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ANNCast - Your Eternal Reward

Incredibly brave putting themselves up for scrutiny here.

There are some elements of the SM community that are already picking over like hawks certain word choices in the translation / translation notes.

Never going to please everyone though :/.

"Moon Stick to Moon Wand" Thank God! Moon Stick has to be one of the laziest, unengaging, names for a fantasy wand. Takeuchi more than made up for it with other names, even to the other extreme but at least that's better than Moon Stick (Or is it that Stick is a straight translation of a word that sounds more romantic in Japanese than the flat feel it has in English?). I wish this had been done long ago.

"In the Japanese edition, the name of this magical item is the English word "Moon Stick". "Stick" was the en-vogue word for magic wands in Japanese magical girl anime back in the 1980s and '90s, and Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon is no exception. "Stick" is an English translation of the word tsue, which in turn, is the Japanese translation of the "wand." It seems likely that "stick" was the word of choice where magical girls were concerned because "stick" sounds similar to suteki, a Japanese adjective describing things that are "wonderful," "beautiful," "dreamy," etc. So "stick" may sound rather magical to a Japanese speaker, but in English the word is a little mundane, so the translators opted to use "wand" in this edition."

1dbad wrote:

"In the Japanese edition, the name of this magical item is the English word "Moon Stick". "Stick" was the en-vogue word for magic wands in Japanese magical girl anime back in the 1980s and '90s, and Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon is no exception. "Stick" is an English translation of the word tsue, which in turn, is the Japanese translation of the "wand." It seems likely that "stick" was the word of choice where magical girls were concerned because "stick" sounds similar to suteki, a Japanese adjective describing things that are "wonderful," "beautiful," "dreamy," etc. So "stick" may sound rather magical to a Japanese speaker, but in English the word is a little mundane, so the translators opted to use "wand" in this edition."

It's still a name change. There's no real question it's supposed to be "Moon Stick". If it was originally called tsukibo or similar in Japanese then there could be an argument, but stuff like that is really just a case of companies wanting to change things. I don't see it as any different Mixx's old changes.

If the English word "Stick" sounds romantic to the ears of Japanese girls than, in order to re-create the same feel for English girls, the word must be given a warmer equivalent.