Are Janus and Schala step-siblings?

[ZeaLitY]

This is what I procured from the Black Omen sidquest thread:

Are Janus and Schala step-siblings?

   I heard Schala's powers far exceed
   those of her mother.
   
   Then there's her step-brother, Janus.
   He's of royal blood, but he doesn't
   seem to have a speck of magic.

Neutral Commentary

Lord J Esq: As for the familial relationship between Schala and Janus, I am uncertain. There is only one quote in the entire game that explicitly establishes their status as step-siblings, but then again there are no quotes that establish explicitly a blood relationship. So there is no contradiction, and the step-sibling quote, however bizarre, stands. Yes, there is a quote by Janus, “She is not our mother…,” that, while circumstantial, might suggest that he and Schala are at least half-siblings, but I would suspect that Janus had simply accepted the Queen as his mother earlier in life.

And if he indeed is a step-child, I am curious as to whether Queen or King Zeal was the one to bring him into the family. For Janus and Schala to not be related at all, then either the King or Queen would have to have previously been married to someone who him- or herself had also been married before. (It is unlikely that Janus was an illegitimate child, because it would then be extraordinarily unlikely that he would be raised alongside the blood progeny of the King and Queen of the most powerful nation in the world. What a tangled web of intrigue in the Land of Magic!

Refutation

go right corner: I think someone also mentioned that in the Japanese version they are simply siblings not step-siblings. As of the moment I cannot confirm or disprove that, and as I've said, Square does have the right to make intentional changes between the North American and Japanese version as they see fit (and there're already examples of those in the form of alcohol and sexual censorship).

I myself believe that Janus may have had another mother if this statement is true; if he were first to die, old age is likely on his part. To find out the truth, it would be better to have this translated.

[Epsilon]

Then there's her step-brother, Janus.
He's of royal blood, but he doesn't
seem to have a speck of magic.

Notice that he says Janus is of Royal Blood.. I'd say that implies that Schala was born between Queen Zeal (if we assume she married into the royal family) and someone else...

[Akuma]

It was a translation error. And only is a metaphor because Janus isn't good at magic and Schala is. Or that's what most Zealots think at least.

[ZeaLitY]

Whoops, forgot this thread existed at all. I'll port over all the recently found stuff.

[GrayLensman]

The following are excerpts taken from the GameFAQs message board topic, "Janus is Schala's step brother?"

I stumbled upon a quote saying that on my 4th new game+. So does that mean Janus was adopted into the Zeal kingdom? Could this have something to do with how the Mystics accepted him? Janus must have completely different parents to be a step brother to Schala. Not just 1 different parents, 2 or else he'd be a half brother. I think Janus's parents are mystics from Mt. Woe, not the mystics we see but more human looking mystics.

Hyena 20 already addressed this. She talked to the same Zealian in the Japanese version and he said nothing of a step relation. They're pure siblings

Here is what is says: (the first line does not translate well at all, the speaker is basically holding reservartion against speaking badly about Janus)

I hear that even though he has the blood of the Royal Family, he truly does not have any magical power.

The second picture says:

This is just a rumor but I heard that Shala has more magic power than her mother, who is the Queen.

And I don't know anyone on this board... just wanted to offer my services. Nice to meet you all.

Go right corner.... I don't think that's the screen shot with the "one of you is close to someone who needs help"

From: The n00b Avenger | Posted: 5/15/2004 9:42:06 PM | Message Detail
Hey Sky Render. If you're good at translating...

Do you think you could handle this one piece of dialogue?

http://img14.imageshack.us/my.php?loc=img14&image=EachOfYou1.JPG


It's one line in Chrono trigger that has been disputed for a helluva long time now.
---
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Where smart men argue about dumb things




From: Sky Render | Posted: 5/15/2004 10:26:48 PM | Message Detail
CT is on the list of projects I have planned to translate, you know... Anyway, that dialogue box reads...

Old Man
"There are things in each of your time periods happening that you should know about.
Listen to me now......"

Not that different from CTUS, really. I would think you'd be more interested in what he actually told them, not his introduction to what he's going to tell them.

Are you sure you took the right screen shot?

jibun no jidai no koto nara omae-san-tachi no naka ni mo sh*tte iru mono ga oru darou. kiite miru ga ii......

So far only one person on japanese.about.com responded to my question. The literal translation given to me is:

"If it's matter regarding your own generation, there's probably someone amongst you who know. It's good to ask."

And after considering the Japanese text myself independently of the above suggestion, I feel that the above is probably indeed an accurate translation.

Let me break things down into phrases and give my view of how I think they fit together:

1) jibun no jidai no koto: there's little ambiguity here. This means "things/matters/circumstances [koto] of one's own [jibun] time period [jidai]". Now because Gaspar is speaking to Crono & co as a group, the "one's own" here by context would be referring to each of the members in Crono & co. [Japanese as far as I know do not have specific "himself", "yourself", "yourselves" and the like, just a general "self". Not too surprising if you think about it; it's redundant to say "yourself" or "himself" anyway; the "you" or "he" has already been stated in the subject!]

2) nara: this word is described as the "provisional form" of the direct copula "da". An example usage:

Raishuu nara hima desu

"Provided that [it's] next week [you're talking about], am free." (with things in [] deduced from context, since Japanese typically omits any parts of a sentence which is clear from context)

A somewhat smoother English translation would then be "if you're talking about next week, I'm free".

This should explain why together 1&2 could be translated as "if it's matters regarding your own generation". Of course, we know here that "jidai" doesn't really mean generation but the various time eras defined in CT.

3) omae-san-tachi no naka ni

a really literal translation would be like "within the group consisting of all of you", so equivalent "someone amongst you".

4) mo "also"

5) sh*tte iru: "to know". Unfortunately this is the most ambiguous part of the sentence, thanks to Japanese' freedom for dropping sentence parts. So it's not entirely clear to me what the subject and the object of this "to know" is, though I'm sure a native Japanese speaker would have no trouble giving you the most likely inferred subject and object, based on the structure of the sentence and other factors.

I'll get back to this later.

6) XXX sh*tte iru mono ga oru darou.

mono is "person". The way japanese works, if you want to modify a noun with a verb phrase, whereas in English you use words like "that" [eg. "the letter that I wrote"], in Japanese you tag the dependent verb phrase in front of the noun as if the whole phrase is an adjective, kinda like "the I-wrote letter". Now thanks to the ambiguity (at least to a non-native like me) of subject and object in the "sh*tte iru" part, the "XXX sh*tte iru mono" could either be "person(s) who know(s) blah" or "person(s) who blah knows".

But after that the rest is simple. "mono ga oru darou", ignoring the modifying phrase preceding the mono, simply means "probably [darou] there exists [oru] person [mono]".

We see now that how the translater in about.com read it as "person(s) who know(s) blah", and so the translation become
From: Zeality | Posted: 5/16/2004 6:59:38 PM | Message Detail
"there's probably someone amongst you who know", with the object of know being, from context of sentence, the "jibun...nara" stuff, namely "matters regarding your own time era".

Phew! So putting it all together, the first sentence could mean:

"For matters regarding each of your own time era, there's probably someone amongst you who knows about it."

-----------

(cont'd)

From: go right corner | Posted: 10/23/2003 11:40:11 PM | Message Detail
(cont'd from prev post)

The next sentence is much easier to translate. Literally:

to listen to and [kiite] to see [miru], is good [ga ii].

Again typical example of how Japanese sentences don't require subject and object if inferrable from context. But since the previous sentence is definitely talking about a person (even though I couldn't resolve whether the person knows something, or is being known by Crono & co), clearly the sentence would translate to

"it would be good to see and listen to that person [who knows about matters regarding your own time era]."

"to see and listen to" is pretty much equivalent to "to ask about something", hence it's acceptable to translate as "it's good to ask".

I should also note that "ga ii" is actually used in practice as a phrase that connotes an indirect command/suggestion of sort, so a translation that's more faithful to this nuance would probably be "you may want to see and listen to that person."

-------------------

So what's the conclusion? I now actually think that in the Japanese, Gaspar is simply telling you that you can talk to your own members (at End of Time) to find out about particular sidequests [with the sidequests being "matters of your own time eras"].

If that's the case, then Ted Woosley didn't really translate! He practically throw in a new line of dialog in the English version of CT!

However, since it's by all means possible for Square to intentionally modify the dialog (they have already done it to censor references to alcohol for example), maybe this is an intentional change, in which case we might not be able to draw much conclusions from the Japanese version regarding the English quote we see.

Hopefully Hyena20 can comment on some of this.