unlogical name translation

[sandanjuu]

so, there's this game... Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII?
and this guy here in it... ヴェルド? Verudo?

why is his name romanized as Verdot? he's not officially named like that, but that's how he's named at Wikipedia.

wouldn't it be more logical if his name is Veld, since ル is used instead of l or lu and ド instead of d at the end of a foreign word/name?
and, if his name would be Verdot, wouldn't it be spelled as ヴェルドト?

please tell me if i'm right or if i'm talking jibberish. again.

[MMM]

Originally Posted by sandanjuu

so, there's this game... Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII?
and this guy here in it... ヴェルド? Verudo?

why is his name romanized as Verdot? he's not officially named like that, but that's how he's named at Wikipedia.

wouldn't it be more logical if his name is Veld, since ル is used instead of l or lu and ド instead of d at the end of a foreign word/name?
and, if his name would be Verdot, wouldn't it be spelled as ヴェルドト?

please tell me if i'm right or if i'm talking jibberish. again.

It's probably going for the French pronunciation. Verdot rhyming with the wine Merlot (Mer-low).

[Nagoyankee]

MMM is right as usual.

Japanese is a phonetic langauge. When the Japanese transliterate a foreign word into katakana, we go by the 'sound' of it, and not the 'spelling' in its original language. So the silent letters in the original language will be completely omitted in the katakana transliterations.

[anrakushi]

Originally Posted by Nagoyankee

MMM is right as usual.

Japanese is a phonetic langauge. When the Japanese transliterate a foreign word into katakana, we go by the 'sound' of it, and not the 'spelling' in its original language. So the silent letters in the original language will be completely omitted in the katakana transliterations.

while i'm not complaining about MMMs answer as well, i agree completely i have to get a little anal about this blanket statement you have made Nagoyankee. if you look at many brands in Japan that are written in Katakana you can see they translated the name into katakana by the letters and not the sound. Another example is that just about every international student in Japan will have their name on their student card written in Katakana and it will have been done in the office by people who have never heard the persons name pronounced, thus they go by the spelling and this can lead to some pretty bad conversions.

[sandanjuu]

well, thanks to everyone for replying made it more understandable for me...

making it a French pronunciation makes sense... but i'm not quite sure if he's meant to be inspired by French people...?

how would you people romanize his name if he was just another generic English-speaking video game character?

[anrakushi]

i would never pronounce the T on the end of the name in english so i think i would do it exactly the same way.

[sandanjuu]

oh. ok then thanx everyone! i just started learning Japanese so your help is very much appreciated