Terra Tina Kefka Cefca

[Galuf]

I had a feeling this was gonna happen : enough talk. Have at thee! *dracula battle"

[Fynn]

SO YEAH, the English names for all the characters are basically the preferred names for me. Tina sounds like a valley girl's name, Mash is dumb, and Cheyenne is too long. Cefca is stupid as well.

[Sephiroth]

Then you clearly misunderstood me because I made it clear in my post that the pronunciation of "c" is entirely context dependent. Just as a general rule, it's a [k] before "a" and an [s] before "e". General rule for English-root words. There are exceptions, mostly in words of foreign origin.

My point was just that any English speaker would, at first glance, pronounce "Cefca" as "Sefka". Hence the transcription is bad.

No, I did understand you. The normal rule is that most words with a "ce" are pronounced like "se" in English and I never would deny that. That does not change the fact that words exist out there which are not and saying "I do not count them because they are lonely words" is also no good argument. I think words showing different pronunciations show the possibility. ALSO, also, there is the thing: Very important -> that not all words you find in a Japanese manual are supposed to have an English writing or pronunciation or origin in mind. So we can even go more global and think about the name in context of a language that is not English (normal, by the way - many foreign words in Japanese that are written in katakana and that appear in games are for example German or something else or have German or something else in mind. "Birusu" for Beerus in DBZ is a pun to the German pronounciation of virus, not of the English one, well later it also became a pun of Beer but that is a different story)

[Formalhaut]

Two people arguing about linguistics is the most adorable thing.

[Fynn]

That's rich, coming from the sociologist. Just watch all the "hard science" people come in and patronize all of us.

[Midgar Mist]

Zzzzzzzzzz
(Jolts awake after being poked)

I'm sorry.........what was the question again Galuf?

Oh yeah, pronunication.

I finds an English PAL translation and I plays it.

Aerith I care more about cos they did change that up when they translated the sequels.

[Peter1986]

Personally I really find it annoying when some Final Fantasy sites always treat names from remakes as the "actual", "official" names.

I mean, look at Cyan's "SwdTech" skill on the Final Fantasy section on "wikia", for example:

http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/B...al_Fantasy_VI)

"Bushido (必殺剣), "Hissatsu Ken), also known as SwdTech"

It's not "also known as SwdTech", it IS known as SwdTech!
That's the original name in the first official American translation from 1994!
It should be the other way around - "SwdTech, also known as Bushido in the Japanese version and some remakes" or something like that.

[Levian]

Seeing an alternate translation of a character's name after playing the game for years is so obnoxious. I don't go around renaming square enix employees, so they better well stop renaming people I know.

[Sephiroth]

Seeing an alternate translation of a character's name after playing the game for years is so obnoxious. I don't go around renaming square enix employees, so they better well stop renaming people I know.

Which alternate translations? These have existed since time immemorial. I mean, two of them existing means there is an alternative but it sounds like you mean this is new.

[Levian]

Ah I know, I'm just being unreasonable again.

[Peter1986]

Seeing an alternate translation of a character's name after playing the game for years is so obnoxious. I don't go around renaming square enix employees, so they better well stop renaming people I know.

It's not the alternate translations themselves that bother me, it's the fact that a lot of sites seem to treat the original version as if it is some kind of rare unknown thing that was released as some kind of bonus version or something.

If a site mentions "Final Fantasy 6 SNES" and nothing else, then it is very natural to expect it to prioritise the original version, because that's what actually IS Final Fantasy 6 from the beginning - every other version is just a remake based on that version.

Anyway, as for the names Terra/Tina and Kefka/Cefka;
I like both Tina and Terra, with a slight preference towards Terra, but I definitely prefer Kefka, since the spelling "Cefka" implies the pronunciation "Sefka", and that sounds stupid.

[Sephiroth]

The name is Cefca, no Cefka. And as mentioned, it does not automatically imply any se at all. Just like Cyan's name is not Cheyenne, but Cayenne. Not everything is written with ordinary English rules in mind. If it is hard to imagine for you, think about Ce being hard pronounced in other languages or have even "other other" pronunciations. Those are also absolutely legit when names in Japanese are made up and then converted. You might as well go and say Tolkien was wrong pronouncing his own invented character as "Keleborn" or "Kirdan" but I would say, if I choose a name for something I create, I decide how it is written and how it is pronounced. As a matter of fact English speaking people pronounce so many names that come from Japan, and not only from Japan, wrong, being upset about Cefca is silly.

As far as the names go: I have a thing for both Tina and Terra, when it comes to Kefka I think Cefca looks better. C is one of my favourites though.

[Peter1986]

It may not imply any particular pronunciation in some languages, but we are talking about the American translation here, and a C that's written before the letters E, I and Y is typically pronounced as an S, so writing it as "Cefca" for an American audience is unnecessarily misleading - that spelling would have been more fitting for a Latin audience.

Some changes make a lot of sense, yes, like changing "Pearl" to "Holy" and those kinds of things, but changing "Kefka" to "Cefca" just seems pointless.
Also, the original Japanese pronunciation is "KeFuKa" anyway - you can see that very clearly in the Japanese version if you can read Katakana - so "Kefka" is a perfect American spelling, IMO.
"Kefca" and "Kefcka" would have worked fine as well.

[Galuf]

Aye he is a KeFu*ka.

[Peter1986]

Aye he is a KeFu*ka.

That would have worked even better.