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> The unfortunate thing is the pirated versions often have better translations and translation notes vs the official release. Depends on the team doing it, rea

> The unfortunate thing is the pirated versions often have better translations and translation notes vs the official release. Depends on the team doing it, really. I've seen some fan translations before that are so obsessed with delusions of purity or faithfulness to the source that it beckons the question why they even bothered rendering it into English if it's going to be not so much translated as transliterated. We're talking guys who will unironically refer to the manga as "Boku no Hīrō Akademia" instead of "My Hero Academia"...even though the translated English title is literally in the logo: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5a/Boku_no_Hero_Academia_Volume_1.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5a/Boku_no_Hero_...

cercatrova 5y ago
What's wrong with referring to it by the Japanese title? I often look for the Japanese title specifically when looking for manga or anime.
- klodolph 5y ago
  You can index by both easily enough. But how are you searching for the Japanese version? Are you typing in “僕のヒーロー”? Or “Boku no hiro”? Or “Boku no hiirou”? “Boku no hero”? If you get a Japanese copy of the manga, in Japan, it will say, at the top, “My Hero Academia” in English. There’s no excuse for using some other title. You can always add alternative names to your indexing system—just like you might search for “In Search of Lost Time” and find a book titled “Remembrance of Things Past”—but the English translation would never be called “À la recherche du temps perdu”. That would be silly.
  - babypuncher 5y ago
    If you're looking for Japanese results, searching using the Japanese name makes the most sense. I'm not sure what people expect to find searching for something by its romaji title.
  - falcolas 5y ago
    Not all titles are translated the same. This is particularly a problem with Japanese titles, which can be frustratingly different sometimes. For example, the following is the title as used in the Anime: "Graced by the Gods". However, a more literal translation (and the one the novel was originally (unofficially) translated under) was "The Man Picked Up By the Gods". Compared with the romanji "Kamitachi ni Hirowareta Otoko", which is much more consistent to find it by. Separately, there's also titles that translate like: "I Came to Another World as a Jack of All Trades and a Master of None to Journey while Relying on Quickness"... EDIT: Another advantage of using the Japanese names is you can use fewer words to search/refer by. For example, "The Irregular in Magic High School" is most often referred to simply as "Mahoka" by its fans. Same with Danmachi.
    - astrange 5y ago
      Btw, when an anime is officially called by a short name in English it's because the Japanese side knows the real name is embarrassing because the author is a pervert and are trying to hide it. Case in point "Oreimo" which is a romantic comedy except in the last chapter it ends with the MC marrying his own sister. Or "Mahouka" whose author is a Japanese nationalist, at one point in the story has them nuke China, and the MC's sister is also in love with him. Huh, kind of a trend there. "Danmachi" is too bad because the Japanese title is actually a pretty good joke, but it's hard to translate. It's like a pun on deai meaning "random encounter" in a video game but also "encountering" someone in a bar/on a dating app.
      - jbboehr 5y ago
        Where does GochiUsa go wrong? Or, more likely, people don't want to say the whole title because it's too long. Weebs being weebs are going to prefer the Japanese abbreviation sometimes. Is there a version of Hanlon's Razor that goes "Don't attribute to malice what can be attributed to convenience?"
      - Dracophoenix 5y ago
        >Btw, when an anime is officially called by a short name in English it's because the Japanese side knows the real name is embarrassing because the author is a pervert and are trying to hide it. Case in point "Oreimo" which is a romantic comedy except in the last chapter it ends with the MC marrying his own sister. I think what you're describing are isolated cases. There are others like "Konosuba" and "Arifureta" which are still quite popular. >Or "Mahouka" whose author is a Japanese nationalist, at one point in the story has them nuke China, and the MC's sister is also in love with him. Huh, kind of a trend there. "Mahouka" never struck me as controversial either. In fact, if anything it was quite individualistic.
  - cercatrova 5y ago
    Scanlators and anime fan subtitlers usually use the romanji title, so that's what I use to search. My Hero Academia is popular enough to be common, but others are not so common.
- babypuncher 5y ago
  I suspect that searching for an anime/manga by its romaji title is going to yield far fewer results than searching by its English title. Especially in cases like the one highlighted above, where the original work actually uses the English title in its Japanese branding.
  - falcolas 5y ago
    A counter point: Danmachi. You'll get plenty of search hits off it.
    - babypuncher 5y ago
      That seems like an exception rather than the rule. The official English title is very wordy (Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?), and the romaji title is both easy to spell and rolls off the tongue really well. It's a good shorthand for fans to use. Conversely, Hagane no Renkinjutsushi is longer and harder to pronounce than Fullmetal Alechemist. I've never seen this name used in lieu of the translated English name.
- astrange 5y ago
  Japanese people don't call it that. If you say "boku no hero" to a Japanese person they will either go "oh, My Hero" or they won't know what you're talking about. It's an over-literalization. Similar cases happen in Western video games where they get "completely translated" including all UI elements; JP players actually expect those to be in English. https://legendsoflocalization.com/games-with-famous-bad-translations-into-japanese/ https://legendsoflocalization.com/games-with-famous-bad-tran...
  - cercatrova 5y ago
    So if I say Boku no Hero Academia they'll think in English "My Hero Academia?" If so that's interesting, I thought they'd use their own native Japanese names for their own media.
    - astrange 5y ago
      Well, MHA is supposed to feel like an American superhero comic even though it's set in Japan. So it's more like "My Hero Academia" is the title and 僕のヒーローアカデミア is a translation/furigana subtitle. "Boku no Hero" is also kind of hard to say out loud. But now that I think about it the use of "boku" (which is like an "androgynous" first person pronoun for boys or tomboys) probably means it's specifically about Deku's academic life.
lotyrin 5y ago
Yeah, being mostly unable/unwilling to navigate the spectrum between the commercial censorship overly westernized crap and the fan translation "All according to Keikaku (TL Note: Keikaku means plan)" crap and who has what licenses and how to get quality pirate copies when needed (yet support artists somehow), I have just about given up and determined to just have a JP region kindle, buy on Amazon JP and read everything in the original Japanese.
jbay808 5y ago
To be fair, some things are lost in translation. There are many ways to say the word "my" in Japanese, each carrying their own connotation of status / attitude, and it's hard to preserve that connotation in an English translation. Purists might target an audience of readers that, while not fluent in Japanese, have enough interest to learn that much and meet somewhere in the middle, with a bunch of untranslated words sprinkled around. Keikaku (and most loanwords, like hero) are weird choices to leave untranslated, though.

cercatrova 5y ago

What's wrong with referring to it by the Japanese title? I often look for the Japanese title specifically when looking for manga or anime.

klodolph 5y ago
You can index by both easily enough. But how are you searching for the Japanese version? Are you typing in “僕のヒーロー”? Or “Boku no hiro”? Or “Boku no hiirou”? “Boku no hero”? If you get a Japanese copy of the manga, in Japan, it will say, at the top, “My Hero Academia” in English. There’s no excuse for using some other title. You can always add alternative names to your indexing system—just like you might search for “In Search of Lost Time” and find a book titled “Remembrance of Things Past”—but the English translation would never be called “À la recherche du temps perdu”. That would be silly.
- babypuncher 5y ago
  If you're looking for Japanese results, searching using the Japanese name makes the most sense. I'm not sure what people expect to find searching for something by its romaji title.
- falcolas 5y ago
  Not all titles are translated the same. This is particularly a problem with Japanese titles, which can be frustratingly different sometimes. For example, the following is the title as used in the Anime: "Graced by the Gods". However, a more literal translation (and the one the novel was originally (unofficially) translated under) was "The Man Picked Up By the Gods". Compared with the romanji "Kamitachi ni Hirowareta Otoko", which is much more consistent to find it by. Separately, there's also titles that translate like: "I Came to Another World as a Jack of All Trades and a Master of None to Journey while Relying on Quickness"... EDIT: Another advantage of using the Japanese names is you can use fewer words to search/refer by. For example, "The Irregular in Magic High School" is most often referred to simply as "Mahoka" by its fans. Same with Danmachi.
  - astrange 5y ago
    Btw, when an anime is officially called by a short name in English it's because the Japanese side knows the real name is embarrassing because the author is a pervert and are trying to hide it. Case in point "Oreimo" which is a romantic comedy except in the last chapter it ends with the MC marrying his own sister. Or "Mahouka" whose author is a Japanese nationalist, at one point in the story has them nuke China, and the MC's sister is also in love with him. Huh, kind of a trend there. "Danmachi" is too bad because the Japanese title is actually a pretty good joke, but it's hard to translate. It's like a pun on deai meaning "random encounter" in a video game but also "encountering" someone in a bar/on a dating app.
    - jbboehr 5y ago
      Where does GochiUsa go wrong? Or, more likely, people don't want to say the whole title because it's too long. Weebs being weebs are going to prefer the Japanese abbreviation sometimes. Is there a version of Hanlon's Razor that goes "Don't attribute to malice what can be attributed to convenience?"
    - Dracophoenix 5y ago
      >Btw, when an anime is officially called by a short name in English it's because the Japanese side knows the real name is embarrassing because the author is a pervert and are trying to hide it. Case in point "Oreimo" which is a romantic comedy except in the last chapter it ends with the MC marrying his own sister. I think what you're describing are isolated cases. There are others like "Konosuba" and "Arifureta" which are still quite popular. >Or "Mahouka" whose author is a Japanese nationalist, at one point in the story has them nuke China, and the MC's sister is also in love with him. Huh, kind of a trend there. "Mahouka" never struck me as controversial either. In fact, if anything it was quite individualistic.
- cercatrova 5y ago
  Scanlators and anime fan subtitlers usually use the romanji title, so that's what I use to search. My Hero Academia is popular enough to be common, but others are not so common.
babypuncher 5y ago
I suspect that searching for an anime/manga by its romaji title is going to yield far fewer results than searching by its English title. Especially in cases like the one highlighted above, where the original work actually uses the English title in its Japanese branding.
- falcolas 5y ago
  A counter point: Danmachi. You'll get plenty of search hits off it.
  - babypuncher 5y ago
    That seems like an exception rather than the rule. The official English title is very wordy (Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?), and the romaji title is both easy to spell and rolls off the tongue really well. It's a good shorthand for fans to use. Conversely, Hagane no Renkinjutsushi is longer and harder to pronounce than Fullmetal Alechemist. I've never seen this name used in lieu of the translated English name.
astrange 5y ago
Japanese people don't call it that. If you say "boku no hero" to a Japanese person they will either go "oh, My Hero" or they won't know what you're talking about. It's an over-literalization. Similar cases happen in Western video games where they get "completely translated" including all UI elements; JP players actually expect those to be in English. https://legendsoflocalization.com/games-with-famous-bad-translations-into-japanese/ https://legendsoflocalization.com/games-with-famous-bad-tran...
- cercatrova 5y ago
  So if I say Boku no Hero Academia they'll think in English "My Hero Academia?" If so that's interesting, I thought they'd use their own native Japanese names for their own media.
  - astrange 5y ago
    Well, MHA is supposed to feel like an American superhero comic even though it's set in Japan. So it's more like "My Hero Academia" is the title and 僕のヒーローアカデミア is a translation/furigana subtitle. "Boku no Hero" is also kind of hard to say out loud. But now that I think about it the use of "boku" (which is like an "androgynous" first person pronoun for boys or tomboys) probably means it's specifically about Deku's academic life.

lotyrin 5y ago

Yeah, being mostly unable/unwilling to navigate the spectrum between the commercial censorship overly westernized crap and the fan translation "All according to Keikaku (TL Note: Keikaku means plan)" crap and who has what licenses and how to get quality pirate copies when needed (yet support artists somehow), I have just about given up and determined to just have a JP region kindle, buy on Amazon JP and read everything in the original Japanese.

jbay808 5y ago

To be fair, some things are lost in translation. There are many ways to say the word "my" in Japanese, each carrying their own connotation of status / attitude, and it's hard to preserve that connotation in an English translation. Purists might target an audience of readers that, while not fluent in Japanese, have enough interest to learn that much and meet somewhere in the middle, with a bunch of untranslated words sprinkled around. Keikaku (and most loanwords, like hero) are weird choices to leave untranslated, though.