Northwind or North Window?

[Kirkis]

It was Northwind in Suikoden 1, and North Window in Suikoden 2, which one is the 'correct' translation?

[Occam Arkitect]

North Window is official. But it's not the same as "Cyndar" and "Sindar".

[Kirkis]

Hmm... well I suppose my question is, is... Why?

Northwind sounds like a better town name in my opinion than North Window, and considering how the translation would be something like this...

WUINDO, in japanese, it could be wind or window... damn those 'do' & 'to' sounds.

Anyhow... what exactly would the 'Window' part stand for? A metaphor for it being the looking point of the south/north, or?

[Alastor]

It was Northwind in Suikoden 1, and North Window in Suikoden 2, which one is the 'correct' translation?

Well, maybe Torans and Dunans have soem slight diferences in language. Like same kind, but some slight diferences in some words.

[Oppenheimer]

Hmm... well I suppose my question is, is... Why?

WUINDO, in japanese, it could be wind or window... damn those 'do' & 'to' sounds.

I'm not an expert on Japanese but I did take a crash course in it, I think it'd have to be something more like WUINUDO because you can't have an "N" without a vowel after it.

Oh and Southwind is probably the name in Suikoden I because of limited characters they couldn't fit the whole word so they truncated it.

I know that there's a South Window and your HQ is actually Viktor's hometown North Window. So that's a reason to have it be a seperate word. However why "window" as opposed to "valley" or "glen" or something that makes geographical sense in a title? I don't know that.

[Kirkis]

Isn't it possible to use the 'N' that is used after something like -KUN? Or are we talking sounds and not romaji?

[Dura Sinai]

'n' actually is the one consonant that can be solo in Japanese. It has its own character, ん　in hiragana or ン　in katakana which can be used after another character. However, particularly in conversion of foreign words, sylables that don;t translate directly into Japanese sounds tends to get one of the charracters that is basically n with a vowel such as のねなぬ/ノネナヌ

[Oppenheimer]

Ah well thank you for the information. Japanese is a very interesting language, such different construction than English. Does anyone know what Northwind and Northwindow were before they were translated?

[Kirkis]

Well... this just occured to me... it was probably in Katakana, and so, you ended up with a NOSUWUINDO or something out of it, but, they could've easily used a kanji for North + Window, or North + Wind... so... if it was katakana, they could've easily made a mistake, and if it was kanji, I doubt there would be any mistakes made, since I doubt the kanji for Wind is the same as Window.

It pretty much comes down to the 'do' at the end of WUI part, is it a D or a Dow? Stuff like that is very hard to translate unless they talk with the creator or something like that. Since Konami isn't great with translations to begin with when it comes to Suikoden (They're starting to get better only after 4 games lol), I think the best reference would be from the Novel, or if somebody owns a japanese version of 1 or 2.

Side-Note: It seems even SARs is unsure, as he has stated that in the Neclord Bio that it's Northwind, and on the Geography of the City-States it's Window... so... I'm gonna keep searching around.

Additional Side-Note: According to Suikosource, it's Northwind & South Window... which really is just being on the fence about it all I guess, considering They're either wind or window, not both, hehe.

Another Side-Note: There's a comedic fan-fic out there that makes fun of the Northwind or North Window thing, with a road sign that says "This way to Northwind", but then Northwind is scratched out with a line and it says "North Window" instead scrawled above it.

Another Another Side-Note: After more research, I've found a summary of North Window, and it pretty much went something like this:

After Viktor & Co. went to investigate North Window, South Window fell to Solon Jhee, and the refugees of South Window, fled to Northwind. So... even then it doesn't make sense... unless somehow... the 'area' of the continent is called Northwind...

Last Note at the Moment: There is no mention of any mistranslations about this at Keepers of the Flame, which has a nice list of all the goof ups & mistranslations out there in the Suikoverse.

[dragonmasterx]

Google for "dou" ending(which I would translate as Window)

Google for "do" ending(which I would translate as Wind)

So many hits for both, so I'm not sure what it was originally in the Japanese games.

EDIT: The "dou" ending has over 20 pages of links, while the "do" ending only has about 8 pages of links. So my conclusion is stick with "Window."

[Kirkis]

Okay, I just lost everything I was writing... stupid browser...

ANYHOW... in short... or long...

ノースウィンド or ノースウィンドウ

http://www.konami.jp/th/suiko/list/card/163.html, This official Konami page makes it appear to be North Window according to the card game. Even when I translated it, it translated with the little option it turned ノースウィンドウ into North window. However...

http://www.yuusai.co.jp/carpet/piececar ... -wind.html, this page no longer works, but it still came up on the search engine. Notice the fact that the link used 'north-wind' and that the title of the page was ノースウィンドウ.

So... by official Konami standards it's North Window... however, this part is simply speculation on my part... but is it possible that it wasn't mistranslated in either game, and it's actually a goof up of Konami. In Suikoden 1, it was a town called ノースウィンド (Northwind) and in Suikoden 2 it was a town called ノースウィンドウ (North Window).

I'm going to delve a little deeper into this and see what I can come up with.

Additional Search Info:

I found this on a website that contained the katakana ノースウィンド(Northwind):

1 is not, is. [nekurodo]? Something name became insecure.
That it reanimated it is the person of the vampire which is said.
The kana which is the village of the north window. In the ruin like place of the inner part of the village which has the grave
It is kana - with thinking, it is to try diving, but the boss is not in only the treasure box.
Perhaps doing, it is in out-town kana -. Whether message securely you did not read.
Wandering about too much, it has stopped understanding something is what.

Obviously, they're talking about Neclord and the town... obviously it's badly translated engrish because of the way sentence formations are... however, you can clearly see that the translation ALSO revealed it was 'North Window', and not Northwind. Also, every other website I'm going to is translating it as 'North Window' for the 'Northwind' japanese spelling... so, I'm not sure if I can exactly trust the translator or not... and therefore the entire search system is pretty bunked.

Final Note: The only ways I can think of solving this with 100% sureness, are the following ways:

- Wait for the American Release of the PSP 1 & 2, and see if they've fixed any mistranslations, etc. or if it's just a port.

- Find someone with the original copy of Suikoden 1 and have them play through it and get to the Neclord arc and keep an eye peeled for ノースウィンド or ノースウィンドウ.

- Do the same as the above, but instead with the Suikoden 1 & 2 PSP Game, and the Suikoden 1 part more specifically.

The problem now, atleast from what I can tell, is not what it was called in Suikoden 2, judging from the card and also the Suikoden 2 soundtracks popping up on amazon when you search it up, it's DEFINITELY ノースウィンドウ (North Window). However, we're entirely unsure of what it's called in Suikoden 1.