Plural of the word "Saiya-jin"

[taikufuru]

I don't even come close to understanding the Japanese language. So I need you to help me with this:

In my country, we chose to keep the word "Saiya-jin" instead of "Saiyan".

I know that Japanese words don't have plurals. So, in the case of Western countries that kept the original word romanized, should the "s" be used or not? Is this technically correct?

In Brazilian Portuguese, it would be something like:

– Os Saiya-jins são muito poderosos;
(Saiya-jins are very powerful)

– Os Saiya-jin são muito poderosos;
(Saiya-jin are very powerful)

[nineko]

Unless the author(s) explicitly mandates otherwise (e.g. Pokémon names should never be pluralised), I think it mostly depends on the rules of your own language when it comes to plurals of foreign words. For example, in Italian there's a rule which states that foreign words shouldn't be pluralised, even if they should be in their original language (e.g. "uno sport / dieci sport", meaning "one sport / ten sports", we should omit the "s", though some people use it occasionally). In fact, we say "un saiyan / tanti saiyan", meaning "one Saiyan / many Saiyans".

The Mediaset translation actually misspells that as "Sayan", but that's a whole other can of worms, it's correct in the manga.

[Grimlock]

As already said, until an official spelling becomes the norm, these words should be bound by the already known grammatical rules of the region. If your language uses "S" to denote plural, then the plural of "Saiyajin" should be "Saiyajins".

I don't know about the hyphen, though. It's another conversation whether it should appear or not, but I'm against it.

[GhostEmperorX]

In my country, we chose to keep the word "Saiya-jin" instead of "Saiyan".

It's funny because even JP themselves use "Saiyan" when rendering it in another language (Latin Alphabet-based ones but mainly English).
On a few stray images here & there from the original Z series.

[taikufuru]

As the Brazilian dub was an adaptation of the Mexican dub, we inherited many things from them, including the word "saiya-jin", which for some reason they didn't want to translate. Interestingly, we changed "Krillin" to "Kuririn".

Nowadays, given how present the series is in our collective consciousness, adapting the word with the same criteria that English-speaking countries do would be something very controversial.

Saiya-jin (in Japanese)
Saiya-n (in English)
Saiya-no (in Portuguese)

[Hugo Boss]

As already said, until an official spelling becomes the norm, these words should be bound by the already known grammatical rules of the region. If your language uses "S" to denote plural, then the plural of "Saiyajin" should be "Saiyajins".

I don't know about the hyphen, though. It's another conversation whether it should appear or not, but I'm against it.

This is exactly how it’s spelled in Brazil, Saiyajins. We follow Portuguese rules, so it goes as you described.

[TheGreatness25]

In my country, we chose to keep the word "Saiya-jin" instead of "Saiyan".

It's funny because even JP themselves use "Saiyan" when rendering it in another language (Latin Alphabet-based ones but mainly English).
On a few stray images here & there from the original Z series.

To be fair, there were all sorts of name spellings that they used. And for several years now, Toei has pushed the Funimation name adaptations as being the official English spelling. So if you're going by how they translate their characters' names, we've got "Master Roshi" and "Flying Nimbus" and "Special Beam Cannon" so on and so forth.

[GhostEmperorX]

To be fair, there were all sorts of name spellings that they used. And for several years now, Toei has pushed the Funimation name adaptations as being the official English spelling. So if you're going by how they translate their characters' names, we've got "Master Roshi" and "Flying Nimbus" and "Special Beam Cannon" so on and so forth.

Well yes, although I was mainly referring to it as being something that predates the existence of any Funimation dubs. Which precludes the adoption of their later dub names (one of these mentioned here actually being from Harmony Gold apparently).