Anyone know the background information behind the title translation of Guyver?

[Tallon]

This little question has been bugging me my entire life and I've been searching FOREVER to find the answer to it so if anyone can answer this question....I'd very much appreciate it....

 

How did å¼·æ®–装甲ガイãƒãƒ¼ (Kyoshoku Soko Gaiba) translate to Bio-Booster Armor Guyver?

 

Yes, very weird thing to have bug me, but here's why....Ever since I read/heard Agito shout "BioBoost" I've been searching for the Japanese word for BioBoost.....I never could find it anywhere. So after listening carefully and searching through many dictionaries the closest thing that he shouts that makes sense is "Sokusou" which means. To conform to, to agree with, to be adapted to, to be based on. How did THAT get translated to "BioBoost"? (Of course here I never read the original manga so never got to see the kanji for it so it may be a completely different word that he shouts to begin with.)

 

Which brings me back to my original Question How did Kyoshoku become Bio-Booster? (soko definately means armor there's no change in that) When I looked up Kyoshoku I get the definition "Anorexia" or "To refuse food". Obviously that can't be right so I decided to search each individual kanji separately to make sense of it all and I finally found definitions that makes the most sense imo. The kanji å¼· can mean "Power" or "Strength" and the kanji æ®– can mean "Augmentation" or "Attachment". How did "Power Augmentation Armor Guyver" become "Bio-Booster Armor Guyver"?

 

That's just something I've been trying to find the answer for a long time and never could find a concrete answer. So does anyone know?

[durendal]

I'm not sure if the "bio-boost" was actually used in the manga or this was coined by Viz, but apparently this phrase caught on and has been used ever since.  But it is the official translation.  I can however explain some parts of it, as å¼·æ®– can mean enhancement or boosting.  And since the guyver unit is a biological unit, it seemed just right to stick "bio" in front of it.  Since the armor literally boosts the biological elements of the wearer, one can come up with bio-boost as a portmanteau of biological boosting.

 

If that wasn't enough, the Japanese have the tendency to create english sounding names and write it differently in kanji.  An example would be Zoanoid, but it is written in kanji as ç£åŒ–å…µ (Juukahei) or beast type soldiers, but we keep referring them to Zoanoids.

[Cannibal]

When I looked up Kyoshoku I get the definition "Anorexia" or "To refuse food"

That's funny

 

"Power Augmentation Armor Guyver"

Just want to say that the Russian scanlators translate it almost like this. Or something like Power Multiplication Armor.

[*V Guyver]

to top it all off, Kanji can be read differently depending on how it's written, even without it being part of a sentence. Some of the issues even confuse native speakers. I remember an episode Omake of Bleach poking fun at this. 

[*Jess♥]

also to address 'shokusou'  it takes out the 'strongly' part and takes out the armour part.  it is sort of saying augment-binding. the 'binding' part is probably where 'bio' comes from. if you think about binding a book, you are fusing the components and so this method of binding is a biological fusion.

when we say bio-booster armour, we are taking into account the 'strongly increase bound-armour' kanji, so technically it would be wrong to say bio-boost for agito. is there a lesser form of the word 'boost'? really not sure. but since the english title is bio-booster armour and agito's phrase uses the same kanji as the full title then we should really use the same words as the full title as well. that is the way I would explain it.

 

well anyway it's already been explained about the title, but I guess I'll add my thoughts even if I am repeating what has already beensaid.

it is 'strongly-increased bound-armour' or 'strongly increase binding armour' whatever tense you want to use. strongly increase binding is pretty much bio-boosting.

[Tallon]

Thanks for answering. Was bugging me forever. So my research wasn't totally off and I guess the "Bio-Booster" part came from localization so it'd make sense.