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Monster Hunter Generations: localisation blog post #2 (Astalos, Maccao and Larinoth)

Monster Hunter GenerationsWith both Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate and Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, Capcom published regular blog posts over at Capcom Unity, in order to talk about the localisation process of both games. They detailed how the name of monsters were translated (sometimes talking about the translations in other languages than English), the kind of issues they ran up against when localising the game, and more.

if you like those blog posts, you will be glad to learn that they’re back for Monster Hunter Generations. To read the very first one, simply click here! The second blog post (to be found there) is about the name of several monsters, and how it was translated.

Astalos

The first one is Astalos, one of the Fated Four (the main monsters of Monster Hunter Generations). It lives in warm and wide-open spaces such as the Verdant Hills and Ancestral Steppe. It’s a pretty dangerous monsters who can charge electricity into its wings, tail and crest over time. This allows him to increase his attack range, speed and power. And if that wasn’t enough, the Astalos can inflict status ailments such as Paralysis and Thunderblight. What a shockingly lovely fellow.

His Japanese name is ライゼクス [ra-i-ze-ku-su], which is: Rai (Thunder in Japanese) + Insekt (Insect in German). For the localised name, the team didn’t want to focus in the insect part because, for most people, an insect is not really something to be feared. It’s something you generally want to swat, but with the Rathalos, it’s you who will be swatted instead!

They eventually went with the suffix “los”, for several reasons:

  • it’s pretty common in the Monster Hunter series;
  • the Astalos is pretty similiar to the Rathalos and Rathian, and in fact, they share habitat (they’re frequently fight over territory and preys). Even the shape of their body is similar. So having the name also be similar was definitely a plus here;

They did want to keep the “thunder” reference, but it didn’t really work with Rai. So instead, they went to pick words in other languages, and this is what they came up with:

  • Astralos: from “astrapi,” Greek word for lightning;
  • Fulgalos: from “fulgur,” Latin word for lightning;
  • Nitralos: from “tonitrus,” Latin word for thunder.

The first one was their favorite, and all they had to do was to drop the “r”, and tadam! They had their name. Good thing the Director, M. Yasunori Ichinose, also liked it!

Head after the break for the rest of this post!

Maccao and Great Maccao

Translating the name of that monster was really easy. All they had to do was decide how to romanise the name. After all, the Japanese name is マッカオ [ma-kka-o], which is a combination of “màt” and “kào” (Thai words for fist and knee). What’s more, the inspiration for their attacks came from Muay Thai, so their name was pretty appropriate, and there was no need to change it.

Larinoth

The Japanese name of that monster is リモセトス [ri-mo-se-to-su] (Greek word for neck, “laimós,” and the Latin word for whale, “cetus”). Since this would have been a bit too hard to pronounce, they tried to find other names by looking at key characteristics of the monster, such as its neck.

They ended up keeping “laimós” in the name, and replaced the whale bit with “ocarina,” which is what this monster has on its head (it uses it to signal the herd of any threats in the area… pretty handy!). And after changing “osu” into “oth”, they had their name: Larinoth.

Monster Hunter Generations (3DS) comes out on July 15th in Europe and North America.

Source: Capcom-Unity

Lite_Agent

Founder and main writer for Perfectly Nintendo. Tried really hard to find something funny and witty to put here, but had to admit defeat.

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