How do I say I'm a Paladin-Jisho.org and Google translate are arguing

I want to write the sentence: I am a paladin. Jisho.org says that Paladin is written
義侠の士 (ぎきょうのし). So, 私は義侠の士です。

I entered this sentence into Google Translate, and it said that the same sentence meant: I am a priest.

Is Jisho.org a better source? are there any other sites I should be checking for the correct translations?

(Oh, this is all for fun, by the way, I’m not really a paladin :laughing: )

Thank you

2 Likes

パラディン is probably better to use. I looked around the Japanese wikipedia pages for Dungeons and Dragons and character class (which you can get to by going to the equivalent pages in English and then changing the language in the sidebar), and classes in general are listed as katakana-ized English, and パラディン in specific that way. Which jibes with my experience playing RPGs in Japanese - words are very often used that way in Western fantasy style settings. And “paladin” is surely mainly used in that setting.
I kind of assume you’re talking about the RPG kind of paladin since even in English I can’t think of any other context I’ve ever used the word. And if so - パラディン is a better choice.

義侠の士 seems more like a more obscure phrase that’s a literal translation of what “paladin” means - a warrior fighting for a sense of moral justice.
The difference is like how if you had a character that was a samurai, it would be almost always much simpler and less unusual to call them in English a “samurai” then to translate the word “samurai” into an English phrase as like, I dunno, “feudal warrior” or something.

Some indications to support that:
パラディン comes up in a quick weblio search for JP-JP dictionary entries whereas 義侠の士 as a phrase doesn’t (the constituent parts 義侠 and 士 would - it just means “warrior of chivalry” literally), and just comes up as a phrase in a thesaurus entry.
Also searching “パラディン” in quotes on google gives ~4.4 million results, whereas “義侠の士” just gives ~96 thousand.

In general, basically any source is going to be more reliable than Google Translate, to the point if it probably not being any help at all. The similar service deepl is a bit more reliable, but it’s still fundamentally true that pasting a contextless sentence into a translator and getting valid English back every time is always going to be flawed, so do use it with caution.

Hope that helps!

20 Likes

Thank you so much for taking the time to explain everything and for providing the resources. It answers my question perfectly, and will definitely help when looking up terms/phrases in the future.

3 Likes

The built-in Japanese-English dictionary on Mac OS X is pretty good. Given your context, the katakana version, as Rodan pointed, is the best choice.

1 Like

You are… HIV paladeen

1 Like

interestingly in FFXIV, Paladin class in japanese is referred to as ナイト (knight) rather than english’s Paladin.

1 Like

Thank you :smile:

This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.