The most common translations for these new attacks seem to be “[type] Oath” which has struck me as… less than poetic. I love the English language and I love for it to sound elegant. It made me curious to find out whether or not this common translation was actually the best. After doing some research I’ve come to the conclusion that the best way to phrase it is probably Oath of Grass, Oath of Fire, and Oath of Water. Previously I had been using “[type] Vow” because I just love to do things differently. If Serebii does something one way… I usually find a way to do it differently. Both of those translations though didn’t really hit the nail perfectly, but were serviceable translations. From now on I will be using the above names for the attacks :3
If you’re curious about my reasoning, I think the best example I can give you is the classical Oath of the Peach Garden (Japanese). It is part of the classic ‘Romance of the Three Kingdoms’, originally a Chinese story, but I noted how the English was translated from the Japanese meaning. This ‘of’ convention can be seen numerous other times when translating Japanese to English. [If you’re translating English to Japanese ‘Oath of…’ and ‘… Oath’ are both written the same way, but cannot always be written either way in English. Example being Hippocratic Oath =/= Oath of Hippocratic.]
And that concludes today’s lesson. Hope you find my point substantiated 🙂
<3 pokejungle
ps- You guys like my translation better? Or are you content with ‘Grass Oath’/’Fire Oath’/’Water Oath’?
pps- bowserboy wants us to guess if this is real or fake. Should I give you a hint?
