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Hi everyone on this community forum!

In the video game Ehrgeiz, there is a sentence which is spoken is Japanese, then subtitled, which was localized well, but I'd like to know what the sentence is really saying.

I put some sentences for context

クレア: でも、それがもし本当の不老不死の秘鑰のことだったら、太古の昔から、東西の覇者たちが失った究極の秘宝でしょ？ 見つかったら、凄いことですね！
Clair: "But if that's really the secret of immortality, isn't it the ultimate treasure that rulers everywhere have sought after since ancient times? It'll be sensational if we find it!"

増田: まぁ、な・・・
Koji: "Definitely."

クレア: わあ、これぞ古代のロマンって感じじゃない！
Clair: "Wow. This is the ultimate dream of any archaeologist!

わくわくしてくるなぁ！
I'm getting excited already!"

Google translate: This is not an ancient romance!

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    Google translate: This is not an ancient romance! ← Two things that Google Translate does not seem to know: 1) 「じゃない」in this context is affirmative in its usage and 2) there is a huge difference in meaning between ロマン and ロマンス.
    – user4032
    Jun 9, 2019 at 16:49

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古代の is just ancient, so I assume you're interested in the meaning of ロマン. First, it's completely different from ロマンス/romance (although they may be etymologically related).

ロマン (or 浪漫 in kanji) is a word that derived from romanticism in English. In modern Japanese usage, it has become a somewhat vague term used in several different ways, but basically it refers to certain types of attractiveness:

  1. Nostalgic attractiveness; beauty of the good old days. See 大正ロマン. Western people may associate 浪漫 with Wild West culture, Caribbean pirate culture, Victorian Gothic culture, etc.
  2. More broadly, it also refers to a vague fascination with worlds that are different from reality, such as fantasy (including so-called isekai), cyberpunk, retrofuturism, outer space and so on. "Sense of wonder" may be conceptually similar in English.
  3. In an even broader and slangy sense, it refers to attractiveness that is felt intuitively but cannot be analyzed by logic and reason, or attractiveness despite a lack of practical merit, or indescribable coolness. See ロマン in Nicopedia. For example, ロマン砲 (砲 = cannon) is a slang term used by gamers and military enthusiasts to refer to an attack method that is extremely powerful and cool but has little practicality (due to high cost, low precision, etc).

In your case, "archaeologist's dream" seems to be a good free translation to me, but if you want a more literal one, "dream of the ancient times" should do. Something like "This is exactly what I expect from the ancient times!" may be another option.

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  • Wait, really? I thought that ロマン derived from the French word for a novel (although I think that term ultimately derives from the same underlying concept of romanticism; "romantic" in the sense of the Romantic era).
    – Karl Knechtel
    Apr 8, 2023 at 12:57
  • "For example, ロマン砲 (砲 = cannon) is a slang term used by gamers and military enthusiasts to refer to an attack method that is extremely powerful and cool but has little practicality (due to high cost, low precision, etc)." As a curious coincidence, there is a kind of firework called a "Roman candle"; it is powerful and flashy but would not be practical for lighting up a room :)
    – Karl Knechtel
    Apr 8, 2023 at 13:00
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    @KarlKnechtel I have confirmed through 青空文庫全文検索 that even in older texts, almost no one uses the term ロマン to mean 小説, although a few French literature experts seems to have used it this way. I think it's okay to say ロマン was imported into Japanese with the meaning of romanticism from the beginning.
    – naruto
    Apr 9, 2023 at 13:49
  • Huh. Today I learned. Also related to that gaming term, in the fighting game community I've heard e.g. "roman cancel" in English which apparently is borrowed back from Japanese. Given this context I would just translate it as "flashy"; but in context it generally is jargon referring to a very specific input technique, so it sort of makes sense to leave alone. Except - a lot of people writing in English will capitalize it, and seem to think it has something to do with the city of Rome or alluding to ancient Roman civilization somehow...
    – Karl Knechtel
    Apr 9, 2023 at 14:16

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