After a VERY long time, Ritz is finally finished! To start with, I'm going to mention that Ritz was not a difficult story to translate in most areas. He speaks super casual, so I tried to accurately reflect that in the way he talks. There are also some translation choices I made that I'd like to explain before you go reading the story. First, in Ch. 2, I have this line: In the circus I could see from the courtyard were several women accompanying Ritz. The Japanese is: 中庭から見える回路に、数人の女の子を引き連れたリッツさんの姿が見えた。 The word I want to draw attention to here is 回路. Literally, this translates to 'circuit' like with electricity, or a 'cycle'. Of course that makes little sense, so the other way of reading it is a 'round path'. Kind of like a roundabout, except with no cars. So using that information, and based on the fact that much of this game draws on European themes and elements, I decided to translate this round path as 'circus', which is a British English term for a circular path that also has other intersecting paths. It seemed to make the most sense based on the context and setting, but I wanted to make sure I explained it somewhere to avoid confusion for English speakers not familiar with British English terms (I only know it cause my husband's British, but I'm American). The second part I want to bring up is a translation specific to the SUN route story. In Ch. 7 is this line: The flowers were yellow with small petals, and they swayed gently in the wind. Yet later in Ch. 8 is this line, referring to those same flowers: Ritz gently placed a circlet of purple flowers atop her white hair. What's up with that? Are the flowers yellow or purple? Honestly, I don't know! The Japanese for Ch. 7 says 黄色の花, which means 'yellow flower'. And the Japanese for Ch. 8 says 紫色の花, meaning 'purple flower'. So yes, I am aware that the two don't match in the translation, but that's what the Japanese says so... not sure what to do about that. I've seen blue and green swapped out to mean the same thing, but never purple and yellow. Finally, Ritz's story leads to an interesting understanding of how Secundati is structured! If you read Foia's story, you'll see he is from the Flame Family of Salamande of Secundati. Ritz however is from Tonitrus and the Lightning Family. There are a total of 7 families in Secundati, each with their own elemental affinity. How these areas are structured was kind of unclear at first, but thanks to a particular part of Ritz's story, I've learned that the individual areas in Secundati, like Salamande and Tonitrus, would be considered principalities. This is because Ritz's grandmother is referred to as the 'Crown Princess', 王太妃様 in the Japanese. If this were a kingdom (like so many other places in this game are), and her children were alive and in power on the thrown, she'd be referred to as the Queen Mother. If this were a kingdom but she herself was the ruling power, she'd have the title of Queen (or possibly Duchess if it was a kingdom wherein being married to the ruling king does not give her the title of queen). But the Japanese specifically translates to 'Crown Princess'. There are two cases where the title Crown Princess is given. The first is where the princess with the title is heir to the throne. However that doesn't make sense here. So we need to go with the second case, which is that the ruling female monarch of a principality can also have the title of Crown Princess. Therefore, we now know that Tonitrus, and the rest of the areas like Salamande, is a principality within the kingdom that is called Secundati. Did you need all that explanation of the titles and structure of Secundati? Eh, probably not. But I found it really interesting so I wanted to share!
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