My pet peeve is localized names that sound generic as all hell.
Exhibit a. "Fire force" : What the hell is this? You couldn't make it more generic if you tried. Maybe you could call it "humans that deal with fire" instead lol. The original title is "EnEn no shouboutai", roughly speaking its something like "fire force of fierce flames" (I don't know how else to translate en, from my understanding it means something like intense flame, so EnEn must be off the charts intense) which is certainly close but it has a lot more character.
Exhibit b. "Erased": Are we just replacing the title with random words now? If I squint I can sort of understand why erased fits the story but it's just a boring ass name. The original title "Boku dake ga inai machi" (The town in which only I do not exist) has infinitely more character and is much more memorable. It is even referenced in series where at one point kayo says something like "Now this will be a town where only I do not exist", referencing her moving out, which also brings to our attention that the title was not supposed to be about how Kayo was "erased" or whatever, it has a double meaning where in the original timeline she didn't exist and then in the new timeline is far away from her friends but she remembers them from far away. Anyway, F-tier localized title, whoever came up with that one should "Erase" their career and start from scratch again.
Exhibit c. "Star blazers": It's not as generic as fire force but still pretty bad, it says almost nothing about the series, you could rename any space faring adventure "star blazers" and call it a day if you really wanted to. The original title is "Uchuu senkan Yamato 2199" (Space battleship Yamato 2199) which admittedly also does not tell us much, but it does at the very least reference the namesake of the spaceship that the show is about. I feel like this is the most basic form of title, just use the name of a character or thing from the series as the title, it's not exactly worthy of praise but its simple and it works, the localized title could not even accomplish this.
So here's the conclusion. Just use the original title. Translate it if need be but use the same words and convey the same meaning. If its a word play or pun or whatever that doesn't work in English by all means that is the time to get creative, but you have to get CREATIVE, none of this "pick a word from the dictionary" localization. |