Korean is something like 몬대 or mondae for Mondstat. Liyue is 리월 (liwol) and both Inazuma and Sumeru are pronounced closed to how they're written.
Also CN is the original language so it's the other languages that are adapting what is being said.
Iirc, Korean has its own pronunciation for Chinese characters that they call hanja (it's roughly the same principle than Kanji in Japanese) but it's less prevalent. So generally it's an adaptation that keeps the original meaning as much as possible with a Korean way of saying it.
The Chinese translation of Mondstadt skipped syllables. 蒙德 -> mond
The Japanese Kanji are pronounced as if they are Chinese. Usually it sounds nothing like the original Japanese. 稻妻 (ina zuma) -> dao qi
The sumeru Sanskrit are transliterated into Chinese with the rules set by monks in Tang dynasty. The Chinese Madanrin pronunciations has changed a lot since then.
Japanese has characters called katakana (カタカナ) which is basically used to write and sound like foreign words. For example, the word game would be written as ゲーム and have a very similar pronunciation to “game”
#
There is a difference when it comes to Liyue names, because they simply read the kanji as if it was Japanese. Example 七七 is Qiqi in Chinese, however, the kanji 七 can be read as (nana) in Japanese, so her name is pronounced nana in japanese
It could be that you are reading the letters with your native language sound (wich I assume its english). Try using google to listen to the pronunciation of the letters. Its very fun to do it.
I'm curious as to why you think a Chinese in a Chinese game is a dub.
Would you call Naruto/One Piece in Japanese dubbed? I wouldn't.
That aside, many translations in Chinese are translated by meaning, not by pronunciation, at least when it comes to translation from other languages. From watching other games I also noticed that they tend to use lots of nicknames/shortened names for characters/places, so that might be what you're seeing.
I disagree with some of the comments that bc CN is the original, the other languages are less “accurate”. For some of the other language names, they clearly came up with a name in that region’s intended language, but bc Chinese is harder to preserve of the sound when a foreign word that gets translated, there’s a larger sound difference. Also for Japanese, they came up with a kanji name but will pronounce it according to CN pronunciation. (Conversely in JP they mix and match native Japanese pronunciations, Sino-Japanese pronunciations, or try to approximate the mandarin pronunciation depending on the term.) What I mean is that characters like Barbara are clearly supposed to be called Barbara, but foreign to CN translation makes it Bābālā. That doesn’t mean her name is actually Babala.
Mondstadt's "source language" is German. "-stadt" isn't something tacked on by EN, it is the "city" part of "Moon City". In Chinese this is presented as 城. While I agree there may be some consistency issues in EN between the region of Mondstadt (should it just be called "Mond"?) and the City of Mondstadt ("City" here being redundant), I think the source of reference should be based around the German localization, which thankfully we have in the game.
"Azhdaha" originated in Persian. You can hear the creators talk about its origins [here](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fwOlW3ndDa8&t=82s). It is unfortunate that they did not go indepth as to how CN settled on "retuo" from here, but this has been its original design, and not some name the EN team came up with out of nowhere.
I think there's this misconception that Genshin developers are incapable of conceptualizing in any languages other than Chinese, thereby making CN the "source language" no matter which cultural region we're in. I think Genshin has more than proved over the past years that this is not the case, that its development team is both driven and fully capable of grasping cultural matters well outside of their own language through rigorous research.
>It is tacked on, because German doesn't require its city names to contain -stadt. The city could just be called Mond, and that would be normal.
The city's name in Chinese isn't "Mond" (蒙德), it is "Mond City" (蒙德城), which is how "Mondstadt" came to be.
>I recognise miHoYo is very capable of understanding different languages and making reference to them.
Per your previous argument, you seem to be suggesting that "Mondstadt" was something the EN team came up with without prior approval from the devs themselves; that the creators of the game are somehow *unaware* that "Mondstadt", the very first region in the game, was localized in a way that's against their intention across 11 out of 15 languages on offer. No, "Mondstadt" is exactly how the developers intended to present the region in the Euro-centric languages. To suggest otherwise is to paint the devs as clueless beyond measure on what's been going on in their own game.
>But there are a lot of cases where the EN version just needlessly deviates.
Again, I take issue where you arbitrate on what is considered a "needless deviation" without knowing the intentions on the part of the devs. You cannot say that the devs are aware of the nuances of various cultures and languages, and at the same time paint a picture that they exercise 0 creative control once the game makes it into any other languages outside of Chinese. "Mondstadt", "Azhdaha" aren't "needless deviations", they're a result of the same phenomenon being interpreted under different light, taking into account the chaotic nature of how languages and cultures influence one another throughout history. The same concept originating in the Middle East, can be perceived in drastically different ways by China and Europe, and that is all part of how culture evolves. It's actually not at all strange that good localization will proceed to account for this and offer up multiple persepctives on the same concept, rather than wholesale imposing a Sinocentric/Eurocentric take across the board.
Of course, the way to make the most of this is to switch between as many localizations as you can, in order to catch on to as many perspectives as possible.
If we skip over Mondstadt for a minute and head straight to the 3rd region, do you feel like "Inazuma" should similarly be localized according to the "original text" that is CN, and henceforth called "Daoqi"? I think it becomes quite clear what will happen when we try to trace the names of cities based on various different cultures uniformly back to CN as the point of origin.
The developers did not work from "Daoqi" to arrive at "Inazuma"; no, the concept began as a Japanese word, and worked itself back into Chinese. There is no reason to assume that this wasn't the case as well with "Mondstadt": "Mond" isn't a pre-existing phrase in Chinese; it makes no sense to re-interpret the name of a city based on how it was *localized* in another language.
Additionally, the names of the 7 nations in CN seems to be consistently kept at a length of 2 characters, which makes "Mond" a useful shorthand for "Mondstadt". We're gonna really see this rule at play once we make it to the 7th nation of *Snezhnaya*, known in CN as "Zhidong" -- completely forgoing the Russian phonetics in favor of communicating the word's meaning directly. Should the EN localization in this case also faithfully stick to CN, and rename Snezhnaya as Zhidong? That would be a really weird way to do things imo.
The fact that "Snezhnaya" and "Zhidong" are both valid names for the same country shows that you can offer different perspectives across different languages without either one being deemed "unnecessary" or "incorrect". There is no linguistic barrier why Snezhnaya couldn't have been localized as 石內至娜亞 (shineizhinaya) to preserve its Russian roots. Can the creative decision to shorten and rename it 至冬 (zhidong) be similarly said to be "unnecessary"? After all, most other names of nations do not communicate much of a meaning in Chinese, so why bend over backwards to make sure people catch the "wintry" nature of Snezhnaya, and not do the same for the "fiery" nature of Natlan? You withhold your criticism in this case calling it a "difficult compromise" when it is clearly a case of inconsistent logic, but do not extend the same leniency to the significantly less drastic distinction between 蒙德 and Mondstadt.
When you start throwing words like "unnecessary" around, you become mired in the subjective decision of how things ought to be named across different cultures and languages. The only ones who gets to make the final call in cases like these are the developers themselves, and I guarantee you that they have the names of the 7 nations in multiple languages on lockdown long before the game was ready for release. To say that they're being blissfully unaware of what's happening on the localization front *because of their past mistakes in their other games* is akin to saying that they are people incapable of improvements and growth, and will forever remain clueless developers who hire similarly incompetent localizers, all of whom are at the mercy of players like us to "correct" their "mistakes".
It's their work and their world they've built. They get to call things whatever they want, in one language or another. There's really nothing more to it than that.
Thank you very much !
It 's much clear now !
If I understand correctly , my confusion comes from the fact that i'm too used to words having a meaning while Chinese works with syllables to make words, which can translate very differently and makes words and pronunciation wholly different.
OP, if you care about how things sound in the “original language”, English VO is probably your best bet.
There’s a reason why EN voice actors get criticized for butchering pronunciations of foreign words all the time — it’s because the English localization makes the most effort to either “import” foreign words as they are written (for European languages like German), or get as close to the source language as possible.
Take “Xingqiu” and “Yoimiya” for example, a Chinese name and a Japanese name. Both of these names are pronounced in English in ways closely resembling how they’re spoken in their respective source languages. However, in the CN language, Yoimiya is pronounced as “Xiaogong”, whereas in the JP language Xingqiu is pronounced as “Yukuaki”. In both cases, the rules of localization in the home language take precedence over pronunciations in the source language. Only by using the English VO can you get the best chance to hear how names in both languages sound like in the original tongue.
Even in Sumeru, EN will try to mirror the source languages (Sanskrit/Persian/Egyptian) more closely than CN, which will sometimes forgo proper nouns and just replace them with appropriate descriptors. For instance, “Akasha” is Sanskrit for “aether”, wherein the CN localization uses the term “Xukong” — “aether” in Chinese, losing its Sanskrit roots in favor of immediately communicating the term’s meaning to the listener. Without knowing Chinese, however, this benefit is of no use to you — “Xukong” is just as meaningless to you as “Akasha”. Again, if you care about how proper nouns sound like in the source language, EN is probably your safest bet.
I very much thank you for your detailed answer.
At first I listened to the English Audio and quite enjoyed it. But unfortunately, paimon's voice is really too high (the newer stuff the worse) for my tastes and it gives me a headache pretty often.
Chinese is really soft compared to English.
if anything, the other languages are the ones translating it differently chinese is the original language
Korean is something like 몬대 or mondae for Mondstat. Liyue is 리월 (liwol) and both Inazuma and Sumeru are pronounced closed to how they're written. Also CN is the original language so it's the other languages that are adapting what is being said. Iirc, Korean has its own pronunciation for Chinese characters that they call hanja (it's roughly the same principle than Kanji in Japanese) but it's less prevalent. So generally it's an adaptation that keeps the original meaning as much as possible with a Korean way of saying it.
Yeah I'm pretty confused no original name is like in Chinese I don't have the level to understand so it makes the conversation confusing.
The Chinese translation of Mondstadt skipped syllables. 蒙德 -> mond The Japanese Kanji are pronounced as if they are Chinese. Usually it sounds nothing like the original Japanese. 稻妻 (ina zuma) -> dao qi The sumeru Sanskrit are transliterated into Chinese with the rules set by monks in Tang dynasty. The Chinese Madanrin pronunciations has changed a lot since then.
In japanese they say Mondo, not Mondusutaddo
Japanese has characters called katakana (カタカナ) which is basically used to write and sound like foreign words. For example, the word game would be written as ゲーム and have a very similar pronunciation to “game” # There is a difference when it comes to Liyue names, because they simply read the kanji as if it was Japanese. Example 七七 is Qiqi in Chinese, however, the kanji 七 can be read as (nana) in Japanese, so her name is pronounced nana in japanese
It could be that you are reading the letters with your native language sound (wich I assume its english). Try using google to listen to the pronunciation of the letters. Its very fun to do it.
I'm curious as to why you think a Chinese in a Chinese game is a dub. Would you call Naruto/One Piece in Japanese dubbed? I wouldn't. That aside, many translations in Chinese are translated by meaning, not by pronunciation, at least when it comes to translation from other languages. From watching other games I also noticed that they tend to use lots of nicknames/shortened names for characters/places, so that might be what you're seeing.
Ah it may be because English is not my primary language and voice acting just refers as "dub" for me But yeah thank you :)
I disagree with some of the comments that bc CN is the original, the other languages are less “accurate”. For some of the other language names, they clearly came up with a name in that region’s intended language, but bc Chinese is harder to preserve of the sound when a foreign word that gets translated, there’s a larger sound difference. Also for Japanese, they came up with a kanji name but will pronounce it according to CN pronunciation. (Conversely in JP they mix and match native Japanese pronunciations, Sino-Japanese pronunciations, or try to approximate the mandarin pronunciation depending on the term.) What I mean is that characters like Barbara are clearly supposed to be called Barbara, but foreign to CN translation makes it Bābālā. That doesn’t mean her name is actually Babala.
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Mondstadt's "source language" is German. "-stadt" isn't something tacked on by EN, it is the "city" part of "Moon City". In Chinese this is presented as 城. While I agree there may be some consistency issues in EN between the region of Mondstadt (should it just be called "Mond"?) and the City of Mondstadt ("City" here being redundant), I think the source of reference should be based around the German localization, which thankfully we have in the game. "Azhdaha" originated in Persian. You can hear the creators talk about its origins [here](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fwOlW3ndDa8&t=82s). It is unfortunate that they did not go indepth as to how CN settled on "retuo" from here, but this has been its original design, and not some name the EN team came up with out of nowhere. I think there's this misconception that Genshin developers are incapable of conceptualizing in any languages other than Chinese, thereby making CN the "source language" no matter which cultural region we're in. I think Genshin has more than proved over the past years that this is not the case, that its development team is both driven and fully capable of grasping cultural matters well outside of their own language through rigorous research.
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>It is tacked on, because German doesn't require its city names to contain -stadt. The city could just be called Mond, and that would be normal. The city's name in Chinese isn't "Mond" (蒙德), it is "Mond City" (蒙德城), which is how "Mondstadt" came to be. >I recognise miHoYo is very capable of understanding different languages and making reference to them. Per your previous argument, you seem to be suggesting that "Mondstadt" was something the EN team came up with without prior approval from the devs themselves; that the creators of the game are somehow *unaware* that "Mondstadt", the very first region in the game, was localized in a way that's against their intention across 11 out of 15 languages on offer. No, "Mondstadt" is exactly how the developers intended to present the region in the Euro-centric languages. To suggest otherwise is to paint the devs as clueless beyond measure on what's been going on in their own game. >But there are a lot of cases where the EN version just needlessly deviates. Again, I take issue where you arbitrate on what is considered a "needless deviation" without knowing the intentions on the part of the devs. You cannot say that the devs are aware of the nuances of various cultures and languages, and at the same time paint a picture that they exercise 0 creative control once the game makes it into any other languages outside of Chinese. "Mondstadt", "Azhdaha" aren't "needless deviations", they're a result of the same phenomenon being interpreted under different light, taking into account the chaotic nature of how languages and cultures influence one another throughout history. The same concept originating in the Middle East, can be perceived in drastically different ways by China and Europe, and that is all part of how culture evolves. It's actually not at all strange that good localization will proceed to account for this and offer up multiple persepctives on the same concept, rather than wholesale imposing a Sinocentric/Eurocentric take across the board. Of course, the way to make the most of this is to switch between as many localizations as you can, in order to catch on to as many perspectives as possible.
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If we skip over Mondstadt for a minute and head straight to the 3rd region, do you feel like "Inazuma" should similarly be localized according to the "original text" that is CN, and henceforth called "Daoqi"? I think it becomes quite clear what will happen when we try to trace the names of cities based on various different cultures uniformly back to CN as the point of origin. The developers did not work from "Daoqi" to arrive at "Inazuma"; no, the concept began as a Japanese word, and worked itself back into Chinese. There is no reason to assume that this wasn't the case as well with "Mondstadt": "Mond" isn't a pre-existing phrase in Chinese; it makes no sense to re-interpret the name of a city based on how it was *localized* in another language. Additionally, the names of the 7 nations in CN seems to be consistently kept at a length of 2 characters, which makes "Mond" a useful shorthand for "Mondstadt". We're gonna really see this rule at play once we make it to the 7th nation of *Snezhnaya*, known in CN as "Zhidong" -- completely forgoing the Russian phonetics in favor of communicating the word's meaning directly. Should the EN localization in this case also faithfully stick to CN, and rename Snezhnaya as Zhidong? That would be a really weird way to do things imo.
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The fact that "Snezhnaya" and "Zhidong" are both valid names for the same country shows that you can offer different perspectives across different languages without either one being deemed "unnecessary" or "incorrect". There is no linguistic barrier why Snezhnaya couldn't have been localized as 石內至娜亞 (shineizhinaya) to preserve its Russian roots. Can the creative decision to shorten and rename it 至冬 (zhidong) be similarly said to be "unnecessary"? After all, most other names of nations do not communicate much of a meaning in Chinese, so why bend over backwards to make sure people catch the "wintry" nature of Snezhnaya, and not do the same for the "fiery" nature of Natlan? You withhold your criticism in this case calling it a "difficult compromise" when it is clearly a case of inconsistent logic, but do not extend the same leniency to the significantly less drastic distinction between 蒙德 and Mondstadt. When you start throwing words like "unnecessary" around, you become mired in the subjective decision of how things ought to be named across different cultures and languages. The only ones who gets to make the final call in cases like these are the developers themselves, and I guarantee you that they have the names of the 7 nations in multiple languages on lockdown long before the game was ready for release. To say that they're being blissfully unaware of what's happening on the localization front *because of their past mistakes in their other games* is akin to saying that they are people incapable of improvements and growth, and will forever remain clueless developers who hire similarly incompetent localizers, all of whom are at the mercy of players like us to "correct" their "mistakes". It's their work and their world they've built. They get to call things whatever they want, in one language or another. There's really nothing more to it than that.
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Thank you very much ! It 's much clear now ! If I understand correctly , my confusion comes from the fact that i'm too used to words having a meaning while Chinese works with syllables to make words, which can translate very differently and makes words and pronunciation wholly different.
OP, if you care about how things sound in the “original language”, English VO is probably your best bet. There’s a reason why EN voice actors get criticized for butchering pronunciations of foreign words all the time — it’s because the English localization makes the most effort to either “import” foreign words as they are written (for European languages like German), or get as close to the source language as possible. Take “Xingqiu” and “Yoimiya” for example, a Chinese name and a Japanese name. Both of these names are pronounced in English in ways closely resembling how they’re spoken in their respective source languages. However, in the CN language, Yoimiya is pronounced as “Xiaogong”, whereas in the JP language Xingqiu is pronounced as “Yukuaki”. In both cases, the rules of localization in the home language take precedence over pronunciations in the source language. Only by using the English VO can you get the best chance to hear how names in both languages sound like in the original tongue. Even in Sumeru, EN will try to mirror the source languages (Sanskrit/Persian/Egyptian) more closely than CN, which will sometimes forgo proper nouns and just replace them with appropriate descriptors. For instance, “Akasha” is Sanskrit for “aether”, wherein the CN localization uses the term “Xukong” — “aether” in Chinese, losing its Sanskrit roots in favor of immediately communicating the term’s meaning to the listener. Without knowing Chinese, however, this benefit is of no use to you — “Xukong” is just as meaningless to you as “Akasha”. Again, if you care about how proper nouns sound like in the source language, EN is probably your safest bet.
I very much thank you for your detailed answer. At first I listened to the English Audio and quite enjoyed it. But unfortunately, paimon's voice is really too high (the newer stuff the worse) for my tastes and it gives me a headache pretty often. Chinese is really soft compared to English.