Awww, not Matsuda Bison.

On my millionth or so readthrough of this, I notice the translations say he introduces himself as LT-Commander here but Major on post #1735555.

OOZ662 said:

On my millionth or so readthrough of this, I notice the translations say he introduces himself as LT-Commander here but Major on post #1735555.

He introduces his rank as "shousa" 「少佐」, which usually translates as "Major" (For reference, Edward Elric holds the same rank in FMA). In English (and most other European languages), due to historical and political reasons, ranks in the Navy use different terminology compared to that in the Army; the Navy equivalent of an Army Major (OF-3) is called a Lieutenant-Commander.

The Japanese (and most other East Asian countries, which use similar rank terminology), however, do not distinguish between Navy and Army ranks — an Army Major and a Navy Lt-Commander are both called "shousa". For clarity, however, one can append Rikugun ("army") or Kaigun ("navy", as Matsuda has done here) before the rank.

Of course, when translating, one should take care to match the vagarities of the target language. Calling a navy officer a "major" can be jarring to people who are familiar with rank terminology, as the rank is nonexistent in the navy.

(In practice, most anglophones [who have not served in a military] are probably unfamiliar with the terminology differences, other than knowing "a navy general is called an admiral".)

If you open the note history, you'll see that Matsuda's rank was initially translated as "Major" before being subsequently 'corrected' (by the same translator) into "Lieutenant-Commander". Presumably the presence of "kaigun" before the rank calls to attention the 'correct' rank terminology to use.

This was one of the first things I ever translated, after all...

Paracite said:

This was one of the first things I ever translated, after all...

And a fine piece of work it is, far better than my earlier work.