Then, in an example sentence for this verb it is clearly used as “to pierce”, not as “to be pierced”:
And that’s how jisho.org describes it too:
It’s because WK likes to use the passive for intransitive verbs when in English they’re either transitive or can be either
矢が頭を刺した and 矢が頭に刺さった are both “An arrow pierced my head” in English, but the former is transitive and the latter intransitive in Japanese, while in English it’s just transitive (edit: updated させる to さす since I got mixed up; switched both verbs to past tense to match the English [in prose it wouldn’t necessarily be, but I don’t think my being used to disregarding tenses when translating is why I used present…])
(Actually, I think you can use “pierce into” and that would be an intransitive use. “An arrow pierced into my head” would be a more literal translation for the example sentence)
WK doesn’t want people to take away that 刺さる is transitive just because the equivalent English verb is, so they put it into the passive. Unless “to pierce” is a blacklisted synonym, you can absolutely add it though as long as you know that in JP it’s intransitive
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I agree. In fact, based on the meaning, before this thread I thought that the subject of this verb would be the one being pierced, not the piercer! If the example sentence was 矢に頭が刺さった (the head was pierced by an arrow), then “to be pierced” would make sense, but the actual example sentence 矢が頭に刺さった is more like “The arrow pierced through the head.” If we take away the adjunct 頭に so the sentence is 矢が刺さった, we can see that “to be pierced” really doesn’t make sense…
Edit:
Yes I think this would be a better meaning (changing it to “to pierce into” instead of “to be pierced”). That way there’s no confusion about transitivity but the subject is more accurate
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The problem with this approach is that then they take away a meaning of the verb that goes in the wrong direction instead… I agree that “to pierce into” would work.
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Thanks for the tag. I agree with @meagstudies and @enbyboiwonder that this may be more an English translation friction issue than anything else, but I will ask our team to take a closer look since they know more than me. Grammar isn’t my strong suit 
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Former would mean “An arrow can pierce the head”. Maybe you wanted to say 矢が頭を刺す? 刺せる is not a verb.
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Ah, yeah, I did get mixed up, thanks
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