@YoungWhite:
And I'm tired of viz shills acting like they're beyond criticism and everybody should be happy and accept their questionable choices just because they're official. The official translation has had several issues. Stephen and whoever else came up with these ridiculous names ARE wrong especially when they contradict the manga. They've admitted to being wrong and keeping errors because they value consistency more than accuracy.
Things like Zolo and Neptunians long predate Stephen getting the gig, so those ain't on him. And Zolo specifically wasn't even Viz's choice, they started with Zoro and were made to change it, just like the video games and other merchandising of the time, because Zolo was the name that they could get a trademark for.
Stephen does a fantastic job but is limited by choices made by others nearly two decades ago.
Translation between different languages is an imprecise art, but it IS an art. It is what it is. Even Oda doesn't get it right all the time, as English isn't a language he's fluent in. Look at how the official romanization of Shiryu was "Shilliew" for a decade, and then recently made correct in his most recent appearance.
And, for people who have only been buying the official release all these years rather than reading illegal bootlegs, they would be thrown off by weird random changes in names, changing things now would be completely unprofessional.
@YoungWhite:
The Viz translation is very irksome. They want people to read the official chapters but insist on using awful names like Neptunians, Zolo, Ganfor, Elbaph, Animal kingdom pirates, ponegliff, cat viper, dog storm etc.
Stephen asked the Japanese editor directly what he should do about Dogstorm and Catviper, and was told to go with literal version rather than leaving in raw Japanese.
He translated the names so that we get the same effects as the Japanese readers do, where its a descriptor. Same way we get Whitebeard and Blackbeard, rather than Shirohige and Kurohige. You'd never translate Nami to be Wave, because they're not calling her Wave. But the animal guys? They are calling them descriptors and its more accurate to translate it as such. (As is we're completely losing the pun in Wanda being a bark noise, so we're missing out there.)
Similarly, Kuma is possibly an edge case where his name should have been translated as Bear, given all the bear puns Oda makes about him, but that's an unusual edge case.
You don't just leave in random Japanese words for the sake of leaving in raw Japanese like a weaboo. "All according to keikaku" is a terrible translation choice and its obvious why. Apply that to everything else in a story and you start running into problems.