Ask John: Why Are There Different DBZ Name Translations?

Question:
Why do some characters in DBZ have more than one Japanese name? I’ve seen Freeza called “Freezer” and “Furiza,” and I’ve seen Krillin called “Kuririn” and “Klilyn.” What’s up with that?

Answer:
This actually isn’t a case of characters having more than one name. It’s a question of translation. Japanese is a phonetic language. That means that Japanese language bases spelling on the way words sound. Therefore, English translations are at the discretion of the translator. Furthermore, Japanese has no “L” sound. The “R” sound serves as both “R” and “L” in Japanese because, with a Japanese accent, the “R/L” consonant sounds like a rolling “R” or “L.”

“Freezer,” “Freiza,” and “Furiza,” all have the same basic sound. They all refer to the same character. Each of them is an equally valid, but different attempt to write a Japanese sound in English letters. In the case of “Krillin, Kuririn and Klilyn” if you consider that “R” and “L” are the same thing and pronounce the “R/L” sound together, you’ll see that the sound of each of these translations, when spoken aloud, is essentially the same.

Here’s a pretty good example. Let’s take the name Street Fighter. In Japanese, it’s spelled “Su-to-li-to Fu-a-i-ta.” When you pronounce it quickly in Japanese, you get “Storeet Fuiter,” translated as “Street Fighter.”

When you consider this, basic Japanese language is relatively very easy to learn to read and write, but very difficult to speak and understand because of complex Japanese grammar, word placement, accent and stress, syllabification and use of suffixes and prefixes. For example, My Neighbor Totoro is “Tonari no Totoro.” “Tonari” means “neighborhood,” and “no” means “of.” Therefore, different people could translate this title as “Totoro’s Neighborhood,” “Neighborhood of Totoro,” or “Totoro of the Neighborhood.” So you can see the difficulty in translating Japanese into logical, literal English, and variations in English spellings of Japanese names.

One of our readers has kindly provided these informative corrections to my above statements. Thanks go to Avarra for taking the time to share some insights.

1. The Japanese name for “Street Fighter” is “Sutoriito Faitaa.” Although “fa” is not a sound natural to the Japanese language, it has been recently adopted for use in foreign words.

2. “No” does not mean “of,” or at least not in the sense stated in the column. When used to denote possession, “no” most directly corresponds to the English suffix “‘s.” For instance, to say “his book” in Japanese, you would say “kare (he/him) no hon (book).” In the case of “Tonari no Totoro,” however, the “no” is used to make an adjective out of “tonari,” making the title literally something like “Neighbor Totoro,” “Next-Door Totoro,” or “Next-to-Me Totoro.” This grammatical construction is quite common in Japanese – to say “green book,” for instance, you would say “midori (green) no hon.”