From what I remember (and it has been a while), this doesn’t appear to be drastically different from the translation we ended up with, but I’ve started so I’ll finish!
*Diary of Skiad Ops Lundi
The beginning
1/3
Apparently you are reading this, I have accepted my fate with the Seekers, as surely the Dragon I was riding did, the fact that you have discovered this book must have some significance.
You and I have had a similar encounter with the Dragon, and you must be the person to throw yourself into a battle with the Tower.
2/3
The opportunity has arisen to end the conflict, our friend, the Dragon, personally entrusting me with the secret of his existence, passing it onto me.
After that I became a member of the Seekers. I became a [Compiler1] becoming versed in joint efforts, hopefully through these notes I will be able to explain the whole thing.
3/3
Here in the diary I should mention, I am entrusting you with this secret, the extremely small part I know.
If the small knowledge that I have given has helped you in your similar circumstance, then I will be happy.
1 What!!?? 編み Means knitting or braiding ? but 編集する means to compile. I?m assuming then that Lundi didn?t take up crochet, but rather became a compiler, even if that isn?t what it directly translates as (well not in the five dictionaries I?ve used, anyway).
*
As always, comments and criticism are more than welcome, either on my translating or the document itself.
Lundi was determined history would not forget Lagi, and to immortalise him he apprenticed to the Seekers, renowned for their crocheting skill and technique learned from ancient records. Tragically after 30 years he ran out of irridescent blue Tsukasrook wool and left to hunt in the far northern continent, never to return.
His life’s work of a full size crochet statue of his armored blue buddy left unfinished.
We’ve missed out on so much of the story! Damn you SOA!
One thing I notice straight off: in the existing English translation, his name is given as “Skiad Ops Endow”, not “Skiad Ops Lundi”. After reading that in the English script, I think everyone just assumed he was meant to have taken on a new name when he became a Seeker, but it certainly makes the whole PD2 connection more obvious if the thing opens with “Diary of Skiad Ops Lundi”.
Is there any official reason given for him changing his name to Endow in the English version? It’s not mentioned at all in this. I’ll have the next portion done in a while - about 2/3 through!
1/3
Before the worlds current form had been established, there were groups of ruins called [Towers]. The aim of these constructions was to manage various areas of the ancient world, ?Living Weapons? selflessly2 governing death.
2/3
However, even in the Ancient Age, there were those who were against the Towers.
Towers were the Lords of Creation, the fear of destruction from the Tower depending on him3, from inside the womb of [Uru] the fountain of the world, the Tower had the strongest of all the ?Living Weapons? under its protection4.
That was, the Dragons.
3/3
Respectively Tower 1 is given over to the head Dragon, the mission given to them is still continued now as expected of them.
Even the Imperial troops that handle Ancient Age weapons are torn apart by the protection.
To be able to oppose the strength of that Dragon, a similar Dragon is needed
2 I?m not 100% sure I?ve got the right kanji, but it?s gonna be something like that.
3 Sestren? (Pure speculation, I might add).
4 It might be worth mentioning that the word used here for ?protection? insinuates divine protection
*
Oh no, just that name at the top is different; if it was Lundi in the Japanese script, it must’ve just been a continuity slip, similar to how the same Japanese word was translated as “Khourieat” in PD2 and “Coolia” in PDS, I mean. From my vague understanding of Japanese pronunciation though, I’m not sure how the same original word could give both “Lundi” and “Endow”; is that reasonably possible? If not, I’d say that Endow may have been a name invented by the translator(s), as we know that several of the names in the English script (e.g. almost all of the monster names) were thought up “from scratch” during localisation.
The Japanese spelling of Lundi is “Randei”. Pronounced just as it looks. How in the hell they came up with Endow, I’ll never know. The two major changeables from Japanese to English are L’s/R’s and B’s/V’s, as the language doesn’t natively support the L or V sounds.
Is there a list about of all the monster name changes? I don’t feel i’m annoyed enough and I need some ammunition - pointless name changes in translations always get me riled :anjou_embarassed:
Lance Way’s own (staggeringly comprehensive) FAQ for Saga on GameFAQs runs through all the things that seem to have been renamed after SOA team members. I assure you Kimimi, that will annoy you plenty.
I remember reading something from Abadd (the poster) where he brought up the fact many of the Japanese names had real-world associations that could be seen as less appropriate to the English speaking audience. The only one I recall is the Lathum, which was originally named Zeus I think?
To the topic though, that second part is very interesting Kimimi, the implication that Sestren (embodied) is actually directly based at the Tower of Uru would represent a significant, if subtle paradigm shift…
That one’s another mystery - in the PD2 World doc they were constantly referred to as Coolia (literally spelt Kuuria) and to get Khourieat from that takes some serious fuzzy thinking.
I have just skimmed over Lances FAQ, and yes, I am annoyed at the constant and unnessary name changing to please a few of the translators bored mates. :anjou_verypissedoff:
Perfect excuse to (re)buy a Jp Saturn though - I’ll be able to see exactly what everything was meant to be, rather than what we were forced to live with - which is the main reason I import in the first place.
It’s just something we were aware of without knowing the full details; if you’re feeling like checking it out, I’ll get a full list of the Japanese enemy names to you shortly…
Anyhow, a couple of things that’ve struck me about that second part you’ve translated:
That’s interesting… there’s one line in the existing English script that echoes this statement:
{Edge:}
What makes you say that?
{Zadoc:}
Uru is the origin of our world, and
it’s the homeland of the drones.
…and I always just thought it was overly colourful language, heh. I’m not totally sure what these terms mean, but at first guess I’d say they’d be referring to the huge Tower-plus-genetics-labs setup the Ancients had at Uru; and that maybe that Tower and its surrounding ruins were meant to be more unique (and more central to what the Ancients did) than we’ve been led to believe?
Also, I’ve a suggestion for what the “him” in that paragraph might be talking about:
Rather than Sestren, I suspect this might be referring to the dragon that each Tower had under its control. It looks like the whole sentence could be staying on the same subject - the Towers’ greatest weapon - and we know that dragons were designed and created in the ancient genetics labs at Uru. In that light, “him from the womb of Uru” and “the strongest of all the Living Weapons” mentioned just afterwards look like they could be talking about one and the same thing; what’s your take on that, Kimimi?
That’s a definite possiblity - and all in all probably more likely. I try to keep the grammar similar between the Jp and the English in case anybody wants to try and follow it through so I keep as many of the original “markers” as I can so people have some kind of point of reference through it. This part would make more sense if I re wrote it something like-
…destruction from the Tower depending on him - inside the womb of Uru, the fountain of the world, the Tower had…
Now that you are the dragon rider, our friends soul now lies with you.
Simply, he is the [Destroyer of Towers] dragon soul.
Within reason, all other dragons are your enemy.
2/4
Our friend, who is the Heretic child of the dragon, was the birth and the heresy.
Our friend was accepted into this world as a mutant Coolia, and raised under my protection.
However, the dragon suddenly awakened on his first encounter with the Tower.
3/4
It has puzzled me why he was born as a heresy, that is not certain. He and I grew up together, that couldn?t have merely been an accident.
However, he did pick me as his rider.
When the Tower destroyed my old home he had all the something5* and strength that I could wish for.
4/4
At the end of our journey together, after the Tower of the sky ? Shellcoof and Georgious fell and things came to a conclusion, my friends power exhausted as expected, he cast away his flesh and entered a deep sleep.
Now, once again his body has been reborn and awakened, and you have been picked as the new rider.
5 I?ve tried, but the resolution on the game is pretty low, and I can?t find this kanji at all! >.< It?d read something like ?..had all the Wisdom/power/courage and strength that I??*
That’s interesting, as that’s one of the things we were a bit unsure of in the existing translation: whether Lagi’s original body was meant to be exhausted and discarded at the end of Zwei, or whether that was just colourful English. The way it’s phrased there seems to make it sound like only Lagi’s consciousness / “essence” / “spirit” is meant to have survived at the end of Zwei after all, presumably inside that glowing dragon crest we saw in the ending sequence. That doesn’t greatly help the debate that that question was a part of, though (whether there was meant to be more than one dragon in the series)…
The official translation for this part is extremely close to what you’ve translated yourself, Kimimi:
By destroying the Tower of the
Sky, Shelcoof, our journey came to
an end. Exhausting all his power,
he discarded his body, and entered
a deep sleep. I assume he has now
reemerged with a new body, and
chosen you as his rider.
“Ooh official translation close to original text shocker!”
The Jp text without doubt states that Lagi discarded his body, so hopefully that makes things a little clearer on that count. From the small amount of PD knowledge I have, it seems to me that Lagi has had several bodies, but only one consciousness. But I’m hardly qualified to comment/elaborate much further than that.
Interesting indeed! This was the passage that I most wanted to see the original translation of, and thanks to you Kimimi I finally get to read it… thank you so much!
It does seem pretty hard now to dispute that Lagi’s body “died” at the end of Panzer Dragoon Zwei. The main question now, is what is the “soul” that Lundi talks about in his diary? Is it the Heresy program, or is it the mind and spirit of the coolia that the Heresy program “possessed” at the start of PDZ?
This still doesn’t explain anything about the baby dragon either really, but I guess that is to be expected…
I’d like to believe that the soul that Lagi refers to is that of the coolia himself. It would make much more sense when taking Panzer Dragoon Orta into consideration. It would be far more significant if the physical dragon had the same soul in all the games. Perhaps the coolia’s soul “attached” itself to the Heresy program somehow, so that when the dragon was reborn in PD1 it was still the same Lagi as in Panzer Dragoon Zwei… both halves of him.
So do you believe then that the Coolias soul “tainted” the Heresy program? Or something similar? I’m glad you liked the translation, that’s what it’s there for!
“…he cast away his flesh and entered a deep sleep.
Now, once again his body has been reborn and awakened…”
It seems to me like any interpretation will channel into two essential schools of thought. Either ‘Lagi’s’ soul is part of the dragon crest/baby dragon, and wasn’t part of PD1 or PD3’s dragon until after the two were merged; or that the soul of ‘Lagi’ and the ‘Heresy Program’ are effectively the same until ‘Lagi’ decides to leave Sestren space after the end of Saga, in which case it could be accepted on faith that they’re all “the same dragon” in some primary sense.
That’s a simplification, but it does strike me as the signature point of rift in ideology. I will say that I never assumed they were strictly the same body in the first place, and as such it’s a question that never concerned me much. They’re all manifestations of one purpose, how much does one technicality of physical continuity ultimately matter when this ‘body’ has no conventional continuity no matter how we interpret the details?
I have thought about this quite a lot already, and I’m comfortably certain all the details available will never resolve perfectly together for any defined view. Which is one of the main reasons I personally don’t like to think of ‘Solo Wing’ as a literal aspect of the storyline, there’s just too many extra annoying questions associated with it in my own mind.
