Hadesillo wrote: It is probably too late now, yes, but they should have gone with the Niaowu name from the start. Better consistency makes a better game, and I cannot make any sense of what reason they had to use japanese in that name.
Japanese randomly use original foreign language words and names as well as jap transliterations as they please. it's a japanese game, so i just picture it as what japs would call it, which might have a different translation.
for example, America is Ah-May-Ree-Ka, which are all syllables that sound natural in Japanese. However, India is changed to Indo, one syllable fewer, because the "dia" part doesn't sound like anything in Japanese.
my guess for why Japs do this is because some stuff sounds more awkward (to them) when it's said in its Mandarin (or whatever original language) form. the sound of Niaowu would sound odd in Japanese speech since those sounds aren't usually used in that way, while Guilin/Kweilin ("Kweirin") Baisha, Bailu, Hong Kong, Wan Chai don't sound weird when they're said in Japanese.
mostly though, it's because Japan is an insular society despite its love of foreign cultures, so most Japanese wouldn't give a shit about the exact accuracy all that much unless they're doing an M.A in China studies, and they also don't give a shit what others would think about the level of consistency because they're going with what feels right for them.
one more thing, probably the biggest- Bailu and Baisha are real village names (there are more than one) in China. Choubu is made up. So they probably just made it up in Japanese, used kanji, and didn't bother translating it into Mandarin because they dgaf, and there isn't a town by that name in China anyway.
Oh and Shenmue has already done this with Chinese names- Zhu Yuan Da, the English translation of the character's name in Mandarin, is "Shu Gen Tetsu" or something like that in the Japanese voiceover. Why? because fuck consistency, it's whatever sounds more pleasing to them that gets priority. So this lack of consistency is actually consistent with the game you've been a fan of all these years.