Talk:Sussanna von Beenemünde

From Gineipaedia, the Legend of Galactic Heroes wiki

Name translation

Benemunde's name presents something of a dilemma: All of the translations of it seem to be wrong in some way. Let's step through this:

• The intended name seems to be 'Susanne von Peenemünde' — in German, 'Susanne' is pronounced like 'Susanna', and the surname is derived from the town in northern Germany.

• However, the Japanese spelling listed both in the OVA subtitles and on Wikipedia is 'ベーネミュンデ' — with a B, not a P. That seems like a transliteration mix-up on the part of the author(s), but if we assumed it was intentional, then maybe the best Romanised form of the name would be 'Susanne von Beenemünde'.

• Unfortunately, neither the LaserDisc nor the DVD takes either of the above routes:
  • The LaserDisc uses 'Susanna von Benemünde', which looks fine to the untrained eye, but obv is lacking the underlying context.
  • The DVD, on the other hand, uses 'Sussanna von Beenemünde', which has perhaps a more accurate surname translation, but the spelling 'Sussanna' is basically nonsense (it's not used widely in any language as far as i know).

So, what to do about it? I can't decide. I have already decided that in some cases the LaserDisc names should take precedence over the DVD names (cf. 'Dusty Attemborough'), but i am strongly leaning towards having to decide on at least one of them to be considered 'canon' or whatever.

For now i will leave it as it is, i guess — but i expect a change eventually. — ohkine