enough that people know something is in Latin, but not well-known to an extent most people will understand what it's saying at first glance because, well, who even speaks Latin? (And as a quick disclaimer, I do not speak Latin per se, but I do know enough to be like... well, that's not how this language works.) As beautiful as it is, it's not something many people study.
And that's how you end up with cases like Genshin's, where you get things that sound really cool until you read them twice, which is exactly what happened to me some time ago and why I wanted to talk about this topic. I'll be mostly focusing on the constellations but I'll also mention a few other things I noticed. This isn't meant as a big ''actually, none of you people have any idea about this''; I just want to explain what things are wrong and why. I understand that game developers aren't going to study Latin for years just to write one or two words about a character that not many people will pay attention to because, really, it's not like the constellation names are relevant in any way to the gameplay experience.Unless you're me lol.
On Constellations
To begin with, I have to say that although I've had my eye on this topic for a while now, I hadn't thought about the constellations names possibly being different in Chinese. I don't know Chinese, so I had to take the translations available in the Genshin Wiki as reference, but it really shocks me how much they changed some of them (and it's not just the English version that did this! I'll elaborate on this later.). For example, some of the constellations that refer to specific species of animals are completely different depending on the language. Take Mualani, whose constellation in Latin refers to a species of seal that isn't the same as the one in Chinese. I genuinely do not understand how this happened; if there's a logical explanation for this, someone please enlighten me in the comments.
There's also some cases where I think the adaptation is cool, but definitely gets lost in... not translation, but lost in ignorance, maybe? In the sense that they make sense, but are referencing things that probably aren't common knowledge and it makes me sad how most people will probably miss the reference. Such is the case with Alhaitham's constellation, Vultur Volans, which literally means ''Flying Vulture'', but was the name the Romans used to refer to Aquila, a real constellation in the night sky. Aquila means ''Eagle'', and the CN name for Alhaitham's constellation is, according to the wiki, ''Sky Falcon''. So it's clear what they were trying to convey there. It's such a cool detail, but sadly it's not something most people will catch. I do have to say that this specific case is explained in the Wiki page for his constellation, but still.
Then there are instances that are just like... that's not even Latin lol. Mona's constellation, Astrolabos, is Ancient Greek for ''astrolabe''; Eula's Aphros Delos is also in Greek; and some of them mix both Latin and Ancient Greek which is something that kind of bothers me but that's because I'm a nerd. Take Furina's Animula Choragi, which the Wiki translates as ''Little Soul of the Choregos'', a choregos being a term used to refer to someone who, put simply, leads a choir. This is something the Russian version of Genshin simplified as ''Kapellmeister'', a German word that I feel is much more explanatory than Animula Choragi.
Despite how complicated this name might sound, at least they used the Latin word derived from the Greek one, and taking declension into account, Animula Choragi perfectly translates to ''Little Soul of the Choregos'' — Animula is in Nominative and Choragi is in Genitive. As they should be. I'm not going to explain declension in detail right now but, well, that means they definitely kept this in mind with every constellation, right? ...Right?
Yeah, no, it's been months and I'm STILL confused about why Beidou's constellation is Victor Mare when it should be Victor Maris if they wanted it to mean ''Conqueror of the Sea'', like the Wiki suggests. Like yeah, Mare can be Ablative but WHY would you use Ablative when you can use Genitive. What were they trying to do there. It doesn't even have anything to do with her constellation's Chinese name so I have NO idea of what they were trying to say there. To me it just sounds like ''Conqueror Sea''. I could accept ''Conqueror in the Sea'' but like... why? Why would you make it sound like that?? What the hell is going on???
Not to mention the sudden changes between languages. I mentioned the case with the Russian TL of Furina's constellation earlier, but it's not just that. Mika's constellation Palumbus refers to a wood pigeon and is kept as Wood Pigeon in most languages, and then Italian decides to change it to Columba Silvae, which is Latin for ''Dove of the Woods'', but woods as in... a forest. Well, it can still mean wood, but why change it in the first place? Or Indonesian suddenly naming Wanderer's constellation Errabundus instead of Peregrinus, which is an ADJECTIVE that means wandering. Which is actually more accurate to Wanderer's name, because peregrinus is more like... a pilgrim, someone who's wandering but has a set destination — a beautiful detail, yes, but it's not true to Wanderer's name or story or anything and I just. I'm so confused. Who is naming these. The original Chinese means Vagrant according to the Wiki. What's happening here.
Other Inconsistencies
I also want to highlight their inconsistency with some words. I don't understand why Childe's constellation is Monoceros Caeli, ''caeli'' coming from ''caelum'' (''sky'' but specifically ''heaven''), and then the sudden switch in the soundtrack Polumnia Omnia where they say ''coelica'', derived from ''coelum'', which means the same but is in a more recent spelling instead of the Classical one. So I guess it's not... wrong, per se, but it's weird and confusing and I don't understand how they ended up doing that.
Edit 29/12/24: I can't believe I forgot to mention another inconsistency between translations! This one's about the use of singular and plural forms, most notably with "Fatui". You might've noticed the word "Fatuus" coming up sometimes instead of the other one; this is the singular of the word fatui. This is also the case of Gnosis (singular) vs. Gnoses (plural). Interestingly enough, the Spanish version of the game does not make a difference between these and always uses the plural form Fatui + the singular form Gnosis. I can't speak for any other Genshin versions as I've only played in those two languages, so unfortunately I don't know if this is an exception or if it happens more often.
I think I'm going to wrap up this post now, but as I mentioned at the beginning I will probably come back to this in the future to edit it. If there's anything I got wrong please do tell me in the comments! I'm really just very passionate about Latin and Ancient Greek and I had to type out my thoughts about everything because I have so much to say.
Also, I understand that this might come across as quite the technical post — I tried not to go too much into details, but I understand that I might have unintentionally done that so please let me know if I should explain anything.
Thank you so much for reading until the end, and see you next time!
I am well aware that using Latin (and sometimes Ancient Greek too) really adds to a fantasy setting to the public eye. It's recognisable enough that people know something is in Latin, but not well-known to an extent most people will understand what it's saying at first glance because, well, who even speaks Latin? (And as a quick disclaimer, I do not speak Latin per se, but I do know enough to be like... well, that's not how this language works.) As beautiful as it is, it's not something many people study.
And that's how you end up with cases like Genshin's, where you get things that sound really cool until you read them twice, which is exactly what happened to me some time ago and why I wanted to talk about this topic. I'll be mostly focusing on the constellations but I'll also mention a few other things I noticed. This isn't meant as a big ''actually, none of you people have any idea about this''; I just want to explain what things are wrong and why. I understand that game developers aren't going to study Latin for years just to write one or two words about a character that not many people will pay attention to because, really, it's not like the constellation names are relevant in any way to the gameplay experience.
On Constellations
To begin with, I have to say that although I've had my eye on this topic for a while now, I hadn't thought about the constellations names possibly being different in Chinese. I don't know Chinese, so I had to take the translations available in the Genshin Wiki as reference, but it really shocks me how much they changed some of them (and it's not just the English version that did this! I'll elaborate on this later.). For example, some of the constellations that refer to specific species of animals are completely different depending on the language. Take Mualani, whose constellation in Latin refers to a species of seal that isn't the same as the one in Chinese. I genuinely do not understand how this happened; if there's a logical explanation for this, someone please enlighten me in the comments.
There's also some cases where I think the adaptation is cool, but definitely gets lost in... not translation, but lost in ignorance, maybe? In the sense that they make sense, but are referencing things that probably aren't common knowledge and it makes me sad how most people will probably miss the reference. Such is the case with Alhaitham's constellation, Vultur Volans, which literally means ''Flying Vulture'', but was the name the Romans used to refer to Aquila, a real constellation in the night sky. Aquila means ''Eagle'', and the CN name for Alhaitham's constellation is, according to the wiki, ''Sky Falcon''. So it's clear what they were trying to convey there. It's such a cool detail, but sadly it's not something most people will catch. I do have to say that this specific case is explained in the Wiki page for his constellation, but still.
Then there are instances that are just like... that's not even Latin lol. Mona's constellation, Astrolabos, is Ancient Greek for ''astrolabe''; Eula's Aphros Delos is also in Greek; and some of them mix both Latin and Ancient Greek which is something that kind of bothers me but that's because I'm a nerd. Take Furina's Animula Choragi, which the Wiki translates as ''Little Soul of the Choregos'', a choregos being a term used to refer to someone who, put simply, leads a choir. This is something the Russian version of Genshin simplified as ''Kapellmeister'', a German word that I feel is much more explanatory than Animula Choragi.
Despite how complicated this name might sound, at least they used the Latin word derived from the Greek one, and taking declension into account, Animula Choragi perfectly translates to ''Little Soul of the Choregos'' — Animula is in Nominative and Choragi is in Genitive. As they should be. I'm not going to explain declension in detail right now but, well, that means they definitely kept this in mind with every constellation, right? ...Right?
Yeah, no, it's been months and I'm STILL confused about why Beidou's constellation is Victor Mare when it should be Victor Maris if they wanted it to mean ''Conqueror of the Sea'', like the Wiki suggests. Like yeah, Mare can be Ablative but WHY would you use Ablative when you can use Genitive. What were they trying to do there. It doesn't even have anything to do with her constellation's Chinese name so I have NO idea of what they were trying to say there. To me it just sounds like ''Conqueror Sea''. I could accept ''Conqueror in the Sea'' but like... why? Why would you make it sound like that?? What the hell is going on???
Not to mention the sudden changes between languages. I mentioned the case with the Russian TL of Furina's constellation earlier, but it's not just that. Mika's constellation Palumbus refers to a wood pigeon and is kept as Wood Pigeon in most languages, and then Italian decides to change it to Columba Silvae, which is Latin for ''Dove of the Woods'', but woods as in... a forest. Well, it can still mean wood, but why change it in the first place? Or Indonesian suddenly naming Wanderer's constellation Errabundus instead of Peregrinus, which is an ADJECTIVE that means wandering. Which is actually more accurate to Wanderer's name, because peregrinus is more like... a pilgrim, someone who's wandering but has a set destination — a beautiful detail, yes, but it's not true to Wanderer's name or story or anything and I just. I'm so confused. Who is naming these. The original Chinese means Vagrant according to the Wiki. What's happening here.
Other Inconsistencies
I also want to highlight their inconsistency with some words. I don't understand why Childe's constellation is Monoceros Caeli, ''caeli'' coming from ''caelum'' (''sky'' but specifically ''heaven''), and then the sudden switch in the soundtrack Polumnia Omnia where they say ''coelica'', derived from ''coelum'', which means the same but is in a more recent spelling instead of the Classical one. So I guess it's not... wrong, per se, but it's weird and confusing and I don't understand how they ended up doing that.
Edit 29/12/24: I can't believe I forgot to mention another inconsistency between translations! This one's about the use of singular and plural forms, most notably with "Fatui". You might've noticed the word "Fatuus" coming up sometimes instead of the other one; this is the singular of the word fatui. This is also the case of Gnosis (singular) vs. Gnoses (plural). Interestingly enough, the Spanish version of the game does not make a difference between these and always uses the plural form Fatui + the singular form Gnosis. I can't speak for any other Genshin versions as I've only played in those two languages, so unfortunately I don't know if this is an exception or if it happens more often.
I think I'm going to wrap up this post now, but as I mentioned at the beginning I will probably come back to this in the future to edit it. If there's anything I got wrong please do tell me in the comments! I'm really just very passionate about Latin and Ancient Greek and I had to type out my thoughts about everything because I have so much to say.
Also, I understand that this might come across as quite the technical post — I tried not to go too much into details, but I understand that I might have unintentionally done that so please let me know if I should explain anything.
Thank you so much for reading until the end, and see you next time!
no subject
Date: 2024-12-27 03:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-27 10:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-04 09:37 pm (UTC)(Sorry for the awkwardly late reply, I kind of had a week and it slipped away from me ^^;;)