Interesting. I do see now on Jisho it saying (office) at the end too. But yeah. Good to know.
Yeah it’s so obscure seeming that I’m almost annoyed that I have to review it, those words that I posted just keep coming up in my reviews so often, that’s the main reason why I’m just trying to figure them out because I can’t get rid of them.
That’s because the Japanese version doesn’t say any of that.
庁 has a raw meaning of a specific government administration (not a raw encompassing “governmental”, that would be more like 官). In English “office”, “department” or “bureau” are used for such purpose.
都庁 is easy, it the is the 庁 of 都 (that is, of 東京都).
警察庁 is the 庁 relative to police, as a whole (hence the choice of “national” in English).
警規庁 is about a 警規 (police comissaire, police intendent), a police intendent so complex it has its own 庁, the 庁 of the Tokyo police (but in Japanese it doesn’t spell “Tokyo” nor “metropolitan” at all, just “police intendence agency”).
Those have fixed translations into English, that don’t reflect the Japanese name, but rather English language usage (in particular the agency/department/office distinction doesn’t exist at all in Japanese, it’s just 庁. But English seems to differentiate them (based on size or scope? I am no native English speaker, but I have the feeling “department” is always smaller than “agency”).
The “national” or “metropolitan” wording is put in the English name to make those names more meaningful in English. Similarly, Japan(ese) or Tokyo may be added in the translation.
Personally I don’t care about the exact wording in the official English translation, and won’t hesitate to add a custom alias of “police agency” in case WK doesn’t accept such answer for 警察庁
Yeah it had felt like I probably could add synonyms for the words, it felt like the distinctions between agency and department were so small that it was silly. I agree with you, I think agency sounds like a larger thing, and department feels like a part of something larger. Thank you for your insight though, I think it should hopefully help