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Talk:Hifuu Club

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Pun?

Sealing Club (秘封倶楽部 Hifuu Kurabu) - this is possibly the first time I've seen the romanji, and is it just me or is its name a pun on having two members? i.e. "1-2 Club" (一二倶楽部 Hifu Kurabu) --Prime32 (talk) 14:25, 14 August 2012 (EDT)

秘封

I thought someone else would get to this eventually but since this has been bothering me for a while and this translated term has remained in the fandom for years and no one seems to have challenged then I guess I'll just take this matter up now. The current translation of 秘封 is misleading and kind of hilariously wrong. 秘封 is composed of 秘 (hidden/secret) and 封 (seal). Where does "sealing" come from? The current name makes it sound like they're a club which goes around and seals secrets which is the complete opposite of what they do. They uncover mysteries, not hide them. Furthermore 秘封 is actually a word which originates from a the Japanese poem anthology, Kaifuso (see: https://kotobank.jp/word/%E7%A7%98%E5%B0%81-2078225). It means something that is purposefully sealed, hidden or obscured. Basically "occult", which fits perfectly with the themeing. Not to mention the fact that GFC released right after PCB, in which the main aesthetic theme was poetry. Okay so to cut to the chase 秘封 should be "Secret Sealed" and not "Secret Sealing". It's a secret occult club. The only reason to not change it would be for keeping tradition, which is not a very good argument at all IMO. —Ennin (talk) 21:56, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

The reason behind the misleading translation was that the original title in Japanese was also misleading.
it's poorly explained in Japanese at the point people didn't know it's either Hi-fuu or Hi-hou until ZUN clearly said it was Hi-fuu and he never intended to pronounce it as Hi-hou on a stream in 2016.
秘封 sounds more like "秘密を封じる" but their actual objective is like "封じられた秘密を暴く", which is really supposed to be 封秘. Without further elaboration from ZUN the best answer we can come out as an interpretation based on the contents rather than the title name alone is "Concealed Secret Club", which is still misleading as it sounds like THEY have some sort of secrets to keep, so we have to add the exposure part somewhere.
And now it becomes "Concealed Secret Exposing Club", and we appended a new word that wasn't in the title originally.
There have been a few Hifuu projects where I had to provide an English translation for localization purposes and I used the existing translation just for the SEO. For wiki purposes, we just need to explain the meaning of each kanji and let the readers figure out what it really is supposed to mean.
I was doing a bit of digging around on this and found an aricle on Pixiv talking about the club's name. The writer notes that the way in which the club's name should be interpreted is a question for the fans. They go on to note that, as of 2015, the most common interpretation is not 「秘密を封じる」 ('sealing secrets') but 「封じられた秘密を求める」 (pursuing sealed secrets). I don't think Secret Sealed Club works well as a name because that makes me think of 秘密の封じた倶楽部, or the Secret [Sealed Club] - basically, it can be interpreted as two adjectives that describe the club itself and not what they do. Why not flip our interpretation of the kanji around and go with 'Sealed Secrets Club'? They're a club devoted to sealed secrets.
Personally, I've always interpreted the 'Sealing' in their name to refer to the act of 'sealing' a case or secret after uncovering all the mysteries. It makes me think of something like the different seals that Reimu uses when tackling youkai. Based on the current information, I don't think we need to make any changes other than maybe add more explanatory notes. Biggest Dreamer (talk) 07:42, 7 January 2020 (UTC)