Q: Are you the person who translated the manga for English commercial release?

Fuu: Yes and no. Initially I was volunteering my services (and my fantranslated scripts) to them (albeit they got edited before publication). That was back when you saw my RL name in the masthead of that publication. As time went on, I heard less and less but since they were still using my fantranslation as a "base point", my name was still on the masthead. After that big ugly mess about a year ago, they started to use that new translator (who was getting paid, unlike myself who only got an oral promise - i.e. not written down - for payment for some vague point in the future) and not my scripts, and they took my name off the masthead.... of course, that was after all the "hey, that company is using fantranslations and not paying the fantranslator!" allegations...

Q: Are you the person who is translating the anime for English commercial release?

Fuu: Yes. And I talk to my bosses over in New York via e-mail on a semi-regular basis... and we are still in good relations. They are a great bunch of people to work with because they let me think about any drastic changes to come up with the best compromises.... granted, the compromises may be hated by the fans....

Q: Yeah. What was that with "Rune-God" for "Mashin"?

Fuu: I think most of you saw my caustic rant against those people who thought that the two major "changes" to the English version of the anime sucked.... but here we go again with the "professional" version! =)
First of all, I hope that an English speaker sees the pun that Mashin has on the common English word Machine. This would logically allow the fans to say, "Let's call them Machines." I must disagree with this sentiment. Spelling Mashin as Machine is bad because you would imply to the casual viewer, or even to the budding RayEarth fan, that they are mechas. Despite their battle forms being mechas, their true selves are the selves that Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu encounter in their respective shrines (namely, a dragon, a phoenix, and a lion). So, they are not machines, and therefore I absolutely positively refuse to call them Machines in any RayEarth translation that I work on.
That out of the way, someone new to RayEarth fandom might say, "Let's call them Elements (or whatever Mixx is using right now)!" Once again, I must disagree with this sentiment. This particular idea is bad because although that is basically what their true forms are, it really puts them down because they basically are the godly spirits of Cephiro and not your joe-average elementals.
"All right, then let's keep Mashin as is." I am sure all long-time RayEarth fans, especially those that used my fantraslations to read their mangas, end up here at some point. In fact, as long as it is a fantranslation I have no qualms about keeping Mashin as is. As nice to all the "purist" fans who want nothing but literal translations and footnotes (and who know that Mashin is spelt Magic God in Japanese), the word Mashin means absolutely nothing to all the other Japanese-deficient fans (especially the new fans that start from the Media Blasters translated version of the anime, or those that come from the Mixx translated manga)—hell, they would think that it was a misspelling of Machine! And considering that Ma alone can mean "evil" or "magic", and that shin is one of the legit ways of pronouncing the kanji for "god", if the RE fan in Japan wasn't adept at English (say, they were still in elementary school), they would just accept the Mashin as "magical gods" and not some "magical gods that double as machines".... although I would have to say that if they read the manga (and Nakayosi's target audience is midway through elementary school to junior high, IIRC) they would probably said "majin" instead of "mashin" if CLAMP didn't supply the kana as "mashin"...
I digress. The point of the matter is that I personally feel that the name for the Mashin really have to convey that meaning that they are the pinnacle of the magical entities in Cephiro. In a manga fantranslation, I can get away with using Mashin and then sticking some footnote somewhere along the way (or explaining this on a website, like what I'm doing right now...)—but in a commercially released anime, I really don't think I have that freedom. I mean the serious fan would prefer to see Mashin with liner notes explaining it, but that would deprive the multitude of non-purist fans (which for a typical anime company outnumbers the purists by at least 5 to 1, so I hear from people who release anime commercially) of getting that extensive knowledge. Of course, the "purist" fan would say that if they cared they would look it up and become a "purist" fan... but they don't realize that not all of the casual anime fans are going to look up everything so there will be many a person who will miss the point. Which then put me in a bind.
As much as I wanted to keep Mashin to preserve the "Machine" pun, I felt that losing the "magic" factor was just too big because, it was, Magic Knight RayEarth after all.
As of late, I believe that a "good" translation for the mass market is one where the meanings of everything get portrayed and carried over through the language barrier without needing explanations (i.e. liner notes). Mind you, I still feel the same way I felt 4 years ago concerning a "good" translation for the sake of learning and understanding the language (that is the one reason I ever fantranslated—because I knew that some of my friends actually used them as tools to help themselves teach Japanese)—and that is that the original meanings should be kept in its cultural context and it should be explained in detail. However, as good as it is for learning, it's really not all that wonderful when it's just pure entertainment (which is what mainstream domestic anime is all about—most americans watch the domestic anime as entertainment, not as a lesson in Japanese language and/or culture.... despite what "purists" may think.) And most often, this portrayal of every meaning across the language barrier unfortunately involves transliteration due to the vast differences between the two cultures involved. (That, and the fact that puns really REALLY rarely translate and can still be a pun.) And so, I decided after much painstaking thought, that I did want to put the casual fans above the purists and transliterate Mashin. And I debated this and that over the phone with Clark, and in the end the compromised result was what the purists saw and hated: Rune-God.
I still think that this was an example of a compromise that went over relatively well, as I saw a few positive feedbacks concerning this adaptation.

Q: And the "-ster" thing with Hikaru! IT SUCKS!!

Fuu: This is just an example where the compromise really didn't work well. You'll just have to deal with it... unfortunately for most fans, it's not going away.

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