"Saiya People" is actually more accurate than Saiyans (not really)

[successoroffate]

There's something else I've just realized. The LatinAmerican dub referred more than once to the "Saiyan Race" as "La Raza Saiyajin" which literally translates to " The Saiyajin-Race" which is of course, redundant (Saiyajin-Jin). More accurate would have been saying "La raza Saiya" (Saiya-Jin).

[VegettoEX]

There's something else I've just realized. The LatinAmerican dub referred more than once to the "Saiyan Race" as "La Raza Saiyajin" which literally translates to " The Saiyajin-Race" which is of course, redundant (Saiyajin-Jin). More accurate would have been saying "La raza Saiya" (Saiya-Jin).

Interesting. Not entirely different from "Kamehameha Wave" in FUNimation's dub early on in terms of redundancy.

[ABED]

There's something else I've just realized. The LatinAmerican dub referred more than once to the "Saiyan Race" as "La Raza Saiyajin" which literally translates to " The Saiyajin-Race" which is of course, redundant (Saiyajin-Jin). More accurate would have been saying "La raza Saiya" (Saiya-Jin).

Interesting. Not entirely different from "Kamehameha Wave" in FUNimation's dub early on in terms of redundancy.

Kamehameha is the name of a Hawaiian king, but does it translate to anything in Japanese?

[RedRibbonSoldier#42]

There's something else I've just realized. The LatinAmerican dub referred more than once to the "Saiyan Race" as "La Raza Saiyajin" which literally translates to " The Saiyajin-Race" which is of course, redundant (Saiyajin-Jin). More accurate would have been saying "La raza Saiya" (Saiya-Jin).

Interesting. Not entirely different from "Kamehameha Wave" in FUNimation's dub early on in terms of redundancy.

Kamehameha is the name of a Hawaiian king, but does it translate to anything in Japanese?

The last part is written as 波　which means "wave" (hence the redundancy of Kamehameha Wave), the "kame" may refer to "turtle" but the whole thing is written in hiragana which on their own have no meaning. (かめはめ波) The "Hawaiian king" argument is used to defend the ka MAY ha MAY ha pronunciation but I don't know if that's actually how Hawaiians say it.

[ABED]

The last part is written as 波　which means "wave" (hence the redundancy of Kamehameha Wave), the "kame" may refer to "turtle" but the whole thing is written in hiragana which on their own have no meaning. (かめはめ波) The "Hawaiian king" argument is used to defend the ka MAY ha MAY ha pronunciation but I don't know if that's actually how Hawaiians say it.

I know that, but "hame" has no meaning in Japanese as far as I know. And I think Kamehameha is pronounced like in the Ocean dub.

[Danfun64]

So Kameyameya?

[Snow_Lilies]

I don't see how "Saiya People" is any more accurate than "Saiyans", as the two convey the exact same idea: the people of Saiya.

But there is nothing called "Saiya" in the series. We're humans, not the people from Huma.

But we're also often referred to in the series as 地球人, or chikyuujin, meaning "Earthling" or "person from Earth", which is somewhat encompassing considering all of the intelligent animals we have on Earth in the Dragon World. Consequently, as has been coming up in recent episodes of DBS, 人間 (ningen), has more wide applicability in this series (and possibly in Japanese?) than simply "human/humanoid from Earth" as it includes beings like Magetta and seems to be used by the Kais refer to non-divine life forms. If you look up translations for "ningen" you tend to come up with "human being" or "mankind", but of course irl there would be no other reference point. So far, it's only in fiction where this linguistic application has been explored. Contrast this with something like Star Trek where "humans" and "humanity" is used to refer specifically to us on Earth (as opposed to Vulcans, Klingons, Trill, etc.) though "humanoid" gets tossed around as a grouping word and there is an implied common ancestry, at least throughout the Alpha Quadrant (TNG: The Chase).

If anyone wants to take the Star Trek angle further, it might help to watch episodes involving Q (an recurring omnipotent character/race?) to see if any of his language ever groups "mortals" together in this Dragon Ball way (though I'm pretty certain "humans" even here is always referring to Earthlings). Also any input from other alien Sci-Fi series and languages would probably help elucidate the ever-evolving and yet-to-be-resolved nature of this attempt at categorization.

[huzaifa_ahmed]

I've noticed most of the original (Japanese) voices pronounce it "Say" instead of "Sigh".

Do you have any particular examples of this? The only instance I can think of somebody on the Japanese side of things using Saiyan was with Saiyan Blood, which had Ryo Horikawa pronouncing it "Sigh-yan".

Most of this board knows this, but Horikawa speaks English pretty well, somewhat accented but I can understand him just fine.

[linkdude20002001]

The -an suffix is far from the only way to go, I mean we can't forget about how things are in the country of DB's origin.
Someone from Japan(Nihon-jin) is not called "a Japanian" afterall, rather we say "a Japanese person."
Likewise a Saiya-jin could also be called "a Saiyanese person."
I also like the term "Saiyaman" from Gohan's Great Saiyaman moniker.

Well, no, Saiyanese would be a Saiyan-ese, so you're just using two different styles at the same time. Also, you should probably look for names similar to Saiya to find out which suffix to use. Italia, America, and Hawaii come to mind.

The last part is written as 波　which means "wave" (hence the redundancy of Kamehameha Wave), the "kame" may refer to "turtle" but the whole thing is written in hiragana which on their own have no meaning. (かめはめ波) The "Hawaiian king" argument is used to defend the ka MAY ha MAY ha pronunciation but I don't know if that's actually how Hawaiians say it.

I asked a Hawaiian coworker and he wasn't entirely sure, but thought that it probably was KAmeHAmeHA the Great.

[Xeztin]

Saiya People sounds too weird to me, I like Saiyan best because it doesn't break English sentences. I believe I'd just used the Japanese term Saiyajin if I wasn't going to use Saiyan. If I made a dub it'd be the English speaking language with a Japanese word here and there, like Satan, Freeza, Kuririn, etc.. Well Kuririn doesn't really bother me that much.

[alakazam^]

"Saiya People" isn't wrong per se but it is literal and isn't properly used as-in in English so that's why it isn't a viable option. I don't remember if in sci-fi stories "Human people" is used but even so it's not very common.

We have all these different ways of calling inhabitants like Portuguese, Spanish, French and German (and these are just four neighbouring countries) and others so "we" just have to decide on one of them. Since "Saiyan" is valid and the Japanese have been using it, why not? Come to think of it, "Saiya" is also valid...

What I think is that each country's dub should decide on the proper way of calling them instead of relying on "Saiyan" or "Saiyajin" if that naming scheme isn't relevant in their language.

[El Diabeetus]

Hopefully this is still on topic, but does anybody else think ot would be cool if a dub were to use directly translated names for the attacks? I mean wouldn't it be cool to change things like "Kaioken" to "God Fist". It could also reverse things like "Big Bang Attack" that were natively English into it's Japanese equivalent. I know we'd end up with abominations like calling the "Kamehameha" 'Turtle Destruction Wave' all the time, but I still find the prospect interesting.

They're only fandubs, but I have made those kind of attempts with adaptation. I've renamed the Kaio to 'Galactic Overseer(s)' so it's not super literal bit explain's their title well enough and made the Kaio-ken into 'Overseer's Burst' so once again, not a literal translation, but explains the concept well enough. The Kaio-ken is a burst of energy and the ken literally translates to fist which doesn't flow well for the Dragon Ball move in English. It'd be amusing to see it translated as Fist of (the) Kaio as a tounge in cheek reference to Fist of the North Star.

[Cetra]

Come to think of it, "Saiya" is also valid...

Especially after Baby in Japanese wants Saiya Power.