#noukin

[shakunetsu kabaddi ep.06]

I think the best case scenario is shows with titles such that they don’t even need localised - that’s your Dragon Balls or your Narutos or just, a lot of shounen, really. This is good because it puts everyone on the same page, everybody knows what the fuck a Bleach is regardless of language.

There’s also the literal translation route, which is a fuckin ride of its own thanks to light novels and shit. Turning “Mahou Shoujo something” into “Magical Girl something” is always gonna be fair enough, likewise for like, Boku no Hero Academia and Yakusoku no Neverland to My Hero Academia and The Promised Neverland respectively. I think this is fine if it’s something simple just because like, I mean it makes sense. Us dumb foreigners don’t know Japanese and translating an easy title for us that perfectly retains the original meaning is gonna be fine. Even something that’s changing the entire title rather than one or two words - like Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso into Your lie in April, that’s fine, makes sense. 

But like I said, light novels. Now we need to localise Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo, or Itai no wa Iya nano de Bougyoryoku ni Kyokufuri Shitai to Omoimasu, or Watashi, Nouryoku wa Heikinchi de tte Itta yo ne. Wow, fuckin mouthfuls, right? Yeah no way anyone in the English sphere is calling them that. Fortunately neither do the Japanese sphere - all those shows have little abbreviated titles they go by. Konosuba. Bofuri. Noukin. And I think the first two of those shows have well localised titles. Because they just do the literal translation route, but preface it with the abbreviated title. So now everybody in any language knows what Konosuba is and we’re all calling it the same thing. Noukin’s dog shit because the localised title ditches the Noukin entirely so we’re all calling it different shit. Worthless, why would you do that?

The other way you’ll see shows localised is just like, kinda changing the meaning of the title while still trying to retain the premise of the series in some way. I’ll admit I’ve definitely seen this the least. Only real thing I’ve got is “Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai: Tensai-tachi no Renai Zunousen”. MAL lists a translation for this as something like “Kaguya Wants to be Confessed To: The Geniuses' War of Love and Brains”, but the real localised title is just “Kaguya-sama: Love is War”. The Kaguya-sama part is retained either way so that’s kept across languages, but otherwise they both just go for their own thing, that also both happen to fit the show. There are definitely examples that are more extreme than this, I just can’t really think of any.