In the profiles of the princes, I include the background information on the characters. For example, I write that Avi is the Prince of Alstoria in the Land of Knights.
Some English sites translate this differently, as Alstoria in the Country of Knights. This is, of course, perfectly acceptable because the Japanese kanji that is used in the writing of the name 国 is usually translated as 'country'.
But just for fun, let's look a little more into the naming scheme of the game. To start with, let's look at the title 夢王国. Literally, this is 'Dream Kingdom'. There's not a lot of wiggle room on this translation because of the 王 character, which means 'king'. That one is easy. Now we go down a step to the next division, and we'll use Avi's home in 騎士の国 as our primary example.
When looking at how things are written, like Avi's information says '騎士の国, Alstoria', I originally thought that 'Alstoria' in this case was another name for 騎士の国. But in looking at other princes, it's clear that's not the case. Taking an example from a different 国, Joshua is a prince in 紅茶の国, Bergant. But in that same 紅茶の国 (Land of Black Tea) are Edmond of Dajeelberg, Peco of Orangette, and Haldine of Ticha. So clearly the 国 can be further divided into other sections, each of which has their own prince.
Now let's return to Avi from Alstoria, in 騎士の国. Since Avi is the Prince of Alstoria, and we've already established based on the previously mentioned Black Tea group that each division under a 国 has a prince, it stands to reason that Alstoria has its own governing royal family. Kings and princes operate kingdoms (and sometimes countries). If we were shown that Avi was the head governing body, he would rule over a principality (公領 or 公国). But as Avi's father is referred to as the king in his story (and this is the case in many other stories), we know Alstoria must be a kingdom.
This does mean that technically the Kingdom of Dreams is made up of smaller kingdoms, which traditionally would make it more of an empire, but as the various realms within the Kingdom of Dreams are not physically connected, we'll say it works (plus the Japanese for empire, 帝国, isn't used anywhere).
Records of historical governing structures and my attempts at research aside, it basically boils down to style choice. 国 itself doesn't have just one translation, and I think 'Land of Knights' fits better with the whole theme of the game than 'Country of Knight'. Also, when reading the stories, 国 is often used in multiple situations and could be referring to the kingdom or the larger land itself. However, it's not usually clarified and I have to guess. By using 'Land' in the naming scheme, I can use 'country' as a catch-all noun to translate 国 in the stories without raising questions about whether I'm referring to the kingdom or the larger land it's contained within. You can decide for yourself as you read. Though if you think about it, looking at the maps for the Main Story Part 2 gets me thinking that places like Alstoria are treated more like cities or towns rather than broader nations. But princes don't govern over just TOWNS. Right? That'd be silly! GCrest clearly did not put as much effort into this naming scheme as I think they should have...
Anyway, that's how I've decided to translate this. It just goes to show that there's no hard-and-fast rule for translating Japanese into English.
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