Pony Names in Translation

[Taffeta]

Spoiler

I have a Starlight moc whose card is English but who is fixed into this bigger greek packaging with a candle and tales pony art so that does make sense. When I bought it there were a lot around and apparently it related to Easter in some way...

That's interesting to know! I'm very curious as to which ponies were sold in Greece after the El Greco ones and what sort of packaging they had. Do you happen to have any pictures of your Starlight?

Yeah, I do. I don't seem to have any images of the back that I can find at the moment, but here is the front:

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There were many of these back when I bought mine, and they were not that expensive at the time, but I haven't seen another one come up for literally years. I am sure they have and there must be others out there, but maybe folk are hoarding them.

The Starlight card was/is fixed in place with tape which as you can see is yellowing and drying out, so she's a little loose but hasn't quite come away from the base yet. The card has also been trimmed around the edges but not by me, that also seems to be part of fitting her in the bigger candle...thing.

Awesome! The Greek says "Happy Easter". I don't know a lot about modern Greek culture, but I gather that Easter is a big thing there, and tends to involve candles and red-painted eggs, so I suppose that's why we have ponies like Paschalitsa, Lambaditsa, and this Happy Easter Starlight.
Global pony releases, merchandise etc. are so interesting, and there must be so much that still isn't known about them!

Agreed. I could rantcomplain about the amount of time people have spent not looking into stuff that's blatantly there (but I won't xD).

I do wish I could remember if all the ones back then were Starlight or whether they were others. I think they were others but I really don't recall and I have tried searching but didn't come up with anything. I wonder if you searched in Greek, whether it would come up with anything better? I find a lot more stuff using kanji than romaji when I want to dig up something Japanese, so it's a thought whether a Cyrillic search might reveal more...

I think the artwork is from Princess Sparkle's box.

[Perikoala]

*Baby Quackers - Bebé Patito Feo > Baby Ugly Duckling

WOW, that is amazing. 

Poor baby Quackers

@Perikoala, wow, all those names! I think Baby Quackers' is my favourite. Poor Baby Ugly Duckling 

I know, right? I wonder if the second set of TEs had been available in Spain, maybe Quackers would have been named Uglu Duckling? It would have been hilarious! 

@Perikoala, wow, all those names! I think Baby Quackers' is my favourite. Poor Baby Ugly Duckling 
Do you know if Majesty, Baby Cuddles, Wind Whistler or the Princess Ponies (Sapphire/Royal Blue, Tiffany/Pearl etc) ever had their names translated into Spanish? I don't think they were sold in Spain, but I wonder if they might have popped up in the cartoons, comics or whatever.

Sadly, as you suspected, those ponies were never sold in Spain, so its hard to know how they'd be named, unless you take it as 'canon' the names in the cartoon. And the cartoon is something funny here because there were 2 different dubs in Spain. The first one was in Castilian Spanish (aired only once I think, so its hard to find. No DVDs ) and the second in Latin Spanish.
The Castilian one the names were translated (in Latin the names were in English) and even thought some ponies were true to their Spanish names, others changed theirs; like Sweet Stuff instead of being called Goloso (Sweet Tooth) like her toy version, is called Caramelo (Caramel) so yeah...

I only could find 1 episode in castilian on YT, and fortunately Wind Whistle is in there and her name is Vendaval (Gale).

We had some tale books too but I don't own any yet so I don't know how the ponies are named but once looking at my cousin's sticker album, I found that Lemon Drop is called Suspiro, her piggy's name and I think that's very cute! 

"Barnacle - Barbarroja > Barbarossa/Red Bear"  (Beard?)

Barnacle is Red Beard ? Again, weird but fits him..

I'm pretty sure its because Barbarrosa was a pirate and since Barnacle has a pirate hat and a treasure symbol... I think is pretty cool!

[Shaz]

@Perikoala, thanks for all the Spanish names & info!

@Taffeta, I haven't found anything about Happy Easter Starlight, but I do now have a new hobby of looking at Greek websites about ponies . I found a whole thread of people reminiscing about their childhood Greek ponies, though sadly most of the links and pictures no longer show. Greece seems to have had lots of the later ponies, like the roller-skating ponies, Tales ponies, Glowing Magic/Glow n Show. Also found a mention of "Fantastic Hair" and "Glowing Princess" ponies, so I'm thinking maybe Hair-Do ponies and light-up Princess Sparkle? I'm now filling a notebook with foreign pony names and random observations about ponies in Greece, maybe one day I'll have enough for a coherent history or my own website or something!

[Taffeta]

I'm now filling a notebook with foreign pony names and random observations about ponies in Greece, maybe one day I'll have enough for a coherent history or my own website or something!

Do it. Seriously. Do it

There's a member on here who comes from Cyprus, I know because I sold them ponies...and I remember they had a lot of the same stuff as Greece did in that area as well. I also remember that the later European style cards with the borders also have some information (hasbro details probably?) in Cyrillic (Greek Cyrillic) on them as well and a lot of the border card ponies still MOC come out of Greece. I think both my Rosette and Sweet Clover MIB came from Greek sellers, so there's definitely something there.

It's a hypothesis but I feel like the early years of MLP in Europe is really diverse, with different strands in different countries. And then we get to a point where it almost standardises in terms of the border card releases. Albeit there are some exceptions, what happens in Europe is a lot more uniform after around 1989ish than it is before that point.

[LadyMoondancer]

Sulaine, who IIRC was from Finland, used to have a page of "unusual" Finnish pony names.  Some from comics, some from packaging, some from the show.  Sadly her website is gone now but I did save the list of names for posterity:

http://heckyeahponyscans.tumblr.com/post/142359327977

So the following translations are all from her:

BABY TIC-TAC-TOE —Tipsuttaja  (Tripper)   I wonder what this means…

BABY TIC-TAC-TOE —Hipsuvarvas  (Trip-Toe)   Oh, now I get it! It’s a TOE! The translators could understand the “toe”-part! Isn’t this amazing?!!!

CONFETTI –Konvehti  (piece of chocolate)  and Karkki  (Candy) . Ok, Confetti and Konvehti might be same LOOKING words, but….

MASQUERADE –Muskeli  (Muscle) .

[Leikin]

MASQUERADE –Muskeli  (Muscle) .

I mean, common! what about her seems like a muscle?

[Taffeta]

CONFETTI –Konvehti  (piece of chocolate)  and Karkki  (Candy) . Ok, Confetti and Konvehti might be same LOOKING words, but….

I remember Sulaine!
Also, this one is kind of interesting to me. There's a similar word in Japanese which also means a kind of candy. It does make you wonder if the whole concept of her theme was a bit lost in translation...though I'm assuming Finland had the Wedding Bells release, I actually don't know if they did or if it was just the walking one...

Weird how words have different nuances when they cross cultures...

Muscle is brilliant. Poor Masky.

[Shaz]

Oh my goodness, those Finnish names! I think the translators must have been having some fun! I am now imagining Masquerade as a bodybuilder....

Taffeta, I think I have worked out the story behind your Happy Easter Starlight. Part of Greek Orthodox Easter celebrations involves everyone lighting a candle to symbolise the Resurrection, so attractive Easter candles are big business in Greece, and sometimes have cartoon characters on them/their packaging. These days you can get G4 MLP Easter candles! So that would explain the giant candle in pony packaging. I'm thinking that some enterprising Greek shop then decided to put some ponies that they had lying around in with the candles, hence Starlight on a (presumably) European card. That would explain why it's been trimmed to fit. But I still haven't found any others pictured online, just lots (and lots) of G4.

I've gone a bit off-topic with my Easter Starlight musings (I'm going to have to start a new thread for all my discoveries and questions about Greek ponies!), so I'll just add a few of my favourite recent translated name discoveries:

- Baby Cuddles in Finnish is Pikku Pony ("little pony"). Descriptive, I suppose.
- Little Flitter in Finnish is Lentäjä, which I think means "pilot". Aviator pony?
- Baby Tiddly Winks in Finnish is Pikku Murunen ("little crumb/morsel").
- Wind Whistler in the Italian cartoon is Fischietto, "whistles".
- An Italian advert for the Baby Buggy describes Baby Cuddles as "il Principio felice", "the happy Prince", which is cute.
- Argentinian Starshine is called Sol Dorado, "golden sun", which I think is a very pretty name.

I got on eBay last night (always a mistake ) and purchased myself a G3 sticker book from Serbia. So I will soon know what Rainbow Dash, Wysteria, Pinkie Pie etc is in Serbian. Useful knowledge indeed

[Taffeta]

Easter pony stuff in spoiler

Spoiler

Ooh! That sounds so likely. Whether it was done by one store or one store chain as a special thing, it seems really plausible. Though the boxes and stuff are G1 art and fit, so I almost think it must have had some involvement with Hasbro somewhere along the line. I don't know if Hasbro had a Greek branch. Maybe...?

But I think you're right. Thank you so much for doing the digging Even if we can't prove 100%, it makes a lot of sense that way. It is just a bit sad knowing there were others and now there isn't a trace of them. I have thought about selling Starlight more than once but the size of her and getting the thing out of the cupboard has prevented me. I'm kind of glad now I kept her, so that at least the phenomenon is documented, because otherwise it might have been lost :/

(On the subject of Easter, I think there's some weird easter release for Bedtime Newborns in Australia, but that's off topic and seems like a whole new Easter discussion xD)

On the names again!

I remember having a conversation with my Israeli friend about MLP - she had them as a kid too (G1) and still does have them, what she describes sound mostly like US stuff, but she did mention books in hebrew. I know we have at least one Israeli community member here in Allymer, maybe there are some Hebrew pony names as well. When I talked to my friend about MLP she doesn't really remember the TV show...she remembers the Hebrew version of Transformers and that basically the Hebrew word for Autobot and Transformer was the same thing pretty much...so it seems likely they had their own names for pony stuff too...

But I think her ponies were all sold in English language packages (so far as she remembers). I wonder if Allymer might know more. (Unfortunately the only hebrew word I can read is 'shalom', and I know hebrew characters change according to their position in the word, so I'm not even going to begin trying...

[Shaz]

I am continually amazed by just how many countries had G1 ponies! Truly a global phenomenon. (Although I am still peeved that Romania didn't have them. Romanian history/language/culture is one of my enthusiasms and it would have been fun to combine it with ponies. But then I suppose Romania had bigger things on its mind in the 80s than small plastic equines.)

Israeli Wikipedia tells me that Firefly in Hebrew is:

פיירפלי

What that means or how it is pronounced I have no idea

I found out some Greek names from the Greek translation of the cartoon:
Mimic was Mimi
Sweetstuff/Sweetie was Zacharenia ("sugar")
Megan was Natali (for some reason!)

[Taffeta]

I have the Italian names for Mimic's set. I'm going to go see if I have an image to go with that though, as I don't remember any of them off hand.

Hrm, apparently don't have a scan of that insert :/ It's one of those sets where the characters don't have human names, they seem more translated if I remember right.

Re: Hebrew - My friend tried to teach me a bit about how it works when I was over there with her last May, and curious Taffeta is curious so I was trying to read signs (I did end up recognising Jerusalem once I knew a couple of characters in context!) but I don't remember clearly. Just that it's right to left....and that the vowels aren't written in, they're implied from the position of the character in the word...