by Jelze Bunnycat » Sat Aug 06, 2016 1:59 am
- Motto: "The only good is knowledge, and the only evil is ignorance."
fenrir72 wrote:Sabrblade wrote:william-james88 wrote:Kurona wrote:No, just the fact it's called LG35 Ginrai kind of hints that that's what's gonna be printed on the box
That varies from place to place. His real name on the site with this listing was actually Super Jinrai with a J. So I dont know if that will be there too. The main reason I dontk now anymore is because a lot of Convoys have become Optimus in English on the Japanese boxes.
But Ginrai isn't a Convoy. Japan knows he's not the same character as Optimus like Convoy is. They're the ones who made the distinction in the first place.
And outside of special cases like Scorponok/MegaZarak and Fortress/Fortress Maximus, the little Headmasters don't get their own unique names in Japanese fiction, as they're the same identity as the larger bodies. The little Headmaster here is still Ginrai just as the Transtector body is Ginrai (though, in this case, this toy represents Ginrai's Double On mode Super Ginrai, as the normal Ginrai transtector cab is fully integrated with the trailer this time around).
Japan etymology has Gin as silver. So Silver or something shiny. Rai is like thunder. So "silver thunder" or Shining Thunder? Kind of reminds me of one of Starscream's nick name "silver snake".
Japanese has only one character set (hira- + katakana) per sound, however English uses multiple, which is why proper translations are difficult at times (see "Gregevor" vs. "Greejeeber", same pronunciation). Standard transliterations use the "g" as the voiced "k" (like in "get"), but English uses it for the "j"-sound as well (like "gee").
The proper transliteration, and pronunciation, for his name is "Jinrai", but since the "g" can do double duty, TakaraTomy spells it as "Ginrai", just cause. "Gin" (with the soft "k") does indeed mean silver (in compounds), but that's not part of the meaning for "Jinrai/Ginrai"
Besides, names in katakana (most if not all Transformer names are in katakana) are hardly ever translated, since they're mostly proper nouns or loanwords.
Last edited by
Jelze Bunnycat on Sat Aug 06, 2016 2:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
The resident Rewind... well, half of one
- Jelze Bunnycat =:3
Looking for:
- TR Furos (Hardhead's head) and Crashbash (lost him
)
- PotP Punch head
- TR Galvatron right arm (the gun one)
- CW Brake-Neck/UW Wildrider, CW Offroad
- TR Twinferno & Grotusque
- Greenlight, Lancer and PotP Elita-1 (plus repro Victorion hands and feet?)