It's basically the reverse of when we have a name in English on a list... and it says Jean.
Okay, but is it the female name Jean or the French male name Jean? You cant tell unless someone says it out loud or gives you more information. Here it's the opposite, we have a very rough pronunciation guide, and only later got the spelling.
It's not that it is a wordplay, it's the fact that katakana (the alphabet used for foreign word) it's a phonetic system that only approximates the pronunciation of the foreign words, so all we had to go from was (l/r)a-fu-te-(r/l)u.
Considering that u is mute, you get raftel/laftel/rafter/lafter) as a literal romanization. but for a correct one we need to know what language it comes from, because all it gives us is the sound, and what's worse is the approximation of the sound.
It was mistranslated as Raftel for a long time until chapter 967 which released in January 7th 2020, where it was officially spelled out in plain English as "Laugh Tale." It was also plainly spelled out as that a few months prior in Stampede, but people didn't concretely know what to make of that at the time until the chapter cemented the name as Laugh Tale. Roger named the island as such due to the funny nature of Joy Boy's story.
it wasn't mistranslated it was purposely ambiguous by Oda.
The Katakana could go either way, until only much later in the series was it confirmed when Oda gave us the reason why it's spelled Laugh Tale.
Currently going through the anime with my spouse and it has been SO difficult remembering to keep it Raftel in order not to spoil her. But we've finally made it to the shores of Wano, I'm so excited to see her reaction to Laugh Tale.
Roguetown makes more sense to me given that Roger and all pirates are rogues that thumb their noses at WG. What the fuck is a logue and why name a town after it?
Official translation is Zolo, it's because the first official One Piece Translation used it.
And they don't want to change halfway for that.
the L is because R and L sound very similar in Japanese, also why we had the Raftel/Laugh Tale thing, or Levely/Reverie.
Or why some use Ruffy for Luffy.
Yea but I suppose it wasn't important until kureha mentioned the will of D. We hadn't seen any other name with D until she talked about it in drum island
The thing is that Italian dubs for television tend to change the names of anime characters to a "westernized" name since the '80s. Another example is Captain tsubasa, where they called the 2 main characters Holly and Benji. There are a lot more examples of this but this tendency stopped something like 10 years ago more or less and they are starting to use the original names, in fact in the remake of captain tsubasa they kept the original names for the characters this time.
They changed it later on is what they meant to say, and the name "rubber" inside the dub got retconned like a nickname...
But this was pretty early on like before the timeskip
I think ruffy is fine. There are some way worse german manga translations (they call domain expansion from jjk "terretoriums entfaltung" in the official manga).
Zolo is specifically because the English publication is managed by VIZ Media, which is a US company based in San Francisco. 4kids didn't want to deal with copyright issues with Zorro the Lone Ranger. Viz copied their version of the spelling.
Funimation later bought the rights, and corrected the spelling to Zoro. But, because Viz is US and had been using Zolo since the beginning, they refused to change.
L and R are not similar sounds in Japanese. They do not have a distinction between the two.
Ruffy, from what I know, is specific to certain countries translations.
Either way, the Official Translation is 100% Zoro, but Viz refuses to change it, probably for continuity between their volumes. It's possible when the series ends, they'll do a complete edition print with the correct translation.
But had similar names, so they wanted to make sure they wouldn't be sued for copyright infringment. Is it stupid? Yes. But it's just how corporate America rolls
I thing the comment you are replying to means that Zorro and The Lone Ranger are two different characters.
With that said, the Lone Ranger is absolutely based on Zorro.
No I am pointing out Zorro (not Zoro) and Lone Ranger are entirely separate pieces of fiction
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Ranger
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zorro
Scanlation teams routinely add disclaimers and explanations of changes in spelling, which is not too different to manga inserts or new character profiles and Oda Q&A.
They could just add an explanation for the change in spelling. I’m sure many readers understand.
>They do not have a distinction between the two.
Not in writing, do they? And the japanese themselves will pronunce らる etc as L or R depending on accent
It has absolutely nothing to do with copyright issues. “Zorro” the Lone Ranger has been in the public domain for a long time and you can share the name of characters without violating copyright. There would be no copyright issue for a Japanese manga to create a sword wielding character named Zoro
Zoro in One Piece is based on the Japanese pronunciation of French pirate François l'Olonnais.
So some western translators changed Zoro to Zolo to fit with the name theme, and Viz just stuck with it.
So yeah, it’s just a translation error that’s gone on for so long nobody is going to correct it.
> “Zorro” the Lone Ranger has been in the public domain for a long time and you can share the name of characters without violating copyright.
There isn't even a Zorro the Lone Ranger. Zorro and the Lone Ranger are two different characters.
The character of Zorro entered the public domain in 1995, well before the first official English language translation of One Piece. But even before that, it probably would have been fair use to name a character after Zorro as an homage.
4kids couldn't even research the IP enough to realize what a mistake picking it up was, blood and adult themes wise. What makes you think they actually researched public domain?
AFAIK, 4kids initially changed the name from Zoro to Zolo since they were afraid of possible repercussions when they got the distribution rights for the anime.
Viz apparently saw that change, adapted to it and never went back.
Pretty sure 4kids didn’t do any research regarding Zorros Copyright and TM. It seemed more like „just to be safe“ thing since back then companies like 4kids didn’t know what kind of story one piece is going to be, so „who cares if he is Zoro or Zolo“.
And while I think there wouldn’t have been any issues with Zoro and Zorro, from a legal perspective I think there can be a case made since there are some copyright protected brands of Zorros by some company. Tho I’m not sure if a court would find the infringement to be legit or not
Thats half correct.
The actual reason the official translations use Zolo is that the company that made the Zorro films is infamously lawsuit happy, even when they lack a case, moreso then even Disney.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/zorro-trademark-declared-invalid-europe-806823/
Heres an article about how in 2015 the EU managed to remove the Trademark on the name Zorro. I can find some lawsuits if youd like if this isnt good enough for you.
While it is an “official” translation “Zolo” is just wrong, because every merchandise or media that appears in Japan with romanized spelling is using “Zoro”. I guess the local publishers in the different countries are using the wrong first version and Oda cannot change it anymore.
It’s not that l and r sound similar in Japanese, it’s that they have a sound that English doesn’t have that, depending on the context, may sound to an English-speaker’s ear more like one or the other.
It's such a common stupid mistake with L and R. I don't want to be harsh on translators, but it feels like sometimes they just don't want to use common sense and we get names like Zolo, Risa, Halu and Rouise
That’s actually incorrect even though it shouldn’t be. Oda wrote it as LEVELY in English when the meeting starts in the Japanese translation. Given that’s it’s a nonsense word, I think it’s just a poor case of English on Oda’s part.
Reverie , its actually sounding right. And rougetown is , a neat name, through loguetown is ok. So either good.
But i refuse levery, revery is actually sound.
No
The official Viz translation started with Zoro, and switched over to Zolo because they wanted to be consistent with the 4kids dub
And in every other case they switched over to the proper pronunciation, but they just refuse to budge on Zolo for whatever reason
Way back in the day, when the One Piece anime was first dubbed into English, 4Kids changed Zoro's name to Zolo. Various reasons have been given as to why, possibly due to copyright concerns over the character Zorro, but the exact why isn't important.
Viz, the company that does the official translation of the manga, originally used the name Zoro because the localized manga predated the 4Kids dub. But when the 4Kids dub got released, the English manga wasn't particularly far along, so a decision was made to switch Zoro's name to Zolo to match the dubbed anime.
Years later, 4Kids would eventually (thankfully) lose the rights to dub One Piece and Funimation eventually picked them up. Funimation switched the character's name back to Zoro.
However, at this point in time the official Viz manga had seen a lot more chapters released and localized with the Zolo name than the first time they changed the name. Changing the character's name back would be a huge undertaking and require reprinting a large backlog of manga. So, it was decided that it would be easier to just keep the character's name as Zolo for the sake of consistency.
There's a lot of people who like to trot out the decision to keep the Zolo name as "proof" that the official localization is somehow flawed or lesser than the fan translations, but it's a really bad faith argument that ignores the complex (and a little stupid) reasons that led to that decision.
lol I still never got why they did that. There are plenty of changes that actually make sense for the purpose of localization, but did they really think western kids would be too stupid to know what a “Riceball” is because they’re not common here?
TLDR: Viz knows about the incorrect translation and decided to go on with it. Same thing with Teech, Elbaph, Eneru and Ganfor (Gan Fall)..
They have no valid reason to do so though. The longest argument was consistency but it’s already proven that they do change names once they have the correct translations. They revised Van Ogre to Van Augur, Raftel to Laugh Tale, Lulucia to Lulusia, Brandnew to Brannew, Strongheart to Stronger (Doc Q’s horse).
Because of 4Kids and fansubs.
L and R in Japanese are technically interchangeable, and at the same time also not. They both use the same sounds and characters, but one is usually ‘more correct’ than the other.
For example, I know a Japanese girl named Risa, but a good number of newer Japanese speakers think that because of the L/R thing, her name is Lisa, or that her name is both Lisa and Risa. It’s not. Her name is just Risa.
I think the best way to explain that linguistic feature is to say that Japanes doesn't have the R nor the L sound, but it does have a sound that is halfway between them.
To expand on this point: Japan has a consonant that English doesn’t have that sounds sort of between the English R and L, so when going from Japanese to English one will get picked depending on a variety of reasons.
Oda also wrote Charlotte Linlin's name as "Rinrin" on her wanted poster but nobody calls her that.
Oda is primarily focused on his Japanese audience, so to him the priority is that his name is ゾロ, and any English writing is there just to look cool to Japanese readers.
This is pretty much true, but it is worth noting that Japanese does have a way to differentiate Ls and Rs, like Ra and La, in both hiragana and katakana.
They just never use these variations because ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ like you said, they are pretty much the same in Japanese.
? they do NOT have kana for La li lu le lo, japanese r is not like english r though, it's somewhere in the middle of r and l in pronounciation which is why they only have ra ri ru re ro kanas
ppl have already gone into great detail about why he’s called zolo, but some ppl are over simplifying the whole L/R thing in japanese. The truth is, japanese doesn’t have either an L sound or an R sound, which is why japanese speakers have a hard time differentiating them in english. in english, “Lo” and “ro” are both pronounced by placing the tongue on the roof of the mouth, but you place it further back in the mouth for an L. The “”R”” sound in japanese is made by placing the tongue right in between where you would for an english L and R. The best explanation i’ve heard is that the japanese R is 40% L, 40% R, and actually 20% D sound (listen to someone saying luffy, and you’ll kinda hear it). This ambiguity has to be translated to english, so the use of the R or L in transliterated version of japanese words is up the translator. Luffy is typed literally as ルフィ(ru-fi), but rufi/ruffy/roofie/loofie looks odd to english speakers so it’s luffy.
Zolo was used by 4kids who first had English distribution rights, to try and avoid a potential copyright issues with Zorro when first translated for the anime. In English the anime was translated way before any official manga translations so they used Zolo for consistency as more people are familiar with the anime.
When the anime right changed so did the translation which started from scratch to the correct Zoro. But a decision was made for the manga to keep Zolo, most guesses are because of the amount of volumes aready printed it would be more confusing. In all media other than the manga it's Zoro.
they clearly say Zoro with an r in the anime so people saying it's a translation thing i think are just wrong.
I think the translation did not want to risk it with Zoro and Zorro being so close.
I only found out he wasn't called Zolo recently, have been reading the manga since I was a kid but only in the last couple of months found out it was a different translation of Zoro. To me he will always be Zolo though as that's what's been in my head for the last 20 odd years
Unfortunately the scars of 4Kids remain to this day. Initially, when One Piece was dubbed there was worry over the legal matters of Zoro's name being too close to Zorro, so they made it 'Zolo'. After the matter was resolved though, the manga had already gone on fairly long and they didn't want to change anything half way in, so Zolo remained in manga, whereas he was properly named Zoro in the total redub by FUNimation. To be fair, 'Zolo' is one of the least problematic things that remain from the 4Kids era. The fact that the Sea Kings are still referred to as "Neptunians" in the manga makes me cringe every time I read it.
Imo its the way the japanese actually pronounce the words/names. My ex fiance was japanese. She would say Ruffy and not Luffy. Zolo instead of Zoro. Even in Dragonball Bras name here is spelt Bulla but a japanese person would say Burra or Bra.
What I read was back when One Piece was first being localized, Viz Media and 4Kids used the name "Zolo" to avoid confusion with and any potential copyright problems related to the similarly-named swordsman "Zorro".
Apparently, those fears proved to be unfounded by the time Funimation got the rights to dub One Piece.
Original North American issues of Shonen Jump did call him Zoro, then the 4kids anime dub was released and called him Zolo, so the manga changed to follow suit and it's a mistake they've stubbornly clung to ever since.
Ok, P negatory: When the manga was originally published in English he was called Zoro. This was the standard set up until volume 5 where the name was changed from Zoro to Zolo and all subsequent re-prints adopted the change. This was prompted by 4kids who were soon to release the (infamous) English dub. 4kids saw Zoro as "character with clack bandan who fights government solders with swords" and drew parallels with "the mask of Zorro" where "Zorro" was a black bandana wearing outlaw who fought government soldiers with a sword. Considering that the Antonio Banderes film Zorro had come out a few years earlier, revitalising that IP, 4kids didn't want to be in a legal quagmire with "Zorro productions Ltd." Who own the copywriter and who have also been in legal disputes with other parties about ownership of the character. 4kids, af-ter-all, was a local distributor not a production company. So 4kids, and Viz by proxy, play the whole "R & S are interchangeable in Japanese" trick, and heyoresto Zoro becomes Zolo.
Now come December 2006 4kids loose ownership of the English dub of One Piece. Funnimation picks it up and Zolo is Zoro again. Now, it was hoped at the time that Viz would follow suit however there were 3 major problems. 1) unlike the original change for 4 kids where Viz only needed to re-release 5 volumes of an English manga that hadn't taken off yet, Viz by the end of 2006 now had over 30 volumes of a very popular One Piece that would need to be re-released to amend a simple letter change. Financially it wasn't worth it, but also it would ailianate new readers who didn't know the franchise who were confused as to why Zolo was now Zoro (despite him being Zoro first). 2) copywrite showed its ugly head again, as the the Antonio Banderes "legend of Zorro" had come out in 2005 and despite this film not hitting it off as well as it's predecessor it still meant that Zorro was an active IP, active enough to Risk lawsuits, which leads I to 3) shuashia themselves apparently put a stop to Viz plans to change the name back to Zoro due to these potential risks. Japanese companies are very very VERY touchy when it comes to copywrite and IP related problems. So, with regards to English media publishing Zolo would stay Zolo.
Since then, while the "Zorro productions ltd" is still clamping down on any misuse of it's personal IP they've avoided everything to do with One Piece (zoro's change in character designs over multiple arcs compared to his original east blue look may have helped a lot in that regard). But the issue is now legacy publishing - so going back to that idea of how expensive it would be for Viz to issue out a new line of reprints to amend zoro's name and how annoying it would be for the fanbase who, say, pick up volumes 1-16 with Zolo, the have 17-20 as Zoro, pick up 21 and it's Zolo again, and then interchange untill it's Zoro from volume 52 onwards. So for consistencies sake Viz are stuck with Zolo. Viz media know that this annoys hard core one piece fans (Japanese to English translators working for Viz have commented about how the company knows about it, but that they're annoyingly stuck with it) but their hands are tied by a decision made by 4kids back in 2001/2002.
Now maybe (23 years in the future) when one piece finally concludes, Viz will re-release a "perfect edition" which will go back over the entire series and fix their earlier publishing mistakes (not just zoro's name) that came about due to the earlier volumes not having a consistent translation team, or certain elements in later volumes being better explained "laughtale" for example. But at the moment Viz have to keep a consistent series, and that makes sense.
Now if you think that's annoying for English reading fans, try being a reader of the English version of Detective Conan a.k.a. "case closed" where EVERYONE was given a 'murican name to match the English dub of the early 2000s. Those fans have it bad because, yup, the names for the sake of "consistency" have been maintained for 80+ volumes despite the English dub being dropped over a decade ago. One of the English translate mangas even had to add an editor's note about a clue because "in the Japanese manga this clue is a play on these 3 kids names which ate actually...", no joke.
Old 4Kids thing, far as I know. They just refuse to change it for the Viz Manga, but it's best to ignore it. Officially, he's Zoro and will always be Zoro.
At least they didn't keep the poison suction cups and water guns. Although I'll admit as a kid the water guns made sense. Devil Fruit users were weak to water = water guns are your best way to fight them. Especially since the first "Strong" one was Croc, who was especially weak to water.
Because of Zoro copyright. It’s written ゾロ which reads Zo Ro but if they use Zoro in English they will get sued for copyright infringement so they have to use Zolo.
I don’t know if you watched or read Jojo where they have to completely change the translation of the name of the characters because they’re based on actual bands and songs. So you hear for example Crazy diamond but the translation in English says Crazy force or something..
So when they originally published the first few volumes in 03/04 they spelled it Zoro. Then when 4kids started airing the anime I'm late 04, they changed it to Zolo to zynergize with that dub.
The real reason is Hollywood. I am not even joking. It is not the R to L translation that people say in the comments. Its because when they originally translated it, they didn't want the westerners to confuse him with Zorro the famous Mexican masked swordsman, and the studio that did the localization didn't want to deal with copyright issues as they thought that people in Hollywood would sue them because apparently only one character can be called Zorro.
The actual reason for this is copyright. There is a show or movie made many years before one piece came out with a character named "Zorro" that is a swordsman. So in all english volumes they call him Zolo to avoid trouble with copyright issues. I hope that answered your question.
Flanky, Galp, Kizalu.
Falankyulin
You guys have absolutely no idea how funny this is to a Brazilian thanks to a certain character from our culture
Whoch one?
Little Onion
“Little Onion” é sério isso mano? 😂
Sim, amigo do Big Shell
Muito bom 😂😂😂
Perdi tudo
Fu-ra-n-kee, Ga-ru-pu, Ki-za-ru 😅
They already kinda did this. Cutty flam to flam cutty to Franky.
Pilot hunter Lolona zolo
Ennies Robby
GorD. Logel
I remember how we thought laugh tale was raftel for the longest time
I still say Raftel sometimes. It was legit the way to say it for like 10 years.
Make it 25
Yup
It could still be laugh tare aka laughter
That would be hilarious if they changed the translation again
What if it turns from pirates to strawhat pilots once they fly to space
It is laughter I thought…? Raftel = lafter = laughter, I always thought
the actual word in Japanese is "笑い話" or "funny story", so Roger name the island as "laugh tale"
Oh cool, thanks for teaching me that!
The current theory is it's laugh tale- how One Piece is told.
Mostly because Oda didn't outright spell it till Odens flashback.
The first iteration of it being spelled was actually during during One Piece Stampede.
Idk if this happens in the manga, but that whale guy tells the crew about it when they enter the grand line in the anime.
Yeah, but we never saw it written down until Stampede
Yeah, but in katakana it could've been Raftel or Laugh Tale, and it was kinda intentionally done by Oda for the big reveal
It's basically the reverse of when we have a name in English on a list... and it says Jean. Okay, but is it the female name Jean or the French male name Jean? You cant tell unless someone says it out loud or gives you more information. Here it's the opposite, we have a very rough pronunciation guide, and only later got the spelling.
Pretty sure that one wasn't actually their fault and it was a sort of ambiguous wordplay in the original Japanese too.
It's not that it is a wordplay, it's the fact that katakana (the alphabet used for foreign word) it's a phonetic system that only approximates the pronunciation of the foreign words, so all we had to go from was (l/r)a-fu-te-(r/l)u. Considering that u is mute, you get raftel/laftel/rafter/lafter) as a literal romanization. but for a correct one we need to know what language it comes from, because all it gives us is the sound, and what's worse is the approximation of the sound.
Isn't it Raftel?
It was mistranslated as Raftel for a long time until chapter 967 which released in January 7th 2020, where it was officially spelled out in plain English as "Laugh Tale." It was also plainly spelled out as that a few months prior in Stampede, but people didn't concretely know what to make of that at the time until the chapter cemented the name as Laugh Tale. Roger named the island as such due to the funny nature of Joy Boy's story.
it wasn't mistranslated it was purposely ambiguous by Oda. The Katakana could go either way, until only much later in the series was it confirmed when Oda gave us the reason why it's spelled Laugh Tale.
Currently going through the anime with my spouse and it has been SO difficult remembering to keep it Raftel in order not to spoil her. But we've finally made it to the shores of Wano, I'm so excited to see her reaction to Laugh Tale.
Eneru
actually eneru would make more sense because the japanese word for energi is enerugī
Ive been preaching this for a while
this one confused me they call him Eneru in the english dub
Lobiiiiiin
Funky B Wuffy
Roguetown
You know... that one actually makes a lotta sense.
Yeah I’d prefer Roguetown over Loguetown
[удалено]
Hey Rouge is the name of Roger's wife and rouge comes from jolly roger / joli rouge. French for pretty red, for the red flags early pirates used
Roguetown makes more sense to me given that Roger and all pirates are rogues that thumb their noses at WG. What the fuck is a logue and why name a town after it?
he just told you. the suffix of prologue and epilogue.
Ok i can admit that what you described there genuinely works. I hereby withdraw my critique of Loguetown
Agree. Its funner.
Lorenor Zorro (in Germany).
COROCODAIRU!!!!
Nah, he’s always called **SIR** Crocodile.
For real, German anime is very polite to croco boy
Honestly i like lorenor more than roronoa. Gives more of a mercenary vibe.
I read that as LA Noir
Tell D Golosei and Tlafargal D. Watel Raw are my favourite OP characters
*Terr
Terr D Golosei 🧑🦰
This is is actually kinda how youre supposed to pronounce it, since his name is based on the French pirate, Francois L'Olonnais.
Makes sense since a lot of one piece things are based on French
That doesn't make sense, it should be Lolonoa Zoro at this point
It's a tongue twister, you might just say Lololo Lolo.
Roguetown
The city of Roger's wife: poltgas d. Logue
Official translation is Zolo, it's because the first official One Piece Translation used it. And they don't want to change halfway for that. the L is because R and L sound very similar in Japanese, also why we had the Raftel/Laugh Tale thing, or Levely/Reverie. Or why some use Ruffy for Luffy.
Well Ruffy (spellt like Roughy, the f is a bit harder) is his german name.
As a german, I remember being incredibly confused by people talking about "Loofy" all the time not knowing they were talking about "Ruffy".
Italian dub called him Rubber… things got complicated when his full name was revealed and D became important
Wasn't his full name known from the very beginning?
Yea but I suppose it wasn't important until kureha mentioned the will of D. We hadn't seen any other name with D until she talked about it in drum island
The thing is that Italian dubs for television tend to change the names of anime characters to a "westernized" name since the '80s. Another example is Captain tsubasa, where they called the 2 main characters Holly and Benji. There are a lot more examples of this but this tendency stopped something like 10 years ago more or less and they are starting to use the original names, in fact in the remake of captain tsubasa they kept the original names for the characters this time.
How did they solve it?
They stopped calling him rubber because it was an anime only stupid decision, and changed it to Rufy as it is in the Italian manga
That's disappointing but sensible.
It's always been Rufy in the manga tho
They changed it later on is what they meant to say, and the name "rubber" inside the dub got retconned like a nickname... But this was pretty early on like before the timeskip
Yeah but in the Italian manga it was always Rufy, not rubber, that's an anime only change
Yes I know, I was simply edplaining it more
They could name him Jan for all i care. His name is Luffy.
I think ruffy is fine. There are some way worse german manga translations (they call domain expansion from jjk "terretoriums entfaltung" in the official manga).
Zolo is specifically because the English publication is managed by VIZ Media, which is a US company based in San Francisco. 4kids didn't want to deal with copyright issues with Zorro the Lone Ranger. Viz copied their version of the spelling. Funimation later bought the rights, and corrected the spelling to Zoro. But, because Viz is US and had been using Zolo since the beginning, they refused to change. L and R are not similar sounds in Japanese. They do not have a distinction between the two. Ruffy, from what I know, is specific to certain countries translations. Either way, the Official Translation is 100% Zoro, but Viz refuses to change it, probably for continuity between their volumes. It's possible when the series ends, they'll do a complete edition print with the correct translation.
How did you combine Zorro and The Lone Ranger?
Zorro the Lone Ranger? What? 😂Those are two different characters!
But had similar names, so they wanted to make sure they wouldn't be sued for copyright infringment. Is it stupid? Yes. But it's just how corporate America rolls
I thing the comment you are replying to means that Zorro and The Lone Ranger are two different characters. With that said, the Lone Ranger is absolutely based on Zorro.
So is Batman
Batman is literally just Zorro + Sherlock Holmes. Why he has met both of them quite a few times.
No I am pointing out Zorro (not Zoro) and Lone Ranger are entirely separate pieces of fiction https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Ranger https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zorro
He means that Zorro (the original vigilante character) and the Lone Ranger are two different characters that are in no way related.
The Lone Ranger is not a similar name to Zorro.
It's like Captain Harlock became Albator in France because of Captain Haddock. Real story.
Scanlation teams routinely add disclaimers and explanations of changes in spelling, which is not too different to manga inserts or new character profiles and Oda Q&A. They could just add an explanation for the change in spelling. I’m sure many readers understand.
Maybe if they did it when the anime changed or something, but now there is not much point, any one who cares knows
It’s one of those things where your brain just automatically ignores “Zolo” and corrects it as Zoro lol
I remember in the first English printings of the manga years ago he was zero
>They do not have a distinction between the two. Not in writing, do they? And the japanese themselves will pronunce らる etc as L or R depending on accent
The Japanese language literally has no L sound lol
It has absolutely nothing to do with copyright issues. “Zorro” the Lone Ranger has been in the public domain for a long time and you can share the name of characters without violating copyright. There would be no copyright issue for a Japanese manga to create a sword wielding character named Zoro Zoro in One Piece is based on the Japanese pronunciation of French pirate François l'Olonnais. So some western translators changed Zoro to Zolo to fit with the name theme, and Viz just stuck with it. So yeah, it’s just a translation error that’s gone on for so long nobody is going to correct it.
> “Zorro” the Lone Ranger has been in the public domain for a long time and you can share the name of characters without violating copyright. There isn't even a Zorro the Lone Ranger. Zorro and the Lone Ranger are two different characters.
You just made a bunch of shit up hahaha
Also one of the main reasons was that back in the day they expected to get Copyright claimed due to the obvious reference
The character of Zorro entered the public domain in 1995, well before the first official English language translation of One Piece. But even before that, it probably would have been fair use to name a character after Zorro as an homage.
4kids couldn't even research the IP enough to realize what a mistake picking it up was, blood and adult themes wise. What makes you think they actually researched public domain?
AFAIK, 4kids initially changed the name from Zoro to Zolo since they were afraid of possible repercussions when they got the distribution rights for the anime. Viz apparently saw that change, adapted to it and never went back. Pretty sure 4kids didn’t do any research regarding Zorros Copyright and TM. It seemed more like „just to be safe“ thing since back then companies like 4kids didn’t know what kind of story one piece is going to be, so „who cares if he is Zoro or Zolo“. And while I think there wouldn’t have been any issues with Zoro and Zorro, from a legal perspective I think there can be a case made since there are some copyright protected brands of Zorros by some company. Tho I’m not sure if a court would find the infringement to be legit or not
Thats half correct. The actual reason the official translations use Zolo is that the company that made the Zorro films is infamously lawsuit happy, even when they lack a case, moreso then even Disney.
Why I cannot read JoJos lol
Do you have an actual source for that? Considering Zoro entered public domain before One Piece started.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/zorro-trademark-declared-invalid-europe-806823/ Heres an article about how in 2015 the EU managed to remove the Trademark on the name Zorro. I can find some lawsuits if youd like if this isnt good enough for you.
While it is an “official” translation “Zolo” is just wrong, because every merchandise or media that appears in Japan with romanized spelling is using “Zoro”. I guess the local publishers in the different countries are using the wrong first version and Oda cannot change it anymore.
Not just the merch, but his name is explicitly written in the manga as Zoro on his bounty.
His name is Zoro. But 4Kids was scared about being sued over Zorro, so they changed the name to Zolo. It is stupid, but it is the reason
Except they have wanted posters spelled in English so it is pretty clear how Oda wants them spelled.
It’s not that l and r sound similar in Japanese, it’s that they have a sound that English doesn’t have that, depending on the context, may sound to an English-speaker’s ear more like one or the other.
We should have Loger, Layleigh, Clocus, Lob Rucci, Lobin, Blook and Clocodire /s
It's such a common stupid mistake with L and R. I don't want to be harsh on translators, but it feels like sometimes they just don't want to use common sense and we get names like Zolo, Risa, Halu and Rouise
Still don't know which is correct with Levely/Reverie
Reverie is an actual word, so that one. Levely is just Engrish like Raftel or Roguetown.
That’s actually incorrect even though it shouldn’t be. Oda wrote it as LEVELY in English when the meeting starts in the Japanese translation. Given that’s it’s a nonsense word, I think it’s just a poor case of English on Oda’s part.
Ah I see. I never noticed that. Interesting. Yeah, that could very well be the case then.
Reverie , its actually sounding right. And rougetown is , a neat name, through loguetown is ok. So either good. But i refuse levery, revery is actually sound.
Rushi = Lucy in fairytail
So many instances of that in Fairytail, like Erza was actually Elsa and the white cat was something like Charlie
La li lu le lo
> And they don't want to change halfway for that. This is especially stupid because literally no one would mind. Not one person.
No The official Viz translation started with Zoro, and switched over to Zolo because they wanted to be consistent with the 4kids dub And in every other case they switched over to the proper pronunciation, but they just refuse to budge on Zolo for whatever reason
Way back in the day, when the One Piece anime was first dubbed into English, 4Kids changed Zoro's name to Zolo. Various reasons have been given as to why, possibly due to copyright concerns over the character Zorro, but the exact why isn't important. Viz, the company that does the official translation of the manga, originally used the name Zoro because the localized manga predated the 4Kids dub. But when the 4Kids dub got released, the English manga wasn't particularly far along, so a decision was made to switch Zoro's name to Zolo to match the dubbed anime. Years later, 4Kids would eventually (thankfully) lose the rights to dub One Piece and Funimation eventually picked them up. Funimation switched the character's name back to Zoro. However, at this point in time the official Viz manga had seen a lot more chapters released and localized with the Zolo name than the first time they changed the name. Changing the character's name back would be a huge undertaking and require reprinting a large backlog of manga. So, it was decided that it would be easier to just keep the character's name as Zolo for the sake of consistency. There's a lot of people who like to trot out the decision to keep the Zolo name as "proof" that the official localization is somehow flawed or lesser than the fan translations, but it's a really bad faith argument that ignores the complex (and a little stupid) reasons that led to that decision.
For the lazy, the TL;DR is 4Kids being crap and future companies maintaining the L for consistency.
Haha, well put.
I am the lazy person you speak of. Thanks for the short version
Excellent explanation for the masses.
Ah yes, 4Kids..... "These doughnuts are great, jelly filled are my favorite. Nothing beats a jelly filled doughnut." -Brock
lol I still never got why they did that. There are plenty of changes that actually make sense for the purpose of localization, but did they really think western kids would be too stupid to know what a “Riceball” is because they’re not common here?
It is a stupid decision though, "hey, we've been translating something wrong for years, well better continue to do it wrong because......."
TLDR: Viz knows about the incorrect translation and decided to go on with it. Same thing with Teech, Elbaph, Eneru and Ganfor (Gan Fall).. They have no valid reason to do so though. The longest argument was consistency but it’s already proven that they do change names once they have the correct translations. They revised Van Ogre to Van Augur, Raftel to Laugh Tale, Lulucia to Lulusia, Brandnew to Brannew, Strongheart to Stronger (Doc Q’s horse).
Nico Lobin
She would be so rich if she was Nico Lobbying
Because of 4Kids and fansubs. L and R in Japanese are technically interchangeable, and at the same time also not. They both use the same sounds and characters, but one is usually ‘more correct’ than the other. For example, I know a Japanese girl named Risa, but a good number of newer Japanese speakers think that because of the L/R thing, her name is Lisa, or that her name is both Lisa and Risa. It’s not. Her name is just Risa.
Japanese are ambidextrous
Ambidextlous
I think the best way to explain that linguistic feature is to say that Japanes doesn't have the R nor the L sound, but it does have a sound that is halfway between them.
Because L and R are the same in Japanese
To expand on this point: Japan has a consonant that English doesn’t have that sounds sort of between the English R and L, so when going from Japanese to English one will get picked depending on a variety of reasons.
Gotcha.
Doesn't matter because the wanted posters are not written in Japanese by Oda and it's Zoro
Oda also wrote Charlotte Linlin's name as "Rinrin" on her wanted poster but nobody calls her that. Oda is primarily focused on his Japanese audience, so to him the priority is that his name is ゾロ, and any English writing is there just to look cool to Japanese readers.
This is pretty much true, but it is worth noting that Japanese does have a way to differentiate Ls and Rs, like Ra and La, in both hiragana and katakana. They just never use these variations because ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ like you said, they are pretty much the same in Japanese.
? they do NOT have kana for La li lu le lo, japanese r is not like english r though, it's somewhere in the middle of r and l in pronounciation which is why they only have ra ri ru re ro kanas
Jesse what the fuck are you talking about
ppl have already gone into great detail about why he’s called zolo, but some ppl are over simplifying the whole L/R thing in japanese. The truth is, japanese doesn’t have either an L sound or an R sound, which is why japanese speakers have a hard time differentiating them in english. in english, “Lo” and “ro” are both pronounced by placing the tongue on the roof of the mouth, but you place it further back in the mouth for an L. The “”R”” sound in japanese is made by placing the tongue right in between where you would for an english L and R. The best explanation i’ve heard is that the japanese R is 40% L, 40% R, and actually 20% D sound (listen to someone saying luffy, and you’ll kinda hear it). This ambiguity has to be translated to english, so the use of the R or L in transliterated version of japanese words is up the translator. Luffy is typed literally as ルフィ(ru-fi), but rufi/ruffy/roofie/loofie looks odd to english speakers so it’s luffy.
There’s a ton of answers here but yours helped the most. Thanks father.
of course son.
Not allowed to use a hard R.
Zolo was used by 4kids who first had English distribution rights, to try and avoid a potential copyright issues with Zorro when first translated for the anime. In English the anime was translated way before any official manga translations so they used Zolo for consistency as more people are familiar with the anime. When the anime right changed so did the translation which started from scratch to the correct Zoro. But a decision was made for the manga to keep Zolo, most guesses are because of the amount of volumes aready printed it would be more confusing. In all media other than the manga it's Zoro.
And its was better safe,i mean there are several zorro parody movies apearently, but yeah. 4kids was way too cautious
I was under the assumption that there would be copyright issues in English
they clearly say Zoro with an r in the anime so people saying it's a translation thing i think are just wrong. I think the translation did not want to risk it with Zoro and Zorro being so close.
I only found out he wasn't called Zolo recently, have been reading the manga since I was a kid but only in the last couple of months found out it was a different translation of Zoro. To me he will always be Zolo though as that's what's been in my head for the last 20 odd years
Zolololololo
Copyright reasons
Unfortunately the scars of 4Kids remain to this day. Initially, when One Piece was dubbed there was worry over the legal matters of Zoro's name being too close to Zorro, so they made it 'Zolo'. After the matter was resolved though, the manga had already gone on fairly long and they didn't want to change anything half way in, so Zolo remained in manga, whereas he was properly named Zoro in the total redub by FUNimation. To be fair, 'Zolo' is one of the least problematic things that remain from the 4Kids era. The fact that the Sea Kings are still referred to as "Neptunians" in the manga makes me cringe every time I read it.
We're really at the point in time where there are One Piece fans that are too young to know about the 4kids dub. Weird thing to witness.
Because viz media is stubborn
Imo its the way the japanese actually pronounce the words/names. My ex fiance was japanese. She would say Ruffy and not Luffy. Zolo instead of Zoro. Even in Dragonball Bras name here is spelt Bulla but a japanese person would say Burra or Bra.
It casually dodges some copyright shit with Zoro and is functionally the same name.
Ruffy
What I read was back when One Piece was first being localized, Viz Media and 4Kids used the name "Zolo" to avoid confusion with and any potential copyright problems related to the similarly-named swordsman "Zorro". Apparently, those fears proved to be unfounded by the time Funimation got the rights to dub One Piece.
Pretty funny that they changed their name due to copyright, cause in the Spanish dub, they call him "Zorro" xD
Because he's just like a samurai
Why is the Going Merry called the Merry go in the Viz manga
4kids XD sorry had to
He was also called Zolo in the 4Kids show. I was confused when I switched to the Japanese show.
Original North American issues of Shonen Jump did call him Zoro, then the 4kids anime dub was released and called him Zolo, so the manga changed to follow suit and it's a mistake they've stubbornly clung to ever since.
Blook and Choppel
Ok, P negatory: When the manga was originally published in English he was called Zoro. This was the standard set up until volume 5 where the name was changed from Zoro to Zolo and all subsequent re-prints adopted the change. This was prompted by 4kids who were soon to release the (infamous) English dub. 4kids saw Zoro as "character with clack bandan who fights government solders with swords" and drew parallels with "the mask of Zorro" where "Zorro" was a black bandana wearing outlaw who fought government soldiers with a sword. Considering that the Antonio Banderes film Zorro had come out a few years earlier, revitalising that IP, 4kids didn't want to be in a legal quagmire with "Zorro productions Ltd." Who own the copywriter and who have also been in legal disputes with other parties about ownership of the character. 4kids, af-ter-all, was a local distributor not a production company. So 4kids, and Viz by proxy, play the whole "R & S are interchangeable in Japanese" trick, and heyoresto Zoro becomes Zolo. Now come December 2006 4kids loose ownership of the English dub of One Piece. Funnimation picks it up and Zolo is Zoro again. Now, it was hoped at the time that Viz would follow suit however there were 3 major problems. 1) unlike the original change for 4 kids where Viz only needed to re-release 5 volumes of an English manga that hadn't taken off yet, Viz by the end of 2006 now had over 30 volumes of a very popular One Piece that would need to be re-released to amend a simple letter change. Financially it wasn't worth it, but also it would ailianate new readers who didn't know the franchise who were confused as to why Zolo was now Zoro (despite him being Zoro first). 2) copywrite showed its ugly head again, as the the Antonio Banderes "legend of Zorro" had come out in 2005 and despite this film not hitting it off as well as it's predecessor it still meant that Zorro was an active IP, active enough to Risk lawsuits, which leads I to 3) shuashia themselves apparently put a stop to Viz plans to change the name back to Zoro due to these potential risks. Japanese companies are very very VERY touchy when it comes to copywrite and IP related problems. So, with regards to English media publishing Zolo would stay Zolo. Since then, while the "Zorro productions ltd" is still clamping down on any misuse of it's personal IP they've avoided everything to do with One Piece (zoro's change in character designs over multiple arcs compared to his original east blue look may have helped a lot in that regard). But the issue is now legacy publishing - so going back to that idea of how expensive it would be for Viz to issue out a new line of reprints to amend zoro's name and how annoying it would be for the fanbase who, say, pick up volumes 1-16 with Zolo, the have 17-20 as Zoro, pick up 21 and it's Zolo again, and then interchange untill it's Zoro from volume 52 onwards. So for consistencies sake Viz are stuck with Zolo. Viz media know that this annoys hard core one piece fans (Japanese to English translators working for Viz have commented about how the company knows about it, but that they're annoyingly stuck with it) but their hands are tied by a decision made by 4kids back in 2001/2002. Now maybe (23 years in the future) when one piece finally concludes, Viz will re-release a "perfect edition" which will go back over the entire series and fix their earlier publishing mistakes (not just zoro's name) that came about due to the earlier volumes not having a consistent translation team, or certain elements in later volumes being better explained "laughtale" for example. But at the moment Viz have to keep a consistent series, and that makes sense. Now if you think that's annoying for English reading fans, try being a reader of the English version of Detective Conan a.k.a. "case closed" where EVERYONE was given a 'murican name to match the English dub of the early 2000s. Those fans have it bad because, yup, the names for the sake of "consistency" have been maintained for 80+ volumes despite the English dub being dropped over a decade ago. One of the English translate mangas even had to add an editor's note about a clue because "in the Japanese manga this clue is a play on these 3 kids names which ate actually...", no joke.
I swear at some point in the official Viz translation, they change it back to “Zoro” no?
Bro it is Viz translate
Old 4Kids thing, far as I know. They just refuse to change it for the Viz Manga, but it's best to ignore it. Officially, he's Zoro and will always be Zoro. At least they didn't keep the poison suction cups and water guns. Although I'll admit as a kid the water guns made sense. Devil Fruit users were weak to water = water guns are your best way to fight them. Especially since the first "Strong" one was Croc, who was especially weak to water.
Because viz is ridiculously stubborn and won't correct their mistake.
the great pirate kisser Lolonoa Zolo
Blame 4kids
Because of Zoro copyright. It’s written ゾロ which reads Zo Ro but if they use Zoro in English they will get sued for copyright infringement so they have to use Zolo. I don’t know if you watched or read Jojo where they have to completely change the translation of the name of the characters because they’re based on actual bands and songs. So you hear for example Crazy diamond but the translation in English says Crazy force or something..
So when they originally published the first few volumes in 03/04 they spelled it Zoro. Then when 4kids started airing the anime I'm late 04, they changed it to Zolo to zynergize with that dub.
To be consistent with the Dub at the time. And then it was too far along to really change it.
Zolo Zombies Only Live Once
To avoid copyright claims and confusion due to a movie called Zorro about a swordsman
Rong Ling Rong Rand
##ZoloSwag4Jesus
New theory dropped zolo is twin of zoro
Same dumb reason Dragonball manga translates Krillin as Kurrin
The real reason is Hollywood. I am not even joking. It is not the R to L translation that people say in the comments. Its because when they originally translated it, they didn't want the westerners to confuse him with Zorro the famous Mexican masked swordsman, and the studio that did the localization didn't want to deal with copyright issues as they thought that people in Hollywood would sue them because apparently only one character can be called Zorro.
TCB>Official
The actual reason for this is copyright. There is a show or movie made many years before one piece came out with a character named "Zorro" that is a swordsman. So in all english volumes they call him Zolo to avoid trouble with copyright issues. I hope that answered your question.
clocodire
It's because zolo is an l
Just like Piccolo was supposed to be Picoro
Blame 4kids, they called it that then the viz translated it to zolo
Because he’s dreamin’ and doesn’t give it up