@SpoonyBardOL:
I've seen a lot of debate about this here over the past few episodes, so it's gotten me curious. What is the 'correct' way to translate "okama"? Everyone seems to have different ideas.
Does it have a single accepted translation that everyone agrees on? Or is it one of those words that can be taken to mean different things depending on context, like many Japanese words? If that's the case, then why is it such a big deal if it translated a few different ways in an episode as long as its true to the context in those cases?
They translate it correctly about 95% of the time, the other 5% is when Bon-chan says "Okama Kenpo" when it, mysteriously, becomes "Oh Come My Way Kenpo"
In Japan it refers to gay people in general, and just like here, people there lump crossdressing in with homosexuality when it really isn't a 1:1 thing (Statistically speaking, crossdressers are more often straight)
The proper translation would be some slang for "Gay" that doesn't actually mean "Crossdresser" and is unfairly lumping crossdressers in with Homosexuals. "Queer" pretty much gets the job done perfectly. That is, if you want to actually preserve the meaning of the word and what they really mean when they say "Okama".
However, we already know FUNimation translates it as "Crossdresser" from movie 8, so it stands to reason that's what we'll get when they do this on DVD and don't have to be so rigid to Toei's list.