I thought this is what dinosaur books were for?
I bought this game and it came with a poster that had the epoch on it.
When my father saw me flying around in the airship he asked if this was a war game or like galaga and I explained to him that it was my time traveling airship and its name was epoch.
He taught me what the word meant and decided this game was a-okay.
Additionally, “EE-pock” has the distinction of sounding as unpleasant as the word actually looks. I can’t quantify this opinion, but yeah, I think in addition to not sounding great, epoch also looks ugly.
I could not take this article seriously or absorb any meaningful information in it as I was too distracted by the unnecessary and overly long sudden hate boner paragraph for the word “epoch”. Who made a random retro game writer adjudicator and style guide for the English language?
Epoch is a great word, there is no confusion between it and “epic”, and you can use it just fine. It has a much better ring to it as the airship name in Chrono Trigger than “era” would and I find the author wrong on all counts.
クロトリ getting the literal “Blackbird” treatment is a good example of how impossible direct localization is. It’s why I appreciate–and support–injecting similar vibes elsewhere in scripts that may not have literal connections to the original Japanese. I think Woolsey got there in this particular case with Flea, Slash, and Ozzie. Not so much with the gurus.
I think, though, the answer to “why did we end up with this Woolsey-ism?” is no more complicated than him sitting bleary-eyed with a spreadsheet at 2am because of insanely short deadlines, and getting zero feedback. I’ve always figured that’s how we ended up with phoenix down.
What’s a better translation for Phoenix Down? And what’s a direct translation of the original name?
A more direct translation would be along the lines of “Phoenix’s Tail”, but even that is misleading because it’s referring to the tail feathers. The Japanese version didn’t specify the individual tail feathers, the same way English wouldn’t designate the individual hairs on a cat’s tail. A more accurate localization may be something like “Phoenix Flight Feather”, but that’s a bit of a mouthful (and would take up a lot of room in your game menus).
Just Phoenix Feather would be fine. Better than Down.
It’s フェニックスの尾. Technically, it’s the “tail” of a phoenix, but it’s clearly depicted as the “tail feather”.
Yeah, I suspect when it first appeared it was a short form of 尾羽. I’m not sure the exact kana limits they had, but I could see the extra two in おばね being too far.
Phoenix Quill? Down feathers are the small, soft feathers close to a bird’s body. The long flight feathers are called quills.
I was in my 30s when I realized phoenix down was, like, the down feathers from a phoenix. Like goose down. And not “PHOENIX DOWN!”
I see why that would be confusing 😂. The German translation has always been Phönixfeder, which translates to Phoenix Feather.
Which results in a WTF moment when you start playing the games in English
I understood from context that down in this case means Daune, not runter :D
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/epoch
There’s 3 pronunciations, the UK EE-pok and two US versions sound like Epic and EH-pock.
It is indeed a weird word. Hard to rhyme. Can only think of peacock.
Huh! I’ve always said eh-pock. But I would understand a speaker who said ee-pock. Epic though?
You ain’t got good rhymes doc
I keep trying to pick up stock
of the silly lyrics i always thought
I meant a perfect rhyme. :/
So I’m spittin rhymes, like I’m a Glock
While all you do is sit and talk.
Clean sock?
That whole era of RPGs helped develop reading comprehension.
Very little voice acting. You had to read everything to understand. There are even those who learned a second language just to play a game.
Also people who write the massive guides on gamefaqs for free.
Good times.
I wrote a free guide for GameFaqs while living in Japan learning Japanese, the FAQ is still up there 25 years later.
I feel seen.
With the best ASCII art.
I dunno, I think that may go to the demoscene release groups, though I guess it could be argued that a lot of that was ANSI and not ASCII. Gamefaqs stuff was okay though.
Nintendo games have helped my kids with their reading because they still won’t put voice acting.
I couldn’t read past the part of the article where he insists (at great length) that epoch is usually pronounced identically to epic.
Came in with that first paragraph this is mentioned on my clipboard to highlight how silly this is
For one, it’s pronounced identically to the word epic in most cases. I’m going to guess that nine times out of ten, if you used epoch in a sentence, most people would assume you’re saying epic anyway, regardless if that makes sense in context.
No. It’s not. It’s pronounced ee-pokh or ep-okh. Anyone pronouncing it like “epic” has got the vowel sound entirely wrong.
It’s apparently the American pronunciation. Though, half our population can’t read anyway, so I’ll just keep saying it the right way. Or maybe we just go back to the original Greek, Epochē.
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So apparent nobody actually pronounces it like that. All things written on the internet are fact, clearly.
Fun article.
I disagree extremely strongly on every point about the word epoch.I used to pronounce it “Ee-potch” until I finally heard it said outloud in something with subtitles on.
