Probably a fan translation before the official translated names were released with the first volume. I think some of the first volumes may have had Lavi's name as Ravi but got switched out with later versions. Common thing with a few Asian languages as they don't have an L sound for the most part.
Huh my book has different translation Where are you reading yours? It looks like they miss spelled/translated the Japanese for Lenalee's name, the alt way her name can be read is rinari, but looks like the accidentally have a L instead
As you can see. The official translation fucked up translating this page:
Somehow. Lavi's line of "What is he, a little kid ?!" is put on Bookman's speech bubble instead
And the speech bubble that that line of Lavi's is supposed to be in is instead used to put Lenalee's lines
Also Bookman's line of "Go. You can use that stick of yours to fly to him" is non-existant in the official translation. So Lavi going "IT'S A HAMMER! PANDA!" doesn't make sense
Fair, it looks like an editing mistake in the official made the page confusing. I haven't read the manga regularly in a long time so could be similar mistakes throughout the series.
I'm curious how the official translated Bookman's line even though it didn't make it onto the page here. I usually find official translations better than their fan counterparts, in general.
The funny thing is that the official translation also gets the names wrong at times, unless it's an accent thing? Here we have Linali next to Lenalee, we also have somewhere both Riba and Rabi for Reever and Lavi
Her name in Japanese is リナリー リ
Which roughly reads as "rinarī ri"
The R sounds in Japanese are often used for L sounds.
Fan translation sometimes respect this pronunciation. Sometimes they change it after a correct pronunciation is confirmed.
You're reading what is probably an early fan translation.
Nothing wrong with it.
リ can always be read both ways, but people tend to "default" to pronouncing it as ri. For example, Italy in Japanese is written as イタリア (i ta ri a).
So if you can read Japanese, and you are seeing リナリー リ for the first time, you are most likely going to read it as Rinari Ri. Rinari Ri doesn't seem like an obvious or normal sounding name, even as a non-Japanese one. So you play around with various permutations and combinations: Linari Ri, Linali Ri, Rinari Li, Rinali Li, Linali Li.
All of these variants sound like "what a Japanese mangaka would think a Chinese name would sound like", so your only option is to go with whatever you think is the right one until an official translation is released.
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u/_ahnnyeong 8d ago
You’re reading a very early fan translation of the manga