The Twelve Kingdoms Forum

I've been reading the Chinese versions of Juuni Kokki and later I tried matching it up with the English version and something just doesn't match. I'm sure it's due to my complete lack of knowledge of Japanese, but here goes...

I don't understand how, Rakushun for example can be expressed as the 乐俊... I know Japan has kanji and they pronounce it in a completely different manner to the Chinese. To me, the name reads le(\) jun(\).

Similarly 阳子reads Yang(/) zi(\/), but it's actually Youko. And 景麒 is jing(\/) qi (/) to me but is actually Keiki in the translations.
It's the same with the nations... 巧国 is Kou Kingdom. But it reads qiao (\/) kingdom.

So you see the problem here... if I was discussing the novel with someone who read the English or Japanese versions they'll have no idea what I'm talking about when it comes to names and places. But I don't want to keep going back to the English translations to match up the names and places.

So what I'm asking is, is there a simpler way to determine how to pronounce/ write the nouns the right way? Maybe some translator or glossary? I've tried a kanji --> Romanji translator, but it doesn't translate some of the characters.

I apologize if this question has been asked before, or if it has an obvious anwser. But I'm very new here, so I hope you can forgive me. ^^

I'm afraid I don't know any Chinese and very little Japanese, so can't help you.

However, IIRC, there are multiple Chinese languages (including, but not limited to Mandarin, Cantonese and Hakkan), which share the same written form. (Except that I believe Mainland China uses simplified characters and Taiwan uses more traditional ones.) Wouldn't this mean that the same text could be pronounced in multiple different ways inside China itself?

I'm not to happy with the official English translation myself. At one point Youko is really impressed by a "watchtower" in En, which only makes sense if she is REALLY looking at a Clocktower. Not the same thing, a watchtower would not be impressive. Eugene Woodbury's translation uses Clocktower.

Actually there are some rules to pronounce Japanese, even not a simple one. You still have to remember it.

Like 陽you子ko (this kanji in most case pronouced as ko in Jp) called herself you shi when she stayed in countryside fighting with the vice governor. It sounds more like Chinese rather than Jp. Please imagine the Twelve Kingdoms world is in the middle of Japan and China, so it has been affected by both of them.

Please contact me if you have some problems on this. I kind of get a hint of transfering the names between these two language.