Update Notes:
Version: 1.0 6/4/2016: It's up! (hopefully). It's still probably unpolished and there may be a few broken links, but hopefully I can get the hiccups smoothed out soon enough. There's no pictures or anything, because I don't wanna step on any toes and use anyone's art. Hopefully I can make the website less drab with a bit of elbow grease.
Translation notes:
On the Steel Dragons and the Gaia Sabers:
So there's many things you could call the big bad guys in this game. The intro cutscene says Gaia Saviour. Alteur at one point (Chapter 29) calls his group the GAIA SABERS in the original text. And they are always described as "The Sword that Defends the Earth". I went with Sabers over Saviors because they don't actually save the world. obs. They're just another tool for Alteur to use (Alteur is also a tool, but in a different way). It turns out that the good guys were the real heroes all along! Woulda thunk?! So I interpret the intro cutscene as referring to the Steel Dragons.
Speaking of Steel Dragons, how about that? I just cut off the last 2 kanji of the compound and called it a day, huh. Well, I felt it had good symmetry with the Gaia Sabers, and also, I felt it was really, really weird to have supernatural beings referring to them as a "Squadron" or a "Task Force" in the final few maps, so then I went back through the ENTIRE translation and changed what had been SDS up till that point to be Steel Dragons. Straws and camelbacks and all that.
On Military Rank:
Japanese, as a language, is very based on knowing where you stand in regards to the people around you. This means they use a lot of classification, and often they add rank when English-speakers wouldn't. Rank in Japanese is also very easy. There's the same 10 ranks for Air Force, Navy, and Army, and all arranged in neat little sections of 3 (Sho, Chu, tai for each of i, sa, and sho). English, meanwhile, is a horrible hodgepodge for each different branch of the armed forces.
Oh, and what do you call the head of a ship in English? Captain. How about a squad leader? Captain. How about a rank between Lieutenant and Major (in some branches of the military)? Captain. It's just a mess. I do my best to use terms that make it obvious whose rank trumps whose, and to keep these terms consistent, but I'm sure I made mistakes here and there. There's also the fact that both of the lowest general ranks of the people in the Steel Dragons (Shoi and chui) are Lieutenants, second and first class. Writing in Lt. SC and such feels really awkward and it's not how humans communicate. When it's super necessary I add it, otherwise, I use rank where it would naturally be used in English military conversations: In formal settings where it's important to know the rank of everyone being talked about. Japanese uses it as just a standard name attachment like san or chan or whatever. FUN STUFF.
On the Tsentr Project:
Hey, that's not a word! Well, it's a romanization of Russian. A lot of the stuff for MX is based on Russian; this is also why I keep their bases refered to as "tochka" which is Russian for "bunker" (and also Japanese for "bunker" apparently). When the bunker in question is not a Tsentr Project bunker, then it's a bunker and not a Tochka. Cool? Cool.
All the MX names are based off being the center of things. Medio, Centrum, Mitte, Mitarl, and so on. It's awful.
On the Baral:
They are the worst. I hate them so much. I do my best but seriously. Show of Hands. Who knows Chinese hermit folklore? I had to go DEEP to figure some of this stuff out. And when they start talking about Inauspicious Beasts and start chanting Chinese spells? Ugh. No thanks. I kept the Chokijin as Mechanoids, because of OG2 for the GBA. If there was a similar name for the Yokijin, I woulda used that as well. But if there is an english name, I don't know it, so they're gonna be Yokijin for now.
On the Guests:
The Guest names were decided in Banpresto by throwing darts at a bunch of letters and then taking those letters and putting them in a blender and then dumping the resulting mush into their computers. They are awful and I can only guess. I used this site for a lot of the names I was guessing on, which may not be super accurate, but eh.
On the Ruina:
So much Latin. Latin that feels like it was run through Google Translate from Japanese to Latin, then turned back into Katakana. Of course, when D was made, Google Translate was still just a babby website, but that's what it feels like. I did my best, reverse engineering the Latin with my best guesses, but I'm not sure about some of the terms. If anyone's got a better knack for dead languages, I'll follow their advice.
On Lord of Elemental stuff:
I feel like the LoE names were even more random than the Guest names. Once again, a lot of it is just me doing my best. I'm sure there's a massive library of these names that I'm not privy to, and if it's that big of a deal I'll change it.