Joseph Riggs wrote: > It's not that big of a deal. And it's obviously a product of converting > Japanese dialogue > into English. And no matter which way a person prefers to pronounce the > acronym, it's
I watched Z and ZZ in Chinese sub. Everyone pronounced AEUG as ey-youg or ey-oug in the Japanese dialogue and no one ever explain what it means on screen. I guess the audience were expected to know what it means from the print media (must have been a marketing blitz in the 80s). If one watches the Japanese version anime only (and ignorant of the print media canon), one can be excused to think that Aeug is a proper name instead of an acronym (A.E.U.G.). So the majority of official Chinese translation even use a phonetic approach to arrive at "you1 gu3". For the longest time, I was annoyed at "you1 gu3" and the English pronunciation "Aeug" as a single word. Ok you might say why I should bring up the Chinese translation issue here, but after a little research, there might be a relation. Translating A.E.U.G. as a proper name is quite extraordinary, since the general rule is to translate meaningful name by meaning then apply a shortening for common usage. So, e.g. N.A.T.O. is commonly written as "bei3 yao1" which is "north treaty" instead of applying a phonetic transliteration of the common English pronunciation which would be something like "nay tor". The rule is applied pretty consistently in recent years, especially noticeable in news and business usage. Applying the same rule on A.E.U.G. should give something like "fan3 lian2" which means "oppose unite". Now when I found the Japanese wiki on AEUG, http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%A8%E3%82%A5%E3%83%BC%E3%82%B4 Ok given that Wikipedia shouldn't be treated as the final word on anything, it's pretty remarkable that there are still 4 variations of the full form of A.E.U.G. on the Japanese article. If A.E.U.G doesn't have an accepted full form then perhaps treating it as a proper name instead of an acronym isn't so radical. Within the UC timeline, I think it's a little uncomfortable, but not completely outrageous to suggest that... say... A.E.U.G. was formerly an acronym but over time, as some EFSF fractions and Karaba etc join forces with them, that it was decided to convert it into a proper name to reflect that the "Anti Earth" part of the name should be shredded as a historical artifact. Imagine if one day Australia and/or Japan join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, then it may be suitable to keep Nato as its name, but drop the full name since "North Atlantic" is not accurate anymore. Ok, it's a bit of a stretch... -- Dr. Core -------------------------------------------------- The Gundam Mailing List MK-II [email protected] Archives: http://www.gundam.com/gml Help: Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] with this in the BODY: help list
