Kakarot vs Kakarotto - The Vegerot/Vegetto(ito) effect

[Zestanor]

Just because that is true in certain cases not mean it has any bearing on the particular case of Kakarotto. Goku is the protagonist. His name Saiyan name sounds shiny when said in Japanese. That should be maintained in the translation. The adaption of his name is way more important than Ginyu.

[Aim]

Kakarotto would have been a better choice than Kakarot. Why does the pun need to be conspicuous? In Japan, it sounds exotic or shiny because it’s an English pun. But if we render the pun directly (Cacarrot) is sounds/looks mundane. Somewhat concealing the pun seems to be less egregious than the horrific Cacarrot, or Bloomers, etc.

Captain Ginyu's name is literally Japanese for "Captain Milk". Burdock is literally the name of a fruit. The Nyoi-Bo, Kinto'Un, and Son Goku are all literally the Japanese way of saying their equivalents from Journey To The West. Oolong and Pilaf are literally food.

Drawing the line at "nah Cacarrot is too close to the pun" is completely arbitrary.

This is possibly the hardest name to find an ideal translation for. I guess one thing we could ask is whether the name "Kakarrotto" is strange or at least noticeable as a pun to 'Japanese ears', that way I guess we could deduct from that whether or not it'd be a good idea to keep it as "Kakarot", "Kakarrotto", "Cacarrot", "Cacarrotto", etc.

If that makes sense.

[Adamant]

Captain Ginyu's name is literally Japanese for "Captain Milk".

No, milk is gyūnyū (ギューニュー). Toriyama did his usual alter-the-word-slightly thing when he named the character Ginyu (ギニュー)

Burdock is literally the name of a fruit.

Assuming you're talking about the character here... again, no. The vegetable (not fruit, he's a Saiyan) burdock's name is written バードック (bādokku) in Japanese, while the Dragonball character is バーダック (Bādakku). I assume Simmons legitimately was under the impression バーダック was how you wrote the name of the vegetable when he chose to write the character's name as "Burdock", and the "Bardock" spelling proooobably came from the same just-write-what-it-sounds-like-these-are-just-fantasy-names-anyway logic as Vegita, Taurus, Doubler and friends, but none of them make a Whole lot of sense, really. Some old Japanese merch spelled his name "Barduck", which really is the logical way to go, and at least some fans have adopted that spelling as well.

[MyVisionity]

Some old Japanese merch spelled his name "Barduck", which really is the logical way to go, and at least some fans have adopted that spelling as well.

Wouldn't "Burduck" be more logical than "Barduck" in this instance? Or are you suggesting that the official merchandise should take precedence?

[Adamant]

Wouldn't "Burduck" be more logical than "Barduck" in this instance?

Uh, yes. Of course. Pretend that's what I said

Or are you suggesting that the official merchandise should take precedence?

Dear god, no. It may be different for franchises created in the modern day, but something like Dragonball was never really intended to be marketed in anything other than Japanese, so neither Toriyama nor anyone else ever really gave any real thought to how these various names would be written in any other language. Any romanized spellings were just done for style, and nobody ever cared much about consistency. (This generally included the author as well, I'm preeetty sure Toriyama wrote both "GOKU" and "GOKUH" during the manga's run. There was no reason to be consistent with your stylistic spellings when all your readers thought of the character's name as 悟空 anyway)

[Aim]

Dear god, no. It may be different for franchises created in the modern day, but something like Dragonball was never really intended to be marketed in anything other than Japanese, so neither Toriyama nor anyone else ever really gave any real thought to how these various names would be written in any other language. Any romanized spellings were just done for style, and nobody ever cared much about consistency. (This generally included the author as well, I'm preeetty sure Toriyama wrote both "GOKU" and "GOKUH" during the manga's run. There was no reason to be consistent with your stylistic spellings when all your readers thought of the character's name as 悟空 anyway)

Wait, so Bardock isn't accurate?

[Adamant]

Dear god, no. It may be different for franchises created in the modern day, but something like Dragonball was never really intended to be marketed in anything other than Japanese, so neither Toriyama nor anyone else ever really gave any real thought to how these various names would be written in any other language. Any romanized spellings were just done for style, and nobody ever cared much about consistency. (This generally included the author as well, I'm preeetty sure Toriyama wrote both "GOKU" and "GOKUH" during the manga's run. There was no reason to be consistent with your stylistic spellings when all your readers thought of the character's name as 悟空 anyway)

Wait, so Bardock isn't accurate?

When he named the character, Toriyama took the word "burdock" and changed the "do" sound to a "da" sound. So yeah, romanizing the name by messing around with the "bur" in burdock doesn't make a whole lot of sense and doesn't match what Toriyama did. Toriyama never touched that syllable.

[Thanos]

Kakarotto would have been a better choice than Kakarot. Why does the pun need to be conspicuous? In Japan, it sounds exotic or shiny because it’s an English pun. But if we render the pun directly (Cacarrot) is sounds/looks mundane. Somewhat concealing the pun seems to be less egregious than the horrific Cacarrot, or Bloomers, etc.

This. I never understood this strong aversion from English adaptations to allow the 'to' to stay at the end. What's wrong with 'Kakarotto'? It seems odd to favor simply dropping those two letters at the sacrifice of completely changing a character's name (Vegetto). I feel like preserving the phonetics is a priority and 'Vegerot' sounds nothing like what the character's name actually is. FUNimation's solution makes me laugh, they just pulled "Vegito" out of their ass. Where'd that 'i' and 'o' come from? Fuck it. To this day I still get corrected on YouTube comments "um its spelled vegito". It also brings up this odd dedication to defend FUNimation's arbitrary creative liberties from dub fans, but that's an entirely separate issue.

[Aim]

Dear god, no. It may be different for franchises created in the modern day, but something like Dragonball was never really intended to be marketed in anything other than Japanese, so neither Toriyama nor anyone else ever really gave any real thought to how these various names would be written in any other language. Any romanized spellings were just done for style, and nobody ever cared much about consistency. (This generally included the author as well, I'm preeetty sure Toriyama wrote both "GOKU" and "GOKUH" during the manga's run. There was no reason to be consistent with your stylistic spellings when all your readers thought of the character's name as 悟空 anyway)

Wait, so Bardock isn't accurate?

When he named the character, Toriyama took the word "burdock" and changed the "do" sound to a "da" sound. So yeah, romanizing the name by messing around with the "bur" in burdock doesn't make a whole lot of sense and doesn't match what Toriyama did. Toriyama never touched that syllable.

So how would one spell and pronounce that? So it's actually "Burdack"? Is that pronounced "BER-DA-CK"?

[Adamant]

Wait, so Bardock isn't accurate?

When he named the character, Toriyama took the word "burdock" and changed the "do" sound to a "da" sound. So yeah, romanizing the name by messing around with the "bur" in burdock doesn't make a whole lot of sense and doesn't match what Toriyama did. Toriyama never touched that syllable.

So how would one spell and pronounce that? So it's actually "Burdack"? Is that pronounced "BER-DA-CK"?

"Burdack" or "Burduck", I guess. The pronunciation is like "burdock", you just change the o sound. First syllable is the same as the "bur" in burdock, second syllable rhymes with "duck". Or "Jack".

[Aim]

When he named the character, Toriyama took the word "burdock" and changed the "do" sound to a "da" sound. So yeah, romanizing the name by messing around with the "bur" in burdock doesn't make a whole lot of sense and doesn't match what Toriyama did. Toriyama never touched that syllable.

So how would one spell and pronounce that? So it's actually "Burdack"? Is that pronounced "BER-DA-CK"?

"Burdack" or "Burduck", I guess. The pronunciation is like "burdock", you just change the o sound. First syllable is the same as the "bur" in burdock, second syllable rhymes with "duck". Or "Jack".

I see, but which one is more accurate?

EDIT: Wait, are you sure it's "BUR" and not "Bar"? When using translators, "バーダック" sounds like it's actually pronounced "Bar-Duck(u)"?

[Adamant]

I see, but which one is more accurate?

Neither is MORE accurate, it just depends on how you want to interpret that last sound.

EDIT: Wait, are you sure it's "BUR" and not "Bar"? When using translators, "バーダック" sounds like it's actually pronounced "Bar-Duck(u)"?

Japanese doesn't have the English "uh" sound, so it has to approximate by using the "ah" sound in loan words, meaning there's no difference between "bur" and "bar". The first syllable in the character's name is the same as the first syllable in burdock, and since that's what he's named after, that's the pronunciation it makes sense to go with. Same reason we generally don't pronounce Vegeta's name with a b.

[Cold Skin]

Well, when it comes to the French translator for the manga (and pretty much all existing DB books), who was aready a Dragon Ball fan before she was put in charge of translating it and other franchises like Dragon Quest, she did choose "Kakarotto" consistantly - and while I have no proof of the following since she never said anything about that, I suspect it is partly because she knew Vegetto was coming and would need the "to".

She assumes that choice to the point that when she refers to the latest game, she calls it "Dragon Ball Z: Kakarotto" in her tweets in a playful manner.

Also, since you guys mention the name of Goku's father, she adapted it into "Bardack", which is consistant with the recent posts in this thread.
It is likely that this was too both keep the pun (being close to the spelling for "burdock") while still retaining what could be retained of the Japanese pronunciation (bādakku), but again, no confirmation from her directly, just a hypothesis from me.

So it's "Kakarotto", "Vegetto" and "Bardack" in the French books.
However, the French dub for the anime is in line with the American dub for Goku's real name, choosing "Kakarot" despite having Vegetto as the name of the fusion, keeping the same flaw in logic when naming the fusion.

My own opinion would be to keep "Kakarotto" as-is to preserve "Vegetto".
But if you're stuck with "Kakarot" (or insisting that it's the best adaptation), at least do what Viz did and rename the fusion "Vegerot" out of logic.
That's my opinion, at least.

Oh, and similarly, she named Kale and Caulifla's fusion Kafla to rightfully follow the logic in fusion names, confirming that the "ka" syllable is to be pronounced like in Kale's name but that she tends to simplifly the "kay" sound into "ke" when pronouncing it.
Therefore, the name is to be written as "Kafla" and pronounced as "Kefla", which makes sense.

[Aim]

Well, when it comes to the French translator for the manga (and pretty much all existing DB books), who was aready a Dragon Ball fan before she was put in charge of translating it and other franchises like Dragon Quest, she did choose "Kakarotto" consistantly - and while I have no proof of the following since she never said anything about that, I suspect it is partly because she knew Vegetto was coming and would need the "to".

She assumes that choice to the point that when she refers to the latest game, she calls it "Dragon Ball Z: Kakarotto" in her tweets in a playful manner.

Also, since you guys mention the name of Goku's father, she adapted it into "Bardack", which is consistant with the recent posts in this thread.
It is likely that this was too both keep the pun (being close to the spelling for "burdock") while still retaining what could be retained of the Japanese pronunciation (bādakku), but again, no confirmation from her directly, just a hypothesis from me.

So it's "Kakarotto", "Vegetto" and "Bardack" in the French books.
However, the French dub for the anime is in line with the American dub for Goku's real name, choosing "Kakarot" despite having Vegetto as the name of the fusion, keeping the same flaw in logic when naming the fusion.

My own opinion would be to keep "Kakarotto" as-is to preserve "Vegetto".
But if you're stuck with "Kakarot" (or insisting that it's the best adaptation), at least do what Viz did and rename the fusion "Vegerot" out of logic.
That's my opinion, at least.

Oh, and similarly, she named Kale and Caulifla's fusion Kafla to rightfully follow the logic in fusion names, confirming that the "ka" syllable is to be pronounced like in Kale's name but that she tends to simplifly the "kay" sound into "ke" when pronouncing it.
Therefore, the name is to be written as "Kafla" and pronounced as "Kefla", which makes sense.

That's what I said! The pronunciation in "bādakku" sounds a lot more like "BAR-DUCK/DACK", so is it what was said before? Or is it "Bardack"? I think "Kakarrotto" is better, or "Cacarrotto" due to it looks more pun-y. Also, what's up with "Kefla"? Why has it been officially translated as that? Who's idea is this? I'm beginning to think the company that does the translations are full of fucking morons who are incapable of doing a beloved franchise justice.

[Cold Skin]

Well, for "Kefla", it seems likely that they simply wanted to ensure that it was pronounced correctly as an adaptation of the Japanese "Kefura", even if they had to ignore the logic in spelling just like for "Vegetto" coming from nowhere when it's "Kakarot", but matching the idea of adapting "Bejito" exactly like they adapt "Bejita".

You have to wonder why they care so much about the pronunciation rather than the logic behind the name in those cases when it's the exact opposite for "Cabba", for whom they don't care the slightest about preserving the "Kyabe" pronunciation as much as they can and simply follow the logic of "shorter version of the word Cabbage" regardless of how it is pronounced in Japanese.

So, I guess there's some double standards of sorts, sometimes they care more about the logic behind the name than the pronunciation, and sometimes it's the total opposite.

[Adamant]

That's what I said! The pronunciation in "bādakku" sounds a lot more like "BAR-DUCK/DACK", so is it what was said before? Or is it "Bardack"?

As I said, the reason his name sounds like "BAR-DACK" is because, since Japanese lacks the English "uh" sound, "burdock" is pronounced "BAR-DOCK" there. Same reason Trunks' name clearly sounds more like "TRANKS" than "TRUNKS"... when the sound just plain doesn't exist in your language, you just have to improvise when it comes to the pronunciation of loan words.

[jjgp1112]

Well, for "Kefla", it seems likely that they simply wanted to ensure that it was pronounced correctly as an adaptation of the Japanese "Kefura", even if they had to ignore the logic in spelling just like for "Vegetto" coming from nowhere when it's "Kakarot", but matching the idea of adapting "Bejito" exactly like they adapt "Bejita".

You have to wonder why they care so much about the pronunciation rather than the logic behind the name in those cases when it's the exact opposite for "Cabba", for whom they don't care the slightest about preserving the "Kyabe" pronunciation as much as they can and simply follow the logic of "shorter version of the word Cabbage" regardless of how it is pronounced in Japanese.

So, I guess there's some double standards of sorts, sometimes they care more about the logic behind the name than the pronunciation, and sometimes it's the total opposite.

I think these days Toei animation has the final say on names and pronunciations, and judging from their insistence on adopting dub names there's probably even more questions to ask.

[Aim]

Well, for "Kefla", it seems likely that they simply wanted to ensure that it was pronounced correctly as an adaptation of the Japanese "Kefura", even if they had to ignore the logic in spelling just like for "Vegetto" coming from nowhere when it's "Kakarot", but matching the idea of adapting "Bejito" exactly like they adapt "Bejita".

You have to wonder why they care so much about the pronunciation rather than the logic behind the name in those cases when it's the exact opposite for "Cabba", for whom they don't care the slightest about preserving the "Kyabe" pronunciation as much as they can and simply follow the logic of "shorter version of the word Cabbage" regardless of how it is pronounced in Japanese.

So, I guess there's some double standards of sorts, sometimes they care more about the logic behind the name than the pronunciation, and sometimes it's the total opposite.

Ugh, it wouldn't surprise me if this is also because of fan translations so they decided to keep it.

As I said, the reason his name sounds like "BAR-DACK" is because, since Japanese lacks the English "uh" sound, "burdock" is pronounced "BAR-DOCK" there. Same reason Trunks' name clearly sounds more like "TRANKS" than "TRUNKS"... when the sound just plain doesn't exist in your language, you just have to improvise when it comes to the pronunciation of loan words.

Ahh okay. So just to be clear, how would I pronounce that? "BUR(BER)-DUCK(as in the animal)"?

I think these days Toei animation has the final say on names and pronunciations, and judging from their insistence on adopting dub names there's probably even more questions to ask.

I doubt it, Toei has shown they give zero fucks, there's really no excuse for these terrible translations.

[Adamant]

Ahh okay. So just to be clear, how would I pronounce that? "BUR(BER)-DUCK(as in the animal)"?

That really isn't a question with a clear answer. At the end of the day we're talking about a fantasy name a Japanese man made by taking an English word that involves a vowel sound that doesn't exist in Japanese and then altering it a bit. He did this by leaving the first syllable alone, and then replacing the vowel sound in the second syllable with a different one. That different one happens to be the same vowel sound from that first syllable.

My PERSONAL opinion would be that it makes the most sense to pronounce it "Bur-duck" - "bur" as in burdock and "duck" as in the animal. But that's just my personal opinion, and clearly not the one shared by the French translator, and I totally see where she's coming from too. Names derived from other languages are difficult like that.

[jjgp1112]

I think these days Toei animation has the final say on names and pronunciations, and judging from their insistence on adopting dub names there's probably even more questions to ask.

I doubt it, Toei has shown they give zero fucks, there's really no excuse for these terrible translations.

Chris Sabat flat out said that Toei made them use "Beerus." Zamasu over the more logical "Zamas" was also confirmed to be Toei's doing.

Additionally, the Crunchy Roll subs that had the same funky name translations were straight from Toei.