One Piece expert Greg Werner has addressed one of the fandom’s most prevalent debates, and as expected, his statement has been met with equal measures of praise and backlash.
One Piece staffer Greg Werner is well aware of translation intricacies. In an interview with Danny with Love, he stressed the importance of context in localizing translated content. Werner, who has provided Japanese-to-English translation services for Monster Hunter, Manga Theater, Dragon Quest and more since the early 2000s, revealed that his career in the industry started with a passion for One Piece. He’s been heavily invested in the franchise since, most recently as a content advisor to the Netflix live-action adaptation series. However, Werner’s hard-earned expertise didn’t spare him from the fandom’s dispute over his recent post on X (formerly Twitter).
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Werner’s X post was an FYI update to the One Piece community, possibly in defense of the characters’ persistent mention of Berry/Berries throughout Netflix’s live-action series. “I forgot to bring this up around the release of OPLA but you can be double-certain that the canon English name for currency in OP is supposed to be Berry/Berries in English,” he wrote. “Sorry Belli and Belly fans.” The issue over the official English translation of the franchise’s universal currency has divided the fan base; some challenged Werner’s authority while others thought the romanticized translation made sense.
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The One Piece fandom wiki acknowledges the varied names for the currency and even details its denominations and purchasing value. The currency is constantly referenced in the manga, anime and live-action adaptation, particularly in the wanted posters that update each pirate’s bounty (Lufffy’s initial bounty was initially set to 30 million berries; Gol D. Roger was worth over 5.5 billion berries when he was captured). The currency was also integral in the “Arlong Park” arc that established Nami’s backstory, which up to that point was a struggle to raise her village’s ransom of 100 million berries.
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Werner said that wordplay and coinages are particularly difficult to translate. “Those can be the most fun and the most dangerous,” he remarked. “If you miss something like wordplay or double entendre, that’s just a nightmare.” He also asserted that anime and manga translations are painstaking undertakings and that he has extremely high regard for his industry colleagues. “I have nothing but respect for the absolute galaxy-level-brain translators who soldier through it,” he said. “It’s amazing.”
The One Piece manga is available on Manga Plus and the Shonen Jump apps and websites. The anime series streams on both Crunchyroll and Netflix, while the live-action adaptation can be found exclusively on Netflix.
Source: X (formerly Twitter)
