Names and places
Many characters have katakana names that derive from German words.
Japanese
German
English
role
first appearance
フリーレン
Frieren
Freeze
main character
Ch 1 p 3
ヒンメル
Himmel
Sky or heaven
Frieren’s comrade
Ch 1 p 3
アイゼン
Eisen
Iron
Frieren’s comrade
Ch 1 p 3
ハイター
Heiter
Cheerful
Frieren’s comrade
Ch 1 p 3
フェルン
Fern
far away
Frieren’s companion
Ch 2 p 42
シュトラール
Strahl
sunlight
holy city
Ch 2 p 42
ターク
Tag
day
region
Ch 3 p 78
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P 130
グレーセ森林 place
グレーセ - German Größe - English size
This one puzzles me. I wonder if a different word was meant as this word doesn’t mean big (the adjective: groß) which would make more sense, Größe just means the size (noun) of something. It can mean greatness for a person in terms of the integrity and wisdom they show, but that doesn’t quite fit the name of a forest or what I would have thought a non native speaker would have connected with this word.
Anyway, I’m guessing the intended meaning is The Great Forest, but it’s not the German word I would have chosen so I’m unsure!
P 134
クヴァール German: Qual English: pain (the suffering kind, not necessarily the hurting)
P 137
ゾルトラーク Zoltraak - coined name, not considered a loan word
What a shift in mood (compared to the gentle Adventuring and character development scenes of the last two chapters)! I should have been prepared but I didn’t read the title until the second pass, lol.
I thought this one was a bit tougher than Chapter 4, but it was a lot easier when I remembered to do a first pass read for the overall story arc, and then another pass with lookups.
P 133
Uh oh Fern hasn’t done her homework. It feels a bit uncharacteristic somehow.
P 137
I hadn’t seen this before:
FYI 四割 is 40% etc
A 70% loss of magicians in the area explains her reticence to take an apprentice adventuring earlier, yikes!
Chapter done, lots of text in this one! Loved the artwork on p.144, expression on the second panel in particular. I’ll have to do a second pass, especially on the later pages.
Some questions:
p.132
Fern and Frieren are talking about defensive magic. As far as I can tell, Fern marvel at how a single defensive spell can protect against almost all offensive magic. And then she says.
強力すぎて不思議です。
Does that translate (loosely) as “It’s a mystery that it (the defensive spell) is that powerful.”?
I’ve usually seen すぎる as being “too much”. In this case, it indicates that the power of the defensive spell is “too much” for offensive magic to penetrate? Or more than it should be? Foreshadowing for what’s explained later in the chapter, now that I look back at it
p.134
My dictionaries did not have an entry for 賢老 (けんろう）. Is it a fantasy-like “Elder” title?
I interpreted it as excessively powerful, as in excessively compared to Fern’s knowledge of how powerful attack magic can be. This seems to be what tipped off Frieren in the next panel that Fern obviously hasn’t read the magic history book yet (otherwise Fern would be aware of why the defense spells were developed to be so powerful).
yes this, basically
But I’m not sure, maybe someone else will confirm or explain more.
P 134
That’s how I took it, and I don’t really have anything to add except that interpretation lines up with the later comment that the character in question was the foremost of the evil Lord’s sorcerers.
Oh this is the chapter with the thingy I mentioned ages ago during one of the first weeks (the sentence repeated twice with different readings through furigana).
Viz translation rendered this “Zoltraak”. Reckon “Zoltrack” would be ゾルトラック.
What I love about this chapter is the way the spell Frieren found unbeatable eighty years ago is basically the same spell she was using to train Fern’s defences.
He’s casting a spell. Gotta use the magic word.
Yeah, Viz rendered it as “Elder Sage”. I reckon it’s a portmanteau of 賢者 and 老人.
The big ones seem to require speaking aloud. The little ones that Frieren collects everywhere she goes, not so much. Though we don’t actually see her casting those onscreen very often. Note that Frieren also names the spell when she’s returning fire, though possibly she’s just making a point.
I blew right by those assuming さぞ worked like ぞ and かろう might be a cousin of だろう. Since it made enough sense I didn’t really think about looking it up, thanks for posting! It’s nice to see that while I missed any nuance of politeness level or rarity, that after a while these formulations follow some general patterns that can be recognised without always having to look them up.
Great chapter, but definitely struggled with parts of this one. It took me a couple tries to get through the chapter. It feels like once sentences hit a certain length my brain just shuts down and I have trouble processing what’s being said. No doubt that will get better in time!
katakana readings
How does pronounciation get determined? I know its meant to be Qual and the anime pronounces it as such, but when I saw it I read it as “Kvaar”. Is this just a situation where there’s ambiguity among the non standard katakana characters, in this case ヴ?
p.135
I not exactly sure why, but this made me smile. There’s something oddly endearing about an old man Himmel going around to whoever will listen and complaining about his elf friend never visiting him.
Yes, there’s ambiguity, and not just among the non standard characters; ル can also cause misunderstandings. With words like this, you basically already have to know the correct spelling in German to be completely sure.
That reminds me:
I think any attempt to question the grammar and/or nuances of the names in this universe is futile. I don’t think the author put much thought into it beyond Google Translate.
I think in that case it’d be グレーサー or グレーザー, in line with other words ending in -er (like ハイター and another character to follow later named リヒター for Richter).
Besides, turning ö into エー is pretty common. I guess it’s the closest sound Japanese had, despite the two sounding nothing alike?
See also 魔法少女に憧れて - マジアベーゼ is Magia Böse, despite the translation mangling it into Baiser for some reason . There are also other characters to come, following the same convention, in this manga - ベーゼ, translated correctly to Böse in this case, and レーヴェ, or Löwe in the translation
As much as the pronunciation is different and the meaning doesn’t make a ton of sense, I do think it’s Größe and the writer just isn’t that proficient in German.
Katakanised German words are so opaque, honestly, I spend about 10 seconds trying to puzzle it out, always fail, and then look them up here to post if someone hasn’t done it yet.
I’m also coming to the conclusion as others have said that this one (Größe) was a misunderstanding, perhaps finding große in the dictionary and mixing it up with Größe when katakanising. It’s actually not such a wild mistake to make after I thought about a bit, especially coming from Japanese where they don’t have some of these vowel sounds and actually Japanese even shares roots quite freely between nouns and adjectives (i.e., the number of な adjectives that are also nouns).
I’ll have to do a second pass, especially on the later pages.
. There are also other characters to come, following the same convention, in this manga -