However, difficult does not mean impossible. This is especially true when moving from a language like English into a language like Japanese, as the latter doesn’t have clear equivalents of words like “to”, or wordplay involving letters in the Roman alphabet. Localizing any form of word play is difficult. When I came across these clear naming conventions for the first time, I started to wonder if and how they were localized. The “to” theme (left) in Leave // Chance, and the “3 letters” theme (right) in Bedeck // Bedazzle There’s more to it than that sometimes, but for now this basic level of detail will serve fine. When playing a split card, the player chooses one half of the card to play, giving them more flexibility than with a normal card. But in 2000 the game first introduced split cards, which instead have two. Most of these cards designed for MtG have, as one might expect, one name. The game first appeared in 1993, and regular new releases and updates have continued since then.
MtG is an extremely long running and influential card game. Rather than discussing the (re)creation of puns though, I’ll instead be looking at a less “funny” style of word play based around the titles of what are known as “split cards”.
This post is a sort of companion piece to this original article, as I’ll be looking at the Japanese localization of word play in the titles of cards from the card game Magic: the Gathering (hereafter MtG). Two years ago, I completed a small research project on the Japanese localization of puns in the online card game Hearthstone.
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