Sailor Scout really is the best English Translation of Sailor Senshi

That's my Magical Girl Hot Take for June 2020.

First of all the choice I dislike the most is Sailor Guardian which has now been forced upon us as the official translation because older Naoko Takeuchi now has control over the localizations and simply used Google Translate to determine the most "literal" translation.

Here is the thing about translating art that a lot of people don't understand, the aesthetic aspects of art can include word choice, and in the early 90s she did not choose the word Senshi over other Japanese words she could have used solely for what it literally meant, how it sounds and on paper looks was also important.  And I don't think how alliterative it is paired with "Sailor" was ever a coincidence.  I'm sure Digi-nee understands that with the Lexical vs Lateral dichotomy she's developed.

As a Millennial who's been at least peripherally a Sailor Moon fan for as long as any American could have been, I grew up in a climate where those rejecting the DiC choice of Sailor Scouts preferred to say Sailor Soldiers, that was the partial name of a number of old role-play forums and Yahoo Groups.  But my reason for preferring Scouts to Soldiers is that on paper Soldiers is a much larger word then Senshi while Scouts is the exact same number of letters.

There are also the mega-weebs who go "don't translate it at all, just use Senshi even in English".  And that is my position on a lot of key Japanese terms especially when Dubbing explicitly Otaku oriented works.  That's how I feel about Miko and all the Honorifics and the Deres and Otokonoko and even Baka at this point.  I also more or less feel the same about Kami, it does not in fact perfectly equate to god/God.

But Sailor Moon isn't an Otaku Anime, it's a kid's show first and foremost, and so we ought to make it as easy for kids to understand as possible, but without engaging in the Queer erasure the DiC dub was guilty of, or the deorientilization of old 4Kids dubs.  So for that reason translating Senshi to some kind of equivalent English term is necessary.  But my position on Miko doesn't change when it's used in Sailor Moon, I feel like that one will prove self explanatory in a way Senshi won't, or rather you don't necessarily need to know exactly what it means for what Rei is at the shrine to make sense.

The main objection I keep hearing to using Scout is that it's somehow derogatory or demeaning.  I feel like that attitude is bound to be offensive to actual soldiers who served as scouts in real world armies, like my dad who was a US Cavalry Scout.  Scouts are typically those actually on the front lines, which makes it a pretty decent analogy to the function Magical Girl Warriors are usually serving in all the Monster of the Week driven shows.  Also my dad was stationed on the Iron Curtain in Bavaria during the Cold War, so he was a Scout quite literally serving as a Guardian patrolling a border.  But I think a major reason that's the word DiC choose in 1995 was because it would be relatable to kids via things like Girl Scouts and Cub Scouts, and that relevance still exists.

My Nostalgia for the aspects of the old Dub that aren't completely horrific are certainly an influence on my preference here.  But I have provided a legitimate justification for it.  And so I will continue to use Sailor Scout and Sailor Scouts without hesitation going forward, though probably still using Senshi a lot too.