Talk:G.I. Joe (franchise)

The Japanese name

I considered rendering "chijou" (地上) as "World", but "World/Earth" is generally written as "chikyuu" (地球). The characters in "chijou" literally mean "ground" and "above". After Interrobang made the change, I decided to go through some online dictionaries and the paperback ones I have here at home to be sure, and none of them gave "world" as a synonym for "chijou". Only "above ground" or "land" or "earth's surface". While "Above Ground Strongest Expert Team" may sound truly awful, I think it is a more accurate translation than "World's Strongest Expert Team". If they had wanted "World's Strongest" they'd have gone with "地球最強", not "地上最強". --DrSpengler 00:04, 18 January 2010 (EST)

Perhaps a better rendering would be "Strongest on Earth", maybe? The first character, "chi", means "land/ground/Earth". The second character, "jou", literally means "above or ontop of". So "on Earth" would be an appropriate alternative to "above ground". --DrSpengler 00:10, 18 January 2010 (EST)

Yeah, Wikipedia agrees. I was going by the translation at [1]. (I didn't see the other translations prior, or I would've rendered it that way.)

When coming across weird phrases, I always find it helpful to search on Wikipedia and look at their translated episode or show titles. Adding an asterisk to indicate a wildcard phrase (since Japanese rarely has spaces) helps a lot. —Interrobang 00:18, 18 January 2010 (EST)