German localizers are less retarded than English ones
(media.kotakuinaction2.win)
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The german translation is still garbage, though.
Yeah, it's super cool and doesn't afraid of nothing, like the super scary no-no word "slave", but for fucks sake, everything BUT the word slave is wrong.
Translation isn't supposed to be about changing shit. It's supposed to be about taking data in language format A and converting it to language format B with minimal loss of data (ideally zero, but that's not always possible).
This is 75-25 noise to signal ratio.
And before any chucklefuck gets the "hurr durr what about things that have no direct translation" like the oft-quoted "the moon is beautiful tonight" thing, fuck off. Add a TL note or something; sometimes your conversion has a plugin dependency, tell the users to install the fucking plugin and load the library.
God fucking forbid people should learn something new or be exposed to a foreign culture. Fuck.
Counterpoint: Liberally translating titles is usually a marketing strategy. Demon Slave probably sounds cooler to the average German than the direct translation.
You could say the same about the Japanese though. 9/10 when they use Christian symbolism, it ends up being cringy as fuck because even after so many decades of cultural exposure, they still have a very superficial understanding of Christianity.
That too, but it's also a space management/text formatting issue.
The original title is 4 words. Two of them only take up 4 characters, making it 9 in total + 5 for the gratuitous addition of "slave" in Latin letters. That is a lot shorter than the 7 words written with 34 letters it takes for the accurate English translation (German would probably be something along the lines of "Sklave der Elitetruppe der magischen Hauptstadt" which is 6 words and 47 letters).
You would have to make the nice lady quite a bit smaller to fit all of that on the cover and still have it be eye catching.
Now someone below mentioned that the titular slave isn't demonic, so they should probably have found a more fitting word. I can't offer a good alternative, without knowing the manga though.
People who think like this are the same people who think translating every instance of "-san" to Mr./Ms. is acceptable, as if high school students go around addressing their fellow students in the exact same manner as their teachers.
At this point I really just want the translators to list the honorific verbatim and stop trying to localize it. Anyone with half a brain will figure it out and those who can't aren't worth accommodating to begin with.
All of us who watched the original Higurashi figured out what the fuck "-chama" was from basic context clues and that should be the barest expectation of anyone watching foreign media.
Heck I remember when Persona 3 was still this sleeper cult classic in the making and the fact that the English dub kept all the honorifics in was considered a huge plus in its favor.
Well what do you and the other grade 10s call each other then? :)
Honestly, it was some variation of faggot, gayboy, and other loving terms of endearment boys that age use.
The only non-slave English title I would have accepted was "BDSM fanservice freakshow".
"That time I was conscripted into a BDSM boudoir but it was actually the key in fighting the frontline of the Demon Army's forces!"
But seriously what's the deal with anime and manga having like 30-word titles now?
People literally judge books by their covers. They don't read the back side of the book anymore, or at least that is popular perception. So when faced with ever-increasing copyright restraints of more and more titles being locked off, instead of a snappy title, they give the back of the book blurb as the book's title.
As long as anything Nazi isn't involved, sure. If so then you will get entire gutted sections outright removed or made laughably censored.
And while I loath to defend localizers, at least "Chained Soldier" is a literal and still accurate descriptor of the character being described. Might be more so after the first two volumes, because at that point he ceases to be any kind of "slave" and very much flips all the power dynamics to his favor and becomes just a monster transformation with chains used as reins instead of a leash. Especially as by the series logic his "slave transformation" must be equally compensated for all its hard work, which usually involves a lot of sexual scenes, which is the furthest thing from slavery I've heard of and sounds closer to just having a job.
By the same principle, the German version is just as bad because there is nothing demonic about it and it complete excises the same amount of information regarding the Maho Elite Soldiers. It only seems better because it keeps the word "slave."
Both are bad and the funny English the Japs put it should always be kept, but not the worst butcherings, and I can only imagine the actual content of the series is in far more danger of being censored than the title considering the incredibly rapey elements involved.
I've found that the German translations/subtitles, while usually not perfect themselves, are often better than the English ones. (Now this is purely anecdotal, since I don't know both versions of ever manga/anime/game I consume and also have to work from context/comparison, since I only understand a handful of Japanese words and phrases.)
The only example that really comes to my mind, where it was the opposite was Wotakoi. English translation is often a bit too lose for my preference, but the German one is just outright trash.
The ones in charge of your banks and money transfers are also the ones with the power to influence what words you can't use in translations.