Dex-chan lover
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2018
- Messages
- 931
It's common in Japanese to shorten titles by making a contraction out of them. スマブラ for Super Smash Bros.,ドラクエ for Dragon Quest, or even just スト for Street Fighter.And about "BuraBasu", this one, let me explain.
Yes, it is completely tied to how Daiba says it. Daiba literally says 「ブラバス」 which is the katakana for "Bu" "Ra" "Ba" "Su". Here you can see it on the left globe text.
Now, yes, I too kept thinking a good 20 minutes the first time he said it on how I should approach it to translate it, and I decided to choose the literal approach since it was the most straightforward and understandable one, I do think it sounds a little weird.
I could choose to say just "Black Bus", and indeed it would have sound better, however, I dont know if it would have been okay to do that since that is not what the translation says.
Let's take another panel for example:
Here we can see the specific Katakana used to say Black Bus as it should be said (not a nickname), which is ブラック バス (you can see it at the right of "Black Bus".
So yeah, that's the explanation for it.
If there is someone with some Japanese knowledge that were to peek into this comment section, I would be extremely grateful if they were to guide me on this particular situation, would it be okay to put "Black Bus" when Daiba says "BuraBasu"?.
But when translating this, it's best practice to use an abbreviation that will be familiar to English speakers: Smash, DQ, and SF (respectively). Or just use the whole title, if you have the space for it.
NOTE: Sometimes, series use the "nickname" as their official localized title. KonoSuba (Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo) and PreCure (Pretty Cure), for example. Hell, even Pokemon is short for Pocket Monsters! So I can't say it's always wrong to translate the portmanteau literally... But in general, I would avoid it.
(source: Japanese was my minor in college)
