Hi! I'm confused about the word "sendan". I was watching anime and it was translated as "war" but when i looked up in dictionary there was only "fleet (fishing, naval, etc.); convoy; group of ships". Does "war" is an accurate translation too?
I asked a native speaker, he can only guess without the kanji, but thinks it could be the せん from 戦争 (sensou, war) and the だん from 談話 (danwa, talk/conversation), meaning war talks. However there’s also a possibility that it was translated as war, but the Japanese content was discussing a fleet, as things are translated roughly, so that they fit on the screen in the appropriate timing. The story of some films (notably the Godzilla series) used to be totally changed, this happens less so now, however translators are first and foremost concerned with having the gist of the story be conveyed in the appropriate timing for each shot or spoken utterance, so you can’t always expect an anime translation to be totally true to the original. This is one reason why people prefer to watch anime in full Japanese,or aim to learn enough to follow with Japanese subtitles, as then they can get a more unadulterated experience of the show.
