While
watching anime, one may encounter the words ‘taichou’ or ‘senschou’, which are
both translated as captain in English. And both words sound like ‘kaichou’ and
‘buchou’ which also imply leading positions. There is a slight difference in
meaning of the words though.
If the
word ‘taichou’ is used, the military rank or the leader of the military party
is meant. This will become clear when destructing the word ‘taichou’ in ‘tai’
and ‘chou’. The translations for ‘tai’ are ‘regiment’, ‘party’, ‘company’ or ‘squad’
and the translations of ‘chou’ are ‘chief’, ’leader’ or ‘head’.
If the
anime is talking about the rank of captain (in the navy/military), one
uses ‘taisa’ or ‘大佐’. The rank of a captain of a military
headquarter is ‘taisho’, and said in a more old fashioned way ‘daishou’ or ‘大将’. When talking about ‘taisho’, it could also
imply the rank of admiral or general. When someone is a leader of something the
word ‘chou’ is often used to imply this.
The same
applies to the word ‘senchou’, which implies the ship’s captain. This is easily
understood when, again, deconstructing the word into ‘sen’ and ‘chou’. ‘Sen’
means ‘ship’ and ‘chou’, as said before implies a leading position. So if
someone is the leader of the (or a for that matter) ship, he is called
‘senchou’.
The
slight difference is also seen in the Kanji of the words. The Kanji for
‘senchou’ is 船長 and the
Kanji for ‘taichou’is 隊長. Here one can see that both words end in the same manner, namely with ‘長’(chou).
‘船’ and ‘隊’ mean ‘ship’ and ‘party’ respectively.
While in
English both ‘senchou’ and ‘taichou’ can be translated as ‘captain’. Hence the
confusion about the correct translation, but as the kanji shows, the Japanese
language differentiates between a captain of a ship and captain of troops.
When
talking about ‘kaichou’ they often mean the highest boss of a company, where
‘kai’ means ‘meeting’ and is written in Kanji as 会長. Here one can see that once again
this word is constructed out of two separate characters. ‘Buchou’ is meant as
‘manager’ and is written as ‘部長’. So a company
will have one ‘kaichou’ and multiple ‘buchou’.
This
article should have hopefully cleared the fog up around the use of the words
‘taichou’, ‘senchou’, ‘kaichou’ and ‘buchou’. If one encounters these words
while watching anime, one knows the translation and why there is a slight
difference.
