Talk:Clowns/@comment-24494906-20141001161128/@comment-24494906-20141001212534

Yeah, everyone calls them "piero" in Japanese. But the Japanese word "piero" almost always does not mean "pierrot", but "clown" (of any kind). Many Japanese don't even know that pierrots are a special type of clown (or what type of clown a pierrot is).

Have you ever heard of the term false friend? That's what it basically is. Even the Japanese wikipedia points it out: "日本では「ピエロ」と呼ばれることも多いが、ピエロはクラウンの一種である. " -> "In Japan, [clowns]'re also often referred to as 'piero', but 'piero' is a special kind of clown." So strictly speaking, 'piero' is a special kind of clown, but nobody in Japan cares and they just use it to refer to clowns in general. You can just use google for a good hint that this is a common expression for clowns: I get 2.8 million hits for ピエロ, but only 665k for 道化師 (the native Japanese word for clown). (Googling for クラウン (loanword derived from English clown) doesn't really work, since it's mixed up with the more common loanword derived from "crown".)

Or look it up in wiktionary: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%83%94%E3%82%A8%E3%83%AD.

The only reason this even came up is because of Imperial Scans' last chapter scan and they likely thought they could make fun of the anime studio.

BTW, the one who referred to them as "道化師" (clown) once was Nico, one of their members, in chapter 78: "The ones who will have the last laugh are the clowns.", where "clown" is written as both "道化師" (native Japanese word for clown) and "ピエロ". The line in chapter 143 is obviously a callback to this. This arguably makes Imperial Scans' translation even worse, because they obviously didn't get the reference. If they had known about it, the reference would have forced them to translate it as "clowns".