How Chrono Trigger Taught Me the Word ‘Epoch’
Once upon a time, in a newsroom far, far away, I worked both as a writer, with my byline running on articles, and as an editor, with someone else’s byline running on articles that I helped make better. I came to respect the give-and-take that goes with being on either side of that relationship, and I’d imagine the work of video game localizers plays out a lot like the way editors interact with writers. In my experience, for example, I found that a good editor keeps a light hand usually but not always, as the line separating too much from just enough moves according to the project and the people involved. Similarly, I’d guess that a talented localizer knows when to hew closely to the source material but also when a direct translation would sound clumsy or even confusing. It seems like more of an art than a science, and as a result, I’ve always been interested when I discover that the localized English version of a game departs radically or perhaps even inexplicably from the original Japanese.
Case in point: the “airship” in Chrono Trigger. In all English versions that I’m aware of, it’s called the Epoch.
This is notable because encountering this in Chrono Trigger for the first time back in 1995 is how I learned the English word epoch, and yes, it’s a real word. I am certain that someone reading this post right now did not know this, because not every kid runs to the dictionary when they encounter an unfamiliar word in an RPG, so I’ll tell you right now that per Merriam-Webster, an epoch can be one of the following things:
an event or a time marked by an event that begins a new period or development
a memorable event or date
an extended period of time usually characterized by a distinctive development or by a memorable series of events
a division of geologic time less than a period and greater than an age
an instant of time or a date selected as a point of reference (as in astronomy)
Obviously, all five of these definitions have various relevances for the time-traveling adventure that is Chrono Trigger, but the original Japanese name for this vehicle is wholly unrelated: シルバード (Shirubādo), which can be transliterated a few different ways but which usually gets rendered in English as something like Sill Bird. You may hear this and ask, “Wait, like a bird you see on a windowsill? A ‘sill bird’?” To which I say, “Yeah, maybe, for all anyone knows.” More on that in a second.
Given that the original Japanese is so different, this choice by localizer Ted Woolsey always struck me as odd. And no, this is not going to be a screed against Woolsey’s localization choices so much as an rumination on why this change was made, but I will at least say that as far as words that exist in my native language, epoch is a bad one that you should not use whenever you can avoid it.
My reasoning:
For one, it’s pronounced identically to the word epic in most cases. I’m going to guess that nine times out of ten, if you used epoch in a sentence, most people would assume you’re saying epic anyway, regardless if that makes sense in context.
More or less all of the definitions listed above could also be definitions for the word era, which a lot more people would know and would be less likely to mishear. Why use a problematic word when you could just use a much more comprehensible synonym?
While “EH-pick” is the standard pronunciation, the dictionary also recognizes “EH-pock” and “EE-pock” as variations that some English-speakers use, but using either of them just runs the risk of making people think you don’t know how the word is pronounced, which undoes any good you might hope for by using a fancy, obscure word in the first place. Additionally, “EE-pock” has the distinction of sounding as unpleasant as the word actually looks. I can’t quantify this opinion, but yeah, I think in addition to not sounding great, epoch also looks ugly.
For all the above reasons, epoch is one of those words that only really works in written form, never spoken, but a guideline I use for writing is that you should always read your work out loud. In general, anything that sounds hard to understand when you read it out loud should be ditched in favor of something that sounds more natural, so excluding some technical situation where epoch is more correct than any alternative, I can’t think of a situation when you should use it.
Did I mention that I think it looks ugly? It scans visually like onomatopoeia for clearing your throat.
Which is to say that no, I don’t know why Woolsey picked this as the name of the airship, except perhaps as part of some extremely long-term scheme to make a twelve-year-old Drew Mackie would look epoch up in the dictionary and carry it around in his head for the next three decades, ultimately leading to the very post you’re reading today. To Woolsey’s credit, he only had about a month to localize the game, so I suppose it’s entirely possible that he saw the the Japanese name, シルバード, couldn't figure out what a Sill Bird was and jotted down epoch because it was time-related and also within the game’s five-character limit for names. (See my post on the origin of Chrono Trigger character names for the whole Crono vs. Chrono thing.) Rather than a strike against it, perhaps it worked in its favor that it sounded like the word epic, which is an adjective that was used not infrequently to describe RPGs around this time. Notably, the recurring Nintendo Power section focused on RPG and adventure games, Epic Center, had launched in March of 1995, just a few months before the translated Chrono Trigger hit shelves in North America.
If I had Woolsey’s phone number, I’d just call him to ask where he pulled epoch from, but I don’t, so I won’t, and it’s sort of beside the point because I think the bigger mystery is what the original Japanese script was trying to get at with all this Sill Bird business. One theory I’ve found appears on the Chrono Compendium, which guesses that the Japanese name could be a contraction of “Silver Bird,” the English name for the Silbervogel, a rocket-powered Luftwaffe bomber designed (but not produced) by Nazis as part of the Amerikabomber project initiated in 1942. If that name doesn’t give it away, the project aimed to bomb military targets on the eastern side of North America. Obviously, the Nazis did not succeed in this regard. The Chrono Compendium entry ends on a note that acknowledges the connections between the Chrono Trigger airship and this Nazi bomber are tentative at best: “Given that the connections are vague and circumstantial, it seems quite unlikely that the CT team named the Epoch after the Silver Bird, but the similarities are worth mentioning.” Sure, I say. I don’t think I, the keeper of this blog, could ever deny anyone else the opportunity to go on a random tangent.
Of course, a name like “Silver Bird” doesn’t have to be in reference to World War II-era warplanes. It could just be a flying machine that is silver-colored, without bringing Nazis into the conversation. After all, the game does feature a second airship called the Blackbird, even if it figures into the game in a different manner. In fact, there’s a theory out there for at least how and why this might be the case even if the Japanese name would seem to be missing a syllable. According to this Reddit discussion, there’s a certain sort of portmanteau-like contraction in Japanese that is actually featured in a previous Squaresoft title, Final Fantasy VI. One of the items in that game is called Sprint Shoes in the English translation but ダッシューズ (Dasshūzu or Dash Shoes) in Japanese, with the character シュ (shu) representing both the end of dash and the beginning of shoes, running it all together rather than repeating the character twice. By this logic, the Japanese name of the Chrono Trigger airship could be working the same way, since シルバー on its own can mean “silver” and バード on its own “bird.”
One strike against “bird” as an interpretation, I suppose, is that in the world of the game itself, the Epoch can’t fly when it’s first encountered. It can only travel from one time period to another, and it only gets wings after Dalton hijacks the Epoch and remodels it for use as his own personal chariot. As the story presents it, the name Epoch is assigned to it by Belthasar before he has any idea that it will ever be able to fly, so perhaps it would be strange that he’d name it after any kind of bird. But then again, the real-life humans who designed and named this thing would have known it would fly eventually, so perhaps this point does not disqualify anything.
But for the sake of debate, if not “Silver Bird,” what could the Japanese name mean?
Well, I asked Fatimah, who offered up that シルバード could be interpreted as Silbad, Shilbad, Silvado, Seal Bird, and Sill Bird, as well as any number of further combinations of these first syllables with these second ones, while also noting, “If we break it up, it has the katakana for ‘silver,’ シルバー, in it, and バード could be translated as ‘bard’ or ‘bird.’”
At this point, I’ve run through every possible combination of syllables in hopes of finding one that sounds like something comprehensible, but I just can’t figure it out. I have the peculiar sensation of the answer being on the tip of my tongue. I only get this when I’m, say, looking at a word puzzle and subconsciously seeing the answer but haven’t yet been able to solve it with my conscious mind, if that makes any sese. I’m inclined to point out that Silvard or Sylbird both sound cool but ultimately don’t mean much of anything — and considering that both exceed the five characters allotted for customizable names in Chrono Trigger, neither was a workable option.
As is perhaps too often the case on this site, this is when I, the writer, need to surrender this text to you in hopes that one of you can further this piece into its best possible version. I can’t shake the nagging feeling that there is something obvious that I just haven’t quite connected.
Miscellaneous Notes
Yes, Chrono Trigger does feature a second airship, kinda sorta, in the Blackbird, but it functions very differently than the Epoch does. The Blackbird is more of a floating fortress that your party has to explore, and you never get to pilot it. That doesn’t mean Blackbird’s name can’t be a justification for the Epoch’s Japanese name also having something to do with birds, I guess, but there is a theory on the Chrono Compendium that puts forth a possible explanation for how the Blackbird got its name, and it’s just too wild for me not to mention. According to this site’s entry on the Blackbird, its name may be a pun. Allegedly the February 1995 issue of the Japanese video game magazine V-Jump ran a review of Chrono Trigger (クロノ・トリガー or Kurono Torigā) that abbreviated the the name of the game using only the first two syllables of either word — as クロトリ or Kuro Tori. Seeing this Kuro Tori in print and not immediately recognizing it as an abbreviation led the writer to try and translate the words individually, and of course, this led to the realization that 黒 or kuro can mean “black” and 鳥 or tori means “bird.” As the Chrono Compendium concludes, “I think it’s a sort of meta pun on the game’s title.” And I’m inclined to think this may be the case.
Another Woosleyism that jumps out to me is the decision to inject Christianity in a spot where none existed beforehand, specifically in the case of the three gurus, Melchior, Belthasar and Gaspar. They’re encountered separately in the game in various time periods before they’re revealed as advisors to Queen Zeal, one of the game’s many antagonists, who formerly lived in Antiquity before being scattered throughout time. Their western names clearly reference the three Magi, the so-called Three Wise Men who, per the Gospel of Matthew, visit the baby Jesus in Bethlehem shortly after being born. Their Japanese names do not reference Christianity or any other religion, as far as I can tell: respectively, ボッシュ (Bosshu or Bosch), ガッシュ (Gasshu or Gasch) and ハッシュ (Hasshu or Hasch). I have no idea what the Japanese names mean, if anything, and I’m open to any theories anyone might have. Separately from that, it’s also surprising to think that the western localization of a Super NES-era game would introduce allusions to Christianity where none existed before, especially considering the long history of Nintendo stripping its games of references to religion outside Japan.