Board Thread:Wikia Discussion/@comment-25683568-20150318062713/@comment-25606292-20150621223835

@Ckwng

First off, thank you, I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to find the full name of the 20.3cm 3rd Year Type Gun in Japanese to check that theory and quite simply could only find it in Romanji at best, so I couldn't accurately gauge if there was an extra Kanji or not.

>Type?

The point I was making is that translating 22号対水上電探 as Type 22 Surface-Search Radar properly conveys it's meaning through to English. No interpretation is required for this translation to make sense, it does by default. That is a hallmark of a translation that is GOOD in quality. By your own admission the translation of 九一式徹甲弾 to Type 91 Armor Piercing Shell does not carry its meaning through. Because 九一式 has an implied meaning that does not exist in the English version an interpreter is required to make complete sense of the line as the translator just didn't do that part of his job. That is the hallmark of a POOR quality translation. Therefore if either of these were to cause misinformation amongst your intended audience (those who can speak English only) then it is not 22号 that is the most likely candidate but rather the inprecise, literal 九一式.

九一式 could less literally be translated as just 91st Year (as opposed to 三年式 = 3rd Year Type) to carry the meaning through in English, since in the context used 式 indicates that the preceeding number is a Year, not a Number. Whether or not the Kanji match really doesn't matter as much as whether or not the proper meaning is being conveyed. As it stands, it looks like a totally arbitrary number to someone who has no idea what he's looking at in the first place which it is not and as a result is causing confusion.

Regardless, Number looks fine to me, even if it does come off as odd for you to target 号 specifically. Therefore if you wish to change 号 specifically, though I object with the premise of the change, then I have no objection to it being to that.

Also, Wikipedia had a source at one point that was listed but has since become a Deadlink as  a result of the site the source comes from being taken over. That source would apparently have been reposted here, Link. I thought it was relavent to the conversation so I'm leaving it here.

>Bi-Type

I'm not going to say that you're wrong. On the contrary you're literally right, but I feel this wiki may be trying too hard to be right and the Bi-Type provides a good example of why. Let's not forget that 日本 is literally Nippon, but shouldn't be translated as such in English.

In the case of Bi-Type my problem with it is that if one were to google 40mm Bi-Type in search of information upon the actual gun in IJN Service they will likely come up with absolutely nothing for their efforts. At least, when I do it the only thing I get in reference to the gun are direct links back to this very wiki. Repeating this process with the incorrect translation 40mm Hi-Type on the complete contrary provides a link to such information almost instantly. That seems incredibly backwards. In other words, being too right is the issue.

I'm not saying that it should be changed back, I'm just pointing out the completely unforseen consequences that changing one single letter resulted in. This is beside the point though, I was using it to lampshade the precedent that changing that name in order to be more (debatably) correct set. (That being that the translation of 式 need not match external translations.)