Story - Lian

Here he is, the last of the 2-star princes, Lian! I think he was a pretty good one to end on as well. I'll start out with saying I found Lian's story a little too short. I enjoyed reading him, and translating him, and I really think he would benefit from some more character development. That's why I'm glad he has an After Story version, so you can continue his story. He's actually the only prince from the 1-2* category that's received that version as well!

As for translating, there wasn't much to note there. Lian speaks very masculine, and I think it's Kanto dialect. I was reading up on him in the guidebook and the developers say he was meant to be a 'man's man', so I tried to make that come across in his lines.

The one thing on translating was that I chose to translate Lian's title a little differently. In every story, the prince of the story is spoken to or of with their name having the -sama suffix. Up to this point I have always translated -sama as 'Lord', so Lord Avi or Lord Forma for example. In part because the prince has always had a castle or whatnot, and it all had a very European fantasy vibe to it. However, Lian is the son of the patriarch of a nomadic tribe and is not blatantly referred to as a prince. Based on the setting, and the interactions with the people, it sounded strange to me for people to call him Lord Lian. So I have instead decided to translate -sama in this case as 'master', which is why Lian is called Master Lian. This is just personal preference though.

A note on his name, I kept wanting to read Lian similarly to 'Leon' with the long 'ee' sound for the 'i', I think because I thought the Japanese was リアン (rian). But actually the Japanese for his name is ライアン (raian) so it's actually pronounced closer to 'lion'.

Also, the Japanese fan community are the ones that say the name Toura comes from the English word 'tribe' which in Japanese would be トライブ (toraibu). I'm not entirely sure I agree with that since there's that elongated 'o' sound in Toura but not in toraibu. Toura is also a surname in Japanese when written 戸浦 or 東浦 but this game rarely uses actual Japanese names for their characters and places. So...I guess the fan community is the best explanation I can get!