Welcome to YGOrg Archive, a series of some of my favorite bits of translation and/or writing I’ve done for Ygorganization.com! Well, the ones published under my username Deadborder, anyway. I’d like to think most of them are pretty approachable even for those unfamiliar with the Yu-Gi-Oh series, so feel free to dive right in!
Since messing around with wordplay is one of my favorite parts of translation/localization, it was only a matter of time before I whipped up something like this April 2014 article. This was meant to be an introduction of sorts, using well-known groups of cards whose puns often couldn’t make their way into English all that easily – and this is just the tip of the iceberg as far as that’s concerned.
I also have to give a special shoutout to the Number monsters mentioned at the end of this article for really getting me into goroawase, the use of alternate readings for numbers to reference words. It comes up more often than you’d think, and helps for memorizing certain numeric strings too!
Hey all, it’s Deadborder, one of the resident translator folks for the Org. Over the past few days we’ve been working on “localizing” the stuff in DUEA to eventually put up on Dueling Network, and it got me thinking about one of my favorite parts of translating these things: the sheer amount of wordplay that goes into some of the cards (and seeing if we can approximate them into English).
So what’s the point of this article, exactly? It’s mostly just a way to show you guys some of the behind-the-scenes details about why some cards are named the way they are, and in other cases why we’ve picked certain names for them instead.
So are you ready for puns? Because there’s no looking back now.
Okay, to start things off: one of the greatest sources of wordplay in Japanese comes from the use of kanji, literally “Chinese characters,” which usually have one meaning but multiple methods of pronunciation. This means you can play off homophones to lend multiple meanings or connotations to a word. This isn’t ALWAYS how wordplay is done, but it comes up a LOT, so I may as well start off with it.
Also there is a royal expletive-ton of puns in this game, so I’m not going to list all of them here. This should serve as just a taste of the amount of goofy names that come up. Of course I could just write more of these in the future but let’s not get ahead of ourselves yet, shall we? On to the cards!
FROGS!
The Frog/Toad cards are some of the oldest pun-based cards I can recall, and also some of the simplest to understand. They’re mostly based off the fact that the word for frog, “kaeru/gaeru” is a homonym for many other Japanese words ALSO pronounced “kaeru/gaeru.” Let’s get hopping! please slap me for that
Poison Draw Frog = 引きガエル (Hikigaeru). This is a play on the Japanese name for the toad, “hikigaeru,” but the “hiki” used here comes from the word “hiku,” which can mean “to draw” (a card). So it’s a “toad” but also a “frog that draws cards.”
Treeborn Frog = 黄泉ガエル (Yomigaeru). The “gaeru” is obviously “frog”, but “yomigaeru” means “to be revived.” Literally it means “return from the yellow spring/fountain,” which may be why Treeborn Frog is yellow. The English pun is somewhat similar, playing off “tree frog” and “reborn” to similar effect.
so will you please stop making awful frog the jam jokes
THE MONARCH SPELLS AND TRAPS!
Recently, with the advent of the Mega Monarchs, we’ve also seen a few spells and traps designed to work with the new big guys, mostly based on if you have an Extra Deck or not. But there’s a reason that each of these cards only features one Mega Monarch – they all contain a bit of wordplay based on the monster they feature!
Incidentally, there’s a possible second pun here. You can make the word “toushi” using the same “freezing” character, but this second “toushi” means “freezing to death” (the “shi” means “death” here). Vaguely badass or possibly suggesting Mobius is gonna die, it’s up to you I guess!
NUMBERS!
A good deal of the Number monsters that appeared in Yugioh ZEXAL feature puns in their names, but these wouldn’t be noticeable to English speakers; that’s because they’re hidden in the actual numbers themselves! Remember, there are kanji for numbers as well, so each one has multiple pronunciations. This means that there’s a surprising amount of variety in the number of words you can make.
Also, there’s a lot of Numbers, so I won’t be covering all of them here – just a few whose wordplay is known. I may post more of these in the future, so let us know if you want to see it here!
3 can be read as “mi” and 9 as “ku.” Put them together and you get “miku,” meaning “future.”
4 can be read as “yo” and 3 as “mi” – the word “yomi” refers to the underworld, perfect for a monster that manipulates souls.
5 is read as “go” and 3 as “mi”; together they make “gomi,” meaning “trash,” fitting in nicely with Dr. Faker’s Garbage deck.
9 becomes “ku” and 6 becomes “ro” – “kuro” is Japanese for the color black. Yyyyyep.
This is just a brief taste of the huge amount of wordplay that goes on within Yugioh – there’s much, much more, and I hope you enjoyed seeing what it was like! If there are any other cards you’d like to know about, write about them in the comments below and maybe I’ll answer them in the future!
Also I should end this with a pun, but I can’t think of one right now, so good night, folks!