Buster sword - honorific name or belittle one ?

[S.L.Kerrigan]

Hi there,

I get this translation for "Buster" (google) : name - used as a mildly disrespectful or humorous form of address, especially to a man or boy.
English is not my mother tongue and I always had the feeling that "Buster" had a more heroic meaning, something like "capable of clearing any enemy".
Can you tell me how you understand it ?

 

[Odysseus]

To "bust" means to break something, in some contexts. In this case I think "buster" refers to the sword's ability to break things. It's a big, unwieldy hunk of steel, very good at "busting" things.

 

[S.L.Kerrigan]

That's close to my first feeling

I noticed that many object names are written in katakana in the original text, including "Buster Sword" which is written バ ス タ ー ソ ー ド(Basutāsōdo). I wonder why in this case (and in other) they would not rather have preferred a more traditional writing.

Perhaps in order to help with the accuracy of the translation, it would have been easier to guide the translators if the important words had been pre-translated (katakanaed) originally. But it seems that the game is not especially known for the quality of its translation ...

And then I imagine that it is still a difficulty for japanese people (children) to have to decrypt / understand the phonetics of an English word in order to understand a sentence from a Japanese work. "Sword" I'd like it to be a generic enough term to be known in its English version, but "Buster"?
What would be the reason for this choice ?

There were probably already Katakana/English dictionaries. Perhaps it is an educational trick that was meant to help the Japanese to learn English more easily.

 

[Kai Schulen]

I mean, considering it's a JRPG...they probably just picked "Buster" because it sounds so cool in Japanese.

(and it does.)

 

[S.L.Kerrigan]

Maybe it's "the guy's sword" like with the character Guybrush from The Secret of Monkey Island that got its name from the texture/brush file guy.brush when they hadn't given him a name yet.

 

[Rydeen]

The Buster busts bustahs.
It almost sounds like "Bastard," especially when transliteration is considered, so I wonder if it's a pun, too. Bastard Sword.

Basutāsōdo - Buster Sword
Basutā - Buster
Basutādo - Bastard

 

[S.L.Kerrigan]

It almost sounds like "Bastard," especially when transliteration is considered, so I wonder if it's a pun, too. Bastard Sword.

That'd be crazy. Buster and Bastard seem to be synonyms (source)