How does "Akumajō Dracula" translate to "Castlevania?"

[Anonymous No.5219394]

I thought it meant "Demon Castle Dracula."
And what the fuck is a Castlevania anyway?

[Anonymous No.5219397]

a castle that vanias

[Anonymous No.5219410]

Combination of "Castle" and "Transylvania"

[Anonymous No.5219414]

>>5219394
Even more than now, publishers in the eighties and ninties often changed titles and character names.

I imagine demon castle Dracula would have gone down poorly in the late eighties

[Anonymous No.5219415]

A lot of localizes back then couldn't even speak Japanese and just made up their own names and dialogue. Look at SNK games as an example.

[Anonymous No.5219431]

>>5219394
I'm pretty sure late-80's Nintendo would not have been okay with a game on their console having "Devil" in the title. Censorship with video game publishers was way more prevalent back then than it is today.

[Anonymous No.5219442]

Most localized name changes were for the best. Including Castlevania. Not that Nintendo would have been okay with the original name. They never even localized Devil World for the USA and Nintendo developed that themselves.

[Anonymous No.5219498]

they could've named it like "dracula's demonic castle" but that's a bit of a mouthful

[Anonymous No.5219526]

>>5219394
Castlevania is also the name of the castle itself.

>>5219442
They did briefly make Castlevania the Japanese name once, but it didn't stick.

[Anonymous No.5219535]

>>5219526
>Castlevania is also the name of the castle itself.

When was the first time this was mentioned? I know even the JP version of CV3 says "Castlevania" on the map screen, but I didn't know if any of the JP manuals used the name.

[Anonymous No.5219551]

>akuma
Demon, devil
>jou
Castle

This has been Japan for Zoomers 101

[Anonymous No.5219569]

>>5219394
How does Biohazard translate to Resident Evil?

[Anonymous No.5219589]

>>5219394
Japanese people prefer getting to the point
"WHAT GAMU"
"DEMONU CASTERU CASTERU"
"NICE I BUY HEE HEE HEE"

[Anonymous No.5219592]

Japanese people prefer getting to the point
"WHAT GAMU"
"DEMONU CASTERU DURACURA"
"NICE TAKE MONEY HEE HEE HEE"

[Anonymous No.5219664]

Localization often means “naturalizing” a word or phrase. Japanese has a habit of agglutinating nouns or verbs together to form huge, dense compounds. “Devil’s Castle Dracula” isn’t huge or even a compound per se, but it is similarly clunky in English.

[Anonymous No.5219667]

The arcade game was localized as Haunted Castle.

[Anonymous No.5219741]

>>5219664
Look at how it's written in the logo. It's not "Devil's Castle Dracula", it's more like "The Devil Castle: Dracula".
If that still sounds too clunky, you could also translate it by swapping the title around, to "Dracula: The Demon Castle", or do something like "The Devil's Castle, Featuring Dracula", taking a page from "Mickey Mouse: Magical Adventure" getting changed to "The Magical Quest: Starring Mickey Mouse".

Still the same title, just different ways of arranging it.

[Anonymous No.5219756]

>>5219569
Thank these guys for that name change

[Anonymous No.5219757]

>>5219741
How about just "Dracula's Castle"

[Anonymous No.5219764]

>>5219757
Too bland.

[Anonymous No.5219768]

>>5219756
Americn copyright law is retarded. How can a band have the right to a common word as a title?
Dragon Quest had to be renamed Dragon Warrior back in the day because of some similar bullshit too.

[Anonymous No.5219840]

>>5219741
None of those are very good because they are almost forcibly prosaic. Mind you, I don’t think Castlevania sounds that good either because it’s kind of cartoonish, unless Konami was actually going for that with the original concept, in which case it’s actually a great title. What it does have going for it is that it’s a one-word title that doesn’t mean anything outside of the game. Any variant of the literal Japanese title makes it either sound like a literary or historical game rather than a fantasy one inspired by those things.

If I was asked to title it back when the series was new, I might have focused more on the Belmont name. Something like “Dracula — Belmont’s Legacy,” but with Dracula in small type.

[Anonymous No.5219842]

>>5219756
i should, since resident evil sounds better anyway. meanwhile, biohazard in any context outside of a hospital sounds like the 80's version of edgelord.

[Anonymous No.5219856]

Biohazard
Biohazard 2: Resident Evil
Resident Evil 2: Biohazard 3
Resident Evil: Operation Biohazard
Resident Evil 4
Resident Evil 5: Wesker’s Revenge
Resident Evil: The Movie: The Game
Resident Evil (2006)
Resident Evi7
Resident Evil: The Barry Burton Chronicles
Biohazard Crossbow Training

[Anonymous No.5219868]

Just my two cent but translated Castlevania would mean draining or emptying the castle and that is exactly what Simon does kill all the monsters that reside with Dracula.

[Anonymous No.5220062]

>>5219868
That's deep

[Anonymous No.5220065]

>>5219842
Biohazard are proto edge lords.

[Anonymous No.5220704]

>>5219535
I'm not sure about Japan, but I know the opening text for SotN mentions it.

>Castlevania, the castle of Dracula said to appear once every 100 years

[Anonymous No.5220719]

>>5219394

Konami America looked at the JP title, and tried to figure out how to localize it. A good literal translation would be "Dracula's Demonic Castle". They could have gone with "Demon Castle", or something along those lines. They instead went with a new name that is kinda silly if you think about it.

>>5219414

I think the "Demon" part would scare Nintendo. Though a few games had that. Also Ghost N' Goblins should have been called Demon Village instead.

[Anonymous No.5220738]

>>5219535
>>5220704
>>5219526

I always thought that "Castlevania" was something created whole cloth by the American localizers. Are you saying it has some basis in Japan as well? It could be that it was made up by Konami of America, and then incorporated into later sequels. Or maybe the Japanese devs themselves made it up and the Americans turned that into the name of the entire game?

[Princess Sevenleaf !IT2uZpX.Ic No.5220765]

>>5219410
It'd be nice if they played up the "forest" aspect of the name a little more. "Transylvania" means "across the forest", "Castlevania" could be interpreted as "castle forest", and lot of games have you literally cross through a forest to reach the castle, but then there are games like Aria of Sorrow which take place entirely within the castle. I just think forests are really pretty.