Localization Details Behind Monster Hunter Generations’ “Gammoth” And “Malfestio”

Capcom shared the latest on their localization work for Monster Hunter Generations with a look at one of the flagship Fated Four in “Gammoth” and the new owl monster called “Malfestio.”

Gammoth

The second of The Fated Four I’d like to talk about is Gammoth, a mountain of a beast that you’ll find in frigid regions such as the Arctic Ridge and the Frozen Seaway. It’s the most gentle-looking of the new flagship monsters, but don’t let that fool you—it won’t hesitate to crush anything it deems a threat! It can dish out powerful smashes and wide sweeping attacks with its large trunk, and even suck the air to pull in enemies into its attack range. Oh, and did I mention its trunk has FANGS on it? Because it does. And it’s not just its attacks you have to worry about. Gammoth can cover its legs in snow, which acts as a thick coat of protective armor. It can then flip this defense into offense by stomping its feet with enough force to scatter the snow in all directions, inflicting nearby hunters with Snowman status.

 

It’s an indomitable force to be reckoned with, and we wanted to make sure we captured that in the international name. Fortunately, naming Gammoth turned out to be a lot simpler than we had thought. The original name, ガムート [ga-muu-to], is derived from the name of the Hindu deity, Ganesha, and the genus name for mastodon, “mammut.” We kept that overall theme since it suited the monster’s almighty appearance, but replaced mammut with mammoth to give the name an even more colossal feel to it.

Malfestio

When you’re deep within the Jurassic Frontier, keep an eye out for this bird of prey. Malfestio isn’t one of the flagship monsters in MH Gen, but it’s a fearsome monster all the same. It has special attacks that can inflict Sleep and Confusion, leaving hunters vulnerable as it swoops in to attack. Hunters who aren’t careful will find themselves waking up back at base camp wondering if it was all a bad dream.

 

For the localized name, we decided on something quite different from the Japanese. In Japan, this monster is called ホロロホルル [ho-ro-ro-ho-ru-ru] (say that ten times fast!), which is derived from the Japanese onomatopoeia for owl sounds, the word “chloroform,” and Koropokkuru—a race of small people in Ainu folklore. As much as we liked the meaning behind this, it was just too long to romanize for the international version (not to mention it’s a bit of a tongue-twister). We always try to avoid making names too long—it could spell disaster when translating material names and such. Plus, there’s always the possibility a subspecies could show up in future installments, so we like to think ahead and leave a little space to work with just in case we happen to need it later.

 

With romanization out of the question, we came up with other ideas based on the monster’s characteristics. A few of our proposals included Sonotus, Strikkua, and Notrios, which were all derived from words like “sleep” and “sorcery” in different languages, as well as various scientific owl names. In the end, our top pick was a mix of the words maleficus (Latin for wicked), jester, and asio (a genus of owls). We felt “wicked” was a good word to describe the monster’s spellbinding capabilities, and visually, it sort of looks like an owl wearing the cap ‘n bells of a jester, so we thought this name fit the monster quite nicely.

You can read about Monster Hunter Generations’ Bherna Village, the Wycademy, and more in Capcom’s latest localization notes report.

Monster Hunter Generations will release in North America and Europe on July 15, 2016 for Nintendo 3DS.