rvbrick said:Ashita no Joe is literally "Tomorrow's Joe" That sounds amusingly like you're referring to the coffee you're drinking tomorrow, haha.
rvbrick said:In the case of anime where the English title is different I just go with whatever's more "iconic". This mainly applies to EVA (Neon Genesis Evangelion doesn't mean the same thing as Shinseiki Evangelion) and all the Ghibli movies. Not to mention that Neon Genesis Evangelion is actually Greek, and Puella Magi Madoka Magica is Latin. (I use neither "Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica" nor "Magical Girl Madoka Magica". On the other hand I use "Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha".)
Also I should add that, despite preferring English names, sometimes I just disagree with the English name.
For example:
* Rinne no Lagrange / Lagrange: the Flower of Rin-ne / Lag-Rin
A more proper translation would be "Lagrange of Reincarnation" or "Lagrange of Samsara", and insert "a" and "the" as you see fit (since articles aren't part of Japanese).
Neither name works very well. The distinctive part of this name is "Lagrange" (the way certain other shows are known in short form by "Arpeggio", "Evangelion", "Druaga", and so on, despite those words not necessarily being the first word of the title), and the English title puts "Lagrange" first, but also introduces the word "Flower" (which is an important element in-series, though not in the Japanese title), and also doesn't translate "Rinne" and even goes and rewrites it "Rin-ne" for some reason (if you know why, please tell me). Meanwhile, the show apparently is abbreviated as "Lag-Rin" by Japanese fans? Heck, the OP actually says that as its first words.
I usually just call the show "Lagrange" or "Lag-Rin". If I'm allowed to choose a name, I think the most appropriately poetic name might be "Lagrange: the Flower of Samsara" or "Lagrange: the Flower of Reincarnation".
* Yuuki Yuuna wa Yuusha de Aru / Yuki Yuna is a Hero / YuYuYu
Okay, so I disagree with this one's English title for a different reason. A couple reasons, actually.
1. The name explicitly mentions a character's name, in a grammatically sensible way. The character's surname is Yuuki, and her given name is Yuuna. The dub actually calls her "Yuuna Yuuki" (or arguably, "Yuna Yuki", though you can't distinguish this because it's not spelled out in romaji), which is standard English name order -- a practice widely used for Japanese names in English, concurrently with standard Japanese name order. (I personally don't feel strongly either way, and solved this problem in my music folder by simply putting "Surname, Givenname".) However, the English title, for some reason, still uses Japanese name order, which is inconsistent with the dub's name for the character.
2. Okay, so we're keeping Japanese name order for the English title, but...for some reason we're taking out the extra "u"s? Why? If you're going to stick with the Japanese name, at least keep a more proper romanization.
As a result, I usually call this series by its short name, "YuYuYu" (though I don't say "YuuYuuYuu", which I think some people use). Incidentally this name doesn't apply to its sequels/prequels/spinoffs/etc. because they all follow the name format "[character name] is a Hero" (or its Japanese equivalent), and the other character names don't start with the "yu" phoneme. But "YuYuYu" is certainly distinct enough to identify the franchise as a whole.
When I have to give a full name, I sorta alternate between "Yuuki Yuuna is a Hero" (thus preserving the proper romanization of the Japanese name) and "Yuuna Yuuki is a Hero" (thus using standard English name order, but keeping the "u"s because I don't see a problem with them).
Fortunately, I haven't yet run into anything yet whose name falls between "Yuki" and "Yuuna" alphabetically.
*insert Soulja Boy going YUUUUUUUUUUUUUU* |