Yaksha Name Translations
(and why they kind of suck)
Hi everyone~
For my first actual post of substance, I figured I’d talk a bit about something in the EN translation that’s bothered me for a while: how the Five Yakshas’ names got translated.
This is not a dig at the TL team. I know from experience that translating from any language into another is very difficult, even more so when you’re translating from a language that can pack so much meaning into a small amount of characters (relative to the amount of characters you’d need in the target language.)
That being said, I still think it’s a shame that so much of this meaning got lost when it didn’t necessarily need to be. At the very least, I think it would have been much better to write the Yaksha’s names (titles are a whole different matter) with the pinyin instead of changing them.
DISCLAIMER: while I am taking chinese lessons, I am by no means fluent. My translations are primarily from mdbg.net, and otherwise are from my Chinese friends. What I’m doing is scuffed as hell, but I think I can at least articulate why I feel the way I do. That being said, if anything here is inaccurate/misleading, please let me know!
Without further ado… let the show begin!
I. 腾蛇太元帅，浮舍 | Marshal Vritras, Bosacius
Bosacius’ original name is 浮舍, which can be broken down as such:
浮 (fú) generally means, roughly, ‘to float’, but (importantly) can also mean ‘superficial/superfluous’, ‘excessive’ and such.
舍 (shě) means ‘to give up’ or ‘to abandon’
Put together, 浮舍 is likely meant to represent letting go of all that is superfluous or excessive, which can be also understood as letting go of earthly/mortal desires. And, as some people much smarter than me have noticed, the chasm quests gives us a line that explains MhY’s intention with his name: 浮生一刹，万般皆舍 (“Life can stop in an instant, all things can be given up”/"Life is fleeting, lasting for just one moment. All things can be left behind/sacrificed.") Together, I think this is meant to represent understanding and embracing the transient nature of life, and taking it for what it is. It’s about giving up greedy pursuits and aspirations and understanding that you are not infinite, but a part of the cycle of the world.
His title, 腾蛇太元帅 (téngshé tài yuánshuài), translates to ‘Marshal Soaring Snake’. 腾蛇 (téngshé) refers to the mythological téng / téngshé, which is, well, a flying serpent/dragon. What’s interesting to me about this title is that Xun Kuang used 腾蛇 in the Xunzi for the expression ‘螣蛇無足而飛’. Here are two translations that have the same meaning: “The T'eng-she dragon has no feet but flies” (Dubs, 1928) and “The wingless dragon has no limbs, but it can fly”. (Knoblock, 1988). Thus, we can conclude that the téngshé represents succeeding by training one's abilities to the fullest.
As for the english translation, Vritras probably refers to Vritra, a danava associated with drought, evil, and chaos. He’s also a serpent! While I think this is an interesting choice, I also think that it doesn’t do a good job of representing what the original text was trying to get across about his character. Vritra is, to my understanding, a negative figure, while Téngshé has a much more ‘uplifting’ tone.
To me, this is a missed opportunity. I’m not sure exactly how it would best be translated, but I don’t understand why they didn’t go the Xiao route and simply switch his title to a latin word with roughly the same literal meaning (even if it’s without the full meaning). I actually asked a beloved friend (who studies latin) for help with this, and together we came up with ‘divi anguis’. ‘Divi’ refers to the sky/open air, and with a bit of wordplay it can be related to ‘divus’ (god, blessed, saint) because they sound the same in the genitive case (their words, I don’t know Latin). ‘Anguis’ refers to serpents, and is in our understanding a more archaic/mystical term, so we’re going with that. Of course this doesn’t come anywhere close to the depth of the original, but it seems like it would be a more accurate representation of his character, and has relation to the being he’s named after.
Moreover, I straight up cannot find any meaning behind Bosacius. I think it would have been better to keep the name as-is and simply write the pinyin.
II. 火鼠大将，应达 | General Musatas, Indarias
Broken down, 应达 (yìngdá) means:
应 (yìng), ‘to answer’
达 (dá), ‘to attain / to reach’
Put back together, 应达 can be interpreted as ‘to attain/reach an answer/understanding’. To me, this ties into the Eightfold Path & the stages to enlightenment since it could represent understanding the nature of the world and the Four Noble Truths.
‘火鼠大将’ (huǒshǔ dàjiàng) is translated literally as ‘General Fire Rat’. The fire rat (huǒshǔ) is, like the téngshé, a creature of myth. It’s said that if its fur is made into cloth, that cloth will be cleaned if it is set on fire. In the case of Genshin, I believe we can conclude that fire (Yingda’s element, so really just Yingda herself) cleanses impurities/falsehoods and allows us to reach the truth, which ties in nicely with her name. (Also! In Gan Bao’s 捜神記, the dwelling of the fire rat is said to be in the Kunlun mountains, which is a place of great mythic and spiritual importance. That being said, other sources say different things, so it perhaps was not considered during the creation of her title.)
According to the wiki, Yingda’s english title of “General Musatas” may actually have a connection to the huǒshǔ. They claim that ‘musatas’ may be a tweaked version of ‘musatus’ which means ‘mouse-like’. That being said… it’s not a real word? And even if it was, it would still be missing the fire connection, which is a shame. If we were to do the same thing we did for Fúshě, again with the help of my friend, we present ‘Fulgoris Mus’ (if the game really needs it to be one word, it can be contracted somehow). ‘Mus’ is simple enough- ‘mouse’ (and it sounds better than ‘ratus’). Fulgoris is a bit more complicated. It does (tenuously, to my understanding) mean flame among other things, but my friend also brought it up since Pliny uses it to describe the lava and molten rock spraying out of Vesuvius (‘fulgor et claritas’), and fire rats were said to live in volcanoes. With this, we keep at least some parts of the mythology in the name.
Indarias, like Bosacius, seems to not mean anything in particular. I really don’t get why they didn’t just go with the pinyin.
III. 螺卷大将，伐难 | General Chizapus, Bonanus
伐难 (Fánàn) is made up of these meanings:
伐 (fá), ‘to cut down / to fell’
难 (nàn), ‘disaster / distress’
The way I interpret this is to persist through hardship and calamity. It’s about standing strong in the face of the difficult and painful, and to emerge victorious from that hell.
螺卷大将 (luó juǎn dàjiàng) means “General Curled Snail”, but is broken down into
螺 (luó), ‘spiral shell / snail / conch’.
卷 (juǎn), ‘to roll up’.
I can’t really figure out what this is a reference to, but my closest guess would be Nüwa, one of the most important gods in Chinese mythology who is attributed with the creation of humanity, and is sometimes associated with snails. At the very least, we do know that it has a link to the aquatic and is directly tied to snails and such. If anyone does know what 螺卷 (luó juǎn) could be a reference to, please share!
Chizapus doesn’t mean anything, and my friend and I think ‘Coculeata’ may have worked better. Coculeata itself only means ‘spiral’, but it is derived from/similar to the word for snail, ‘cochlea’, so I think it still manages to convey the original meaning. If it needs to be more obvious, ‘Concha’ (literally ‘conch’) is an option too.
Like the others, I think Fánàn as a name shouldn’t have been replaced at all, much less by the gibberish that is Bonanus.
IV. 心猿大将，弥怒 | General Kapisas, Menogias
弥怒 (Mínù) is the simplest out of all the Yaksha names:
弥, ‘brimming / overflowing’
怒, ‘anger’
This is pretty interesting, since Mínù in-game seems to be quite calm. This name does, like the others, have mythological connections, but I can’t get into that without first examining his title.
心猿大将 (xīnyuán dàjiàng), “General Mind Monkey” (more literally, General Heart-Mind Monkey). ‘Monkey mind’ is a term used in Buddhism that describes a state of indecisiveness, capriciousness, etc., and Sun Wukong is a direct personification of this concept. The reference to Sun Wukong in Mínù’s title is super important. For those that aren’t already aware, Sun Wukong is the name of one of the most influential characters in all of East Asian literature. He is a protagonist in Journey to the West (Wu Cheng’en), itself one of if not THE most influential work of all of East Asian literature and one of the Classic Chinese Novels alongside Dream of the Red Chamber, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and so on. Sun Wukong starts out as a violent temperamental jerk (and I love him!) and eventually, while being Tan Sanzang’s disciple, learns about the virtues of Buddhism and eventually attains Buddhahood. Throughout their Journey, Sun Wukong faithfully protects Tan Sanzang from the various demons trying to kill and eat him under the assumption that eating his flesh will make them immortal.
While we don’t know much about Mínù, I think we can interpret his story to follow the general idea of Sun Wukong. It’s likely that he was temperamental and restless before following Yanwang Dijun (Rex Lapis), and it was under his command that Mínù moved past that state of ‘monkey-mindedness’.
Kapisas is a decent choice in translation. It comes from the sanskrit कपीश (kapīśa), which is one of the names of Hanuman. Hanuman is a divine monkey (vanara) who is loyal to Rama (one of the most important deities of Hinduism). In his youth, he was also reckless and mistook the sun for a fruit, leaping up to eat it (and dying in the process, before being brought back to life in different ways depending on which source you use), and pranked people. That being said, I don’t think titling Mínù in reference to Hanuman conveys the same ideas that tying him to Sun Wukong would (learning of the virtues of buddhism and bettering yourself through them). It IS much better than the other titles we have seen so far, though.
Menogias is also better than the other given names we’ve seen so far. Meno- may be related to μένος (ménos), which means anger/rage. I can’t tell if -gias comes from anything, but the Meno- part already means what Mínù does. No complaints from me as far as the translation goes, but I still think using the pinyin would work just as well if not better, since it feels more in-line with the names we already find in Liyue. The playable characters’ names are written with the pinyin of the OG chinese characters, so I think it would have been completely understandable to do the same with the given names of the Yakshas.
V. 金鹏大将，降魔大圣，护法夜叉，魈 | General Alatus, Conqueror of Demons, Vigilant Yaksha, Xiao
魈 (Xiāo) is kept the same, for which I am eternally grateful. People already know that it can translate to ‘elfin’, but it also refers to mischievous mountain spirits (山魈, shānxiāo). Unfortunately, his other titles didn’t get translated as well as they could have.
Vigilant Yaksha is originally 护法夜叉 (hùfǎ yèchā), the ‘Dharmapāla Yaksha’. The Dharmapāla is a protector figure in Buddhism and the Dharmapālas are also known as the “Defenders of the Justice”. They are also wrathful, using their strength and terrifying appearance to defend with all their might the followers of Buddhism. In Xiao’s case, this would translate as him defending the followers of Yanwang Dijun, i.e., the people of Liyue. I think it would have been nice if they had simply kept the title as is. The dharmapāla are not a difficult research topic at all, and it would have added more depth than we get from “Vigilant Yaksha”, even if I understand what the translation team was going for.
The original ‘Conqueror of Demons’, 降魔大圣 (jiàng/xiáng mó dà shèng) means “Great Sage who Subdues Demons”
降 can be read as either jiàng or xiáng, but the intended reading here is (imo) xiáng, which means ‘to conquer / to tame’ (as opposed to jiàng, ‘to fall / to descend’)
魔 (mó) refers to demons and evil spirits.
大圣 (dà shèng) is Great Sage. It’s used in Sun Wukong’s title, 齐天大圣 (qí tiān dà shèng, Great Sage Equal to Heaven)
It’s a shame that they did not manage to keep the Great Sage segment. Not only is it a reference to Sun Wukong, which I’ve already covered the importance of, but it also has a different connotation to ‘Conqueror’. It gives a much wiser feeling to the title, whereas Conqueror really only has violent (if triumphant) connotations. “Demon-Conquering Sage”/"Demon-Subduing Sage" doesn’t roll off the tongue quite like “Conqueror of Demons” does, but I do wish there was a way to keep the sage concept in there while maintaining its coolness somehow.
金鹏大将 (jīnpéng dàjiàng) is where my real problems start. Changing 金鹏 into Alatus is like straining spaghetti and throwing everything away except the water. 金 (jīn) means gold. 鹏 (péng) is where the myths are found.
The 鹏 (péng), or 大鹏 (dàpéng), is a mythological creature that transforms from a 鯤 (kūn) into a giant bird. Additionally, 鹏 is a variant way of spelling 凤 (fèng) in the mythological 凤凰 (fènghuáng), which are the kings of all other birds. But going back to the péng, it is described in the Zhuangzhi as searching for the Lake of Heaven, and not stopping until it finds it. It is ridiculed by smaller birds who can only fly from tree to tree, who believe that its journey is pointless. To my understanding, the description of the Péng in the Zhuangzhi is about freeing yourself from mortal limitations and is an embodiment of daoist ideals, reaching a state of enlightenment. If we add 金 (jīn) back into the equation, 金鹏 can be connected to 大鵬金翅明王 (dàpéng jīnchì míngwáng), the ‘Golden-winged King of Illumination’. He also appears in Journey to the West and is mentioned to be one of Sun Wukong’s sworn brothers, but, more importantly, is the guardian of the ‘Pure Land’ and sits at the Buddha’s throne.
Xiao’s connection to all these birds really shows his importance, and reinforces his place as one of the Foremost Five Yakshas and someone Zhongli trusts unequivocally, as well as deepening his role as a guardian of the land and people of Liyue. Alatus only means ‘winged / feathered’, and so much is lost because of that. I think keeping it as the pinyin for jīnpéng might have influenced people to do at least cursory research, and would have led to so many people know how deep and interesting all of this is, and maybe it would have exposed them to new cultures and myths for the first time.
VI. Ok, so what?
I know this might seem like a pure nitpick to lots of people, but I personally find it important. The original chinese text is the original text, which means all these details are very much intended, and tell us about the characters and even what may happen in the future. I also think staying faithful to the spirit of the original text is vital when translating anything. Because of this, I think it's important to do our best to give the most accurate interpretation of these names. Even if we can't truly translate everything, it may encourage the player to do extra research at least.
I don’t blame the translation team, but Iit’s a shame how much meaning was lost in translation, and I wanted to bring a little of it to light. Obviously I’m not well-educated in these subjects, but I still hope I was able to talk about something new!
If anything in this post was lacking/incorrect, please let me know; every day is a new opportunity to learn!
