Forum:Renaming Devil Fruit Pages

Alright, I know this subject is probably going to be heavily debated, but I want to get this out there: I believe that we should rename the Devil Fruit pages. More specifically, I think we should translate "no Mi" into "Fruit". Recently, it has started to bother me that we choose to leave that part untranslated in the names, but everywhere else we simply call them what they are: fruits. We have a Devil Fruit page that talks about different types of fruits, but for some reason all the fruit names have that "no Mi" instead of the simple translation.

"Well, we might as well call Gomu Gomu no Mi the Rubber Rubber Fruit then!" Well, no. The first part of the Devil Fruit names is usually something that's impossible to translate properly: Onomatopoeias, shortened words etc. They're written katakana, which unlike Kanji, has no meaning. It's simply a syllabary that's used for "names of plants, animals, minerals, and often Japanese companies", for example. The two syllable naming theme would also be lost in translation. The fruit part is clear, though: It's written with Kanji and has a clear translation. I really see no reason for us not to translate it.

Now, I know some of you are going to be against this due to the "half-translation" aspect. But I'd like to point out that we already use half-translations for quite a number of pages. For example, islands.

Kyuka Island, Yukiryu Island, Nanimonai Island, Kenzan Island, Karakuri Island

The first part means something in Japanese in all of them, but we leave it untranslated. Yet "shima/-tō" is translated into "Island". You could argue that the first part is the name of the island, while island is just what it is, but one can make the exact same argument for Devil Fruits. 21:42, December 8, 2014 (UTC)

Discussion
Seems like a pretty decent idea to me. No reason to have to explain what "no mi" means on every Devil Fruit page. We'll have to move and rename a lot, but seems worth it to make it easier to understand for the reader. 21:44, December 8, 2014 (UTC)

Islands are different than fruits. The proper noun usage is different. Island is already an accepted title ending in English nomenclature. 3-Mile Island for instance (which coincidentally is what I see this turning into). But you don't hear people buying a bushel of apple fruits. This will snowball into us eventually having 100+ active polls on what English sound effect we should name each fruit. By seeing the whole title in Japanese (or romaji or whatever it is), people understand that there's a cultural meaning behind the fruit's name, which is why we aren't touching it. Like the Tamatebako. It will raise all kinds of confusion about wtf a Pamu or a Bara is. It's best kept in stasis until a databook comes out with English names. 21:56, December 8, 2014 (UTC)

It won't raise any more confusion than the current names already do. In fact, it'll raise less. Seeing the article name, they'll instantly know it's a fruit, even if they're completely unfamiliar with One Piece. They won't know what a Pamu or a Bara is either way; the cultural meaning stays intact in that part. This doesn't have to lead into mass debates about each of the names, all I'm suggesting is that "no Mi" becomes "Fruit". 22:17, December 8, 2014 (UTC)

My gripe is that a person who isn't aware what "no Mi" means is going to click on the DF link for the exact same reason they click on the "Pamu Pamu" bit - to find out what it means. If they don't know what the DF is, they click the link, and they find out what it is. You can't honestly expect people to not twig that the "no Mi" ending means fruit after seeing a full DF name more than once. Once they've done that, they know that ending isn't important to the translation. It's not like someone is going to click the Gomu Gomu no Mi page, then the Mera Mera no Mi page, and be confused as to what the ending means.

23:14, December 8, 2014 (UTC)

This was actually discussed way back then, when we once used something like "the Gomu Gomu no Mi, also known as the Gomu Gomu Fruit", which we decided against as it is a mix of different languages. It's like using Spanish to teach a Chinese course. 23:20, December 8, 2014 (UTC)

What DP and Yata said. If one part gets translated then the rest has to be translated. SeaTerror (talk) 00:04, December 9, 2014 (UTC)

If only a part of the name is translated, it sounds a bit awkward. 14:41, December 9, 2014 (UTC)

What about removing both "no Mi" and "fruit" part? Since Luffy ate the Gomu Gomu no Mi/Gomu Gomu Fruit, what he actually ate is the "Gomu Gomu", which is the name of the Devil Fruit. The reader would instantly read that "The Gomu Gomu is a Devil Fruit...", thus avoiding misunderstandings; at the same time, we would have not a half translation, because it's only japanese. Ok, Seaterror is against my suggestion. What do the other users think? --Meganoide (talk) 16:14, December 9, 2014 (UTC)

This is mostly about consistency. We use "fruit" everywhere besides the names of specific DFs. The Devil Fruit article talks about different types of fruits such as Zoan fruits and so on. Within the devil fruit pages, the specimen in question can be referred to as just "the fruit". Sometimes both "no Mi" and "fruit" are used in the same sentence: "The Mera Mera no Mi is a round orange fruit". It just seems silly to me.

I really don't understand what's wrong with using a "half-translation" here. The "no Mi" part has a clear meaning, so we translate it. Ato Ato/Bara Bara/Nikyu Nikyu/whatever doesn't, so we leave it the way it is. It's that simple. On the Mato Mato no Mi page, it's said that it's also called the "Mato Mato Curse". Going by this naming style, it might as well say "Mato Mato no Noroi" with the meaning of Noroi explained in brackets or something. Same goes for Nui Nui no Mi's "Nui Nui Power" (rather than "no Chikara".) Half-translations look awkward? I don't see how fruit names would look any more awkward than the Island names that have the Japanese part left intact, like "Kuraigana Island".

@Nova: Obviously they would get it after a while; I was just remarking that if we used "Fruit" it would be clear just from seeing the title. There wouldn't be any need to clarify. I mean, this was on the Yami Yami no Mi page til yesterday: "Teach setting his eyes on the Yami Yami no Mi." Yami Yami Fruit Fruit. So while rarely, "no Mi" does cause confusion. 22:23, December 9, 2014 (UTC)

I think a lot of people seem to have skimmed over Kage's original post, sadly. He makes great points there that nobody really seemed to fully respond to.

Meganoide, your idea makes no grammatical sense.

I think the argument against so-called "half-translations" is pretty awkward when put up against the whole "two uses of words meaning fruit in one sentence". It's like the whole "ATM machine", where the M already means "machine". When you look at the whole sentence it's like we're using something worse than half translations.

And the argument about noobs is irrelevant and totally just a distraction from the main point.We can shut them down by just mentioning this forum. One sentence responses. (It would be even easier if we move-locked all DF pages) And none of our veteran users will want to fully translate the names. Maybe it made more sense as an argument 4 or 5 years ago when the wiki was full of indecision and regular squabbles over this kind of stuff. But now we're way more organized in how we do things, and all the regular users tend to share beliefs when it comes to core matters like the first part of the Japanese names for fruits. (We all get that we can't use english for those or we'll lose the intended meaning.) We're a more homogenous community now (mostly because the people who disagreed left, lol).

Anyways, I think we really need to put aside gut-instinct reactions to the idea and really consider the facts of it, and what would be most easy for the new or irregular reader not just people who crawl the wiki all the time and learn a lot about the series. 02:05, December 10, 2014 (UTC)