Rayman Pirate-Community

In the Rayman IV bootleg, I noticed Rayman is spelled Райман on the title screen. Isn't it a typo?
I think the correct spelling is Рэйман. I doubt the typo was intentional to circumvent copyrights, since it's spelled correctly in the German and English versions of the bootleg, and it uses sprites from Rayman Advance among other games. I think it might be better to mention it on the RayWiki article.

The correct spelling is definitely Рэйман, which can be seen in both Origins and Legends if you set the language to Russian. As you can even see here, Bubble Dreamer is calling him "Рэйман". It makes me wonder how they could have possibly made this mistake.

Thank you for the confirmation Steo!

Do you think it's worth a mention on the RayWiki article?

I guess a trivia heading could be added near the bottom of the article, then it can state that the title screen contains a typo, it reads Райман, when it should actually be Рэйман.

The reason behind the typo is a little unclear to me though, especially if the people who made the bootleg were Russian. I know the name Rayman does contain two A's, so this might be where the confusion came from. It makes me consider if the devs were fluent in Russian or not, especially when you consider how it's spelled correctly in the other languages like you said.

I took care of it!

Apparently the game originated from a Taiwanese company!

This probably explains the error then, and it's not uncommon to see bootlegs have grammatical errors in them. It's better for others know the correct spelling, and since there is also a Russian RayWiki, we wouldn't want people misspelling Rayman on it.

Nice work also!

I wonder does the bootleg predate official Russian translations of real Rayman games? Or maybe the authors were simply unaware of the official Russian translations and made up their own name.

Thank you Steo!

Yes, there's a possibility it was just an unofficial translation PluMGMK! It wouldn't be valid either way. The bootleg might also predate Rayman Origins: the company apparently operated between mid-90s to 2009, but the editors of its Wikia page seem unsure about this information so it isn't verified. I agree with Steo it's not uncommon to see spelling mistakes in bootlegs, and you can tell this game wasn't created with especial care.

as a russian i have some cents. rayman 3 was translated all the way in 2003 and it still calls him рэйман:

(from https://www.buka.ru/cgi-bin/show.pl?id=19 )
my guess is that the bootleggers were unaware of how rayman was actually called in the official translations, and did not have good english skills, and thus read it as if it were transliterated russian. if that makes sense. so thats how rayman somehow turns into rye mun

Thank you for the very useful information ZelenPixel! I edited the article accordingly with the more detailed information you provided.

hell yea!
at least i found something funny outta this lmao. after realising рай also means heaven, and poking wiktionary a bit out of curiosity i found out ман (маны) is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manes this. "In ancient Roman religion, the Manes /ˈmeɪniːz/ or Di Manes are chthonic deities sometimes thought to represent souls of deceased loved ones. ".

me on discord wrote:Heaven Manus . he was raymans brother who died for some reason i dont know and went to heaven. pretend sunshine of trip also ties into this i dont have enough ideas for a stupid jokey game theory based around a bootleg which cant read english well lmao

Thanks for this information also, I wasn't aware that Rayman 3 had an official Russian translation. This at least clarifies that they just went and done a literal translation with no idea that Rayman had an official translation. Russian RayWiki also didn't exist back then, so I guess this didn't help.

Yeah, it's like they didn't know the correct pronunciation of Rayman and therefore used a wrong transcription.

Hi, I am one of the members of the Russian-speaking fan base! In Russia, in all official localizations, Rayman is written as "Рэйман", but some people prefer "Рейман"

This discussion reminded me of the following "scary story" (pardon to the Russian non-speakers).
https://vk.com/wall-54644620_123

I can only assume this is a play on репер and рэпер?

Yes. Репер is not a real word; it is a misspelling of рэпер (which, arguably, can hardly be considered "canon", since it's an imported word from the english "rapper"). However, "репер" in Russian suggests a tie to "репа" (brassica rapa, the general family of plants that turnips belong to).

So the joke is that the boy who wanted to be a rapper, due to a misspelling, received a hard labor job on a turnip farm.

I get it, thanks! I was a bit confused at first because a quick search showed that репер is also a loanword, from French repère.