As the title suggests, the point of this thread is to address a few misconceptions formed around certain crucial statements entirely due to poor translation. Of course, this isn't an exhaustive post at all, as cases like these are literally countless and would require a systematic approach to really cover completely. Regardless, these are what I currently take to be the most important and want to appropiately address.
Also, apologies for any poor formatting issues, as this is my first post on this forum. And of course, if there are any mistakes, then feel free to lynch into them.
The first of these is Jinbei's infamous statement of "Under fleet-admiral Sakazuki, Marine HQ has become a more powerful force of justice than ever before":
Of course, this statement is extended to have all sorts of crazy implications due to the usage of "ever" - and is one of the main reasons alot of people highly evaluate Akainu's current strength in relation to the previous generation. The actual raw can be found here:
The Kanji in-question: 率いる かいてんほん 「海軍本部」は より強力な せいざ いんたい 正義の軍隊に なっておる. Now, put this in any translating service you want (DeepL, Papego, Yandex) or ask anyone who's competent in Japanese. There is absolutely no mention of "ever" in this statement - it's quite literally randomly inserted, completely arbitrarily.
All it's saying is that the Navy is more powerful in comparison to how it was prior to the Admiral clash between Aokiji and Akainu. In other words, the new fighting force (Fuji and GB) the Navy brought in alongside Akainu's giga haki-bloom is enough to compensate for Aokiji's departure. Still impressive, sure, but a far-cry from "stronger than ever!!"
The second mistranslation relates to Akainu's vivre-card. Artur's posts regarding the vivre-cards (which are what's most commonly relied upon) state there's an ambiguity on what the raws mean when they refer to it as having the highest offensive power - is it the highest in of itself? Is it simply part of the "highest rank" which other DF can enter? This is usually used to say that the statement isn't some end-all be-all evidence which instantly puts Akainu's devil fruit as being unrivalled in offensive power;
However, if one were to look at the actual raws, then you'd immediatedly notice there is nothing which renders this ambiguous.
マグマを自在に操る力は、悪魔の実のなかでも最高峰の攻撃力を誇る - Or more literally, "Due to it's capability of manipulating magma at will, among all others fruits - it boasts the pinnacle of / highest level of / most prominent offensive power". It's quite literally saying that it's at the absolute top, at "the highest peak" . The confusion seems to stem from that several things can co-exist at the "highest level", but in this case the far stronger implication is that it's standing at the absolute top of the pinnacle all by itself. Even the japanese competent Arab-bros you can find online translated the statement accordingly when the cards were first released.
To sum it up, Akainu's devil fruit has the most offensive power out of any other Devil Fruit, - nothing more, and nothing less.
Another statement you'll see used here and there is Rayleigh's statement in Databook Deep Blue:
ゾロに止めを刺そうとした黄猿。そのレーザーを、武装色の覇気で防ぐ! 冥王の実力には、一切の陰り無しだっ!! - Insert this into DeepL or similiar translating services and you'll get:
Kizaru tries to put an end to Zoro. He (Rayleigh) prevents the laser by using his Armament Hakii! The power of the Dark Lord has not been diminished at all!
Why exactly it translates it that way isn't entirely clear, but this is a scan you'll usually see used to argue the whole point of "Old people don't get significantly weaker and only get their stamina impacted" which alot of people advocate for. While some scans do arguably suggest that, this isn't one of them. The more appropiate translation is:
"There was no shadow of doubt in the power of the King of the Underworld!!".
BONUS:
While this statement isn't used too commonly, and not really taken too seriously - you'll still see the occasional usage of it. This isn't necessarily a mistranslation, but rather shows an admittedly fun case of taking statements and stripping them from their broader context. The scan i'm referring to comes from One Piece Magazine Volume 14 - Rivals, which states the following:
"The pair of the strongest, fateful rivals!
They have dueled many times, but sometimes get along to drink with each other, the way Roger and Whitebeard did. In both name and reality, they can be deemed the strongest rivals: A Yonko and the World's Strongest Swordsman"
No fucking way..... Shanks x Mihawk stated to be the strongest rivals in the same magazine which labels Akainu x Aokiji, Kaido x Shanks, Blackbeard x literally everyone as all rivals!?!?
But let's try and understand the type of source this statement comes from. How credible is it? Is it common for it to exaggerate? To answer these questions, Let's begin by ignoring the statement itself for a second, and taking a look at the full page you can find it in:
Let's see what each of these other rivals have going for them then. Let's start with Law and Marco:
"Marco x Law, the strongest doctor rivalry!!"
I guess that makes sense. It's not like chopper or some shit is close to their level.
What abou Luffy and Katakuri then?
"Luffy x Katakuri, the strongest superhuman (i.e devil fruit user) rivalry!!"
Wtf.... let's just scratch this off as mindless hype, nothing to take too seriously - statements like this always pop up.
Maybe Zoro and Cavendish will give us more clarity, let's see what they say there:
"Zoro x Cavendish, the strongest swordsman rivalry!!"
Lol.
There are again, countless other scans and statements which suffer from similiar issues. I'll probably make another post like this in the future just seeing how many of them there are, but until now, hoped that this would be a good taste as to just how messy alot of the power-scaling you'll see thrown around gets due to issues like this.
Also, apologies for any poor formatting issues, as this is my first post on this forum. And of course, if there are any mistakes, then feel free to lynch into them.
The first of these is Jinbei's infamous statement of "Under fleet-admiral Sakazuki, Marine HQ has become a more powerful force of justice than ever before":
Of course, this statement is extended to have all sorts of crazy implications due to the usage of "ever" - and is one of the main reasons alot of people highly evaluate Akainu's current strength in relation to the previous generation. The actual raw can be found here:
The Kanji in-question: 率いる かいてんほん 「海軍本部」は より強力な せいざ いんたい 正義の軍隊に なっておる. Now, put this in any translating service you want (DeepL, Papego, Yandex) or ask anyone who's competent in Japanese. There is absolutely no mention of "ever" in this statement - it's quite literally randomly inserted, completely arbitrarily.
All it's saying is that the Navy is more powerful in comparison to how it was prior to the Admiral clash between Aokiji and Akainu. In other words, the new fighting force (Fuji and GB) the Navy brought in alongside Akainu's giga haki-bloom is enough to compensate for Aokiji's departure. Still impressive, sure, but a far-cry from "stronger than ever!!"
The second mistranslation relates to Akainu's vivre-card. Artur's posts regarding the vivre-cards (which are what's most commonly relied upon) state there's an ambiguity on what the raws mean when they refer to it as having the highest offensive power - is it the highest in of itself? Is it simply part of the "highest rank" which other DF can enter? This is usually used to say that the statement isn't some end-all be-all evidence which instantly puts Akainu's devil fruit as being unrivalled in offensive power;
However, if one were to look at the actual raws, then you'd immediatedly notice there is nothing which renders this ambiguous.
マグマを自在に操る力は、悪魔の実のなかでも最高峰の攻撃力を誇る - Or more literally, "Due to it's capability of manipulating magma at will, among all others fruits - it boasts the pinnacle of / highest level of / most prominent offensive power". It's quite literally saying that it's at the absolute top, at "the highest peak" . The confusion seems to stem from that several things can co-exist at the "highest level", but in this case the far stronger implication is that it's standing at the absolute top of the pinnacle all by itself. Even the japanese competent Arab-bros you can find online translated the statement accordingly when the cards were first released.
To sum it up, Akainu's devil fruit has the most offensive power out of any other Devil Fruit, - nothing more, and nothing less.
Another statement you'll see used here and there is Rayleigh's statement in Databook Deep Blue:
Kizaru tries to put an end to Zoro. He (Rayleigh) prevents the laser by using his Armament Hakii! The power of the Dark Lord has not been diminished at all!
Why exactly it translates it that way isn't entirely clear, but this is a scan you'll usually see used to argue the whole point of "Old people don't get significantly weaker and only get their stamina impacted" which alot of people advocate for. While some scans do arguably suggest that, this isn't one of them. The more appropiate translation is:
"There was no shadow of doubt in the power of the King of the Underworld!!".
BONUS:
While this statement isn't used too commonly, and not really taken too seriously - you'll still see the occasional usage of it. This isn't necessarily a mistranslation, but rather shows an admittedly fun case of taking statements and stripping them from their broader context. The scan i'm referring to comes from One Piece Magazine Volume 14 - Rivals, which states the following:
They have dueled many times, but sometimes get along to drink with each other, the way Roger and Whitebeard did. In both name and reality, they can be deemed the strongest rivals: A Yonko and the World's Strongest Swordsman"
No fucking way..... Shanks x Mihawk stated to be the strongest rivals in the same magazine which labels Akainu x Aokiji, Kaido x Shanks, Blackbeard x literally everyone as all rivals!?!?
But let's try and understand the type of source this statement comes from. How credible is it? Is it common for it to exaggerate? To answer these questions, Let's begin by ignoring the statement itself for a second, and taking a look at the full page you can find it in:
Let's see what each of these other rivals have going for them then. Let's start with Law and Marco:
"Marco x Law, the strongest doctor rivalry!!"
I guess that makes sense. It's not like chopper or some shit is close to their level.
What abou Luffy and Katakuri then?
"Luffy x Katakuri, the strongest superhuman (i.e devil fruit user) rivalry!!"
Wtf.... let's just scratch this off as mindless hype, nothing to take too seriously - statements like this always pop up.
Maybe Zoro and Cavendish will give us more clarity, let's see what they say there:
"Zoro x Cavendish, the strongest swordsman rivalry!!"
Lol.
There are again, countless other scans and statements which suffer from similiar issues. I'll probably make another post like this in the future just seeing how many of them there are, but until now, hoped that this would be a good taste as to just how messy alot of the power-scaling you'll see thrown around gets due to issues like this.
