Romanes eunt domus
Languages other than Japanese are extremely common in the Puella Magi franchise. As such, sometimes silly grammatical or semantic errors are made. This page is devoted to those errors.
The name of the series itself
Puella magī Madoka magica appears to be intended to translate to "magical girl, magical Madoka." However, puella magī is not the correct Latin way of rendering "magical girl," nor even the obvious error "girl of magic" — magī is the genitive singular of magus, meaning "mage," so puella magī would translate to "girl of the mage." To render "magical girl" correctly, it may be better translated as puella magica. ("Girl of magic" would be puella magiae.)
Named attacks
Elisa Celjska: Der Drache Lindwurm
Ignoring the usage of her royal ex-father's German instead of the Slavic tongue she (and her mother Barbara Celjska, who essentially created the Order of the Dragon) would speak natively for her Magia name, which surely comes with some connotations that this editor is ill-equipped to unpack, der Drache Lindwurm is yet another instance of two entirely unconnected nouns being mashed together in an attempt to pass off as a noun phrase. They are both in the nominative singular, so it cannot be read as a possession phrase, and since it literally translates to "the dragon dragon" (or "the dragon wyvern" if you're being charitable) the intent is unclear at best.
Taking the assumption that it's meant to refer to "dragon [of the] wyvern [worn on the Order's heraldry]", as if Elisa is metaphorically giving the symbol of the Order of the Dragon physical form and attacking with it, the word Lindwurm should certainly be definite and in the genitive: des Lindwurm(e)s. This would make a correct rendering of the name Drache des Lindwurmes or Drache des Lindwurms.
Iroha Tamaki: Strada Futuro
Strada is an Italian noun meaning "road," and futuro can be either a noun or adjective meaning "future." If it is a noun, it needs an additional particle (in this case del) to be marked as possessive. Or if it is an adjective, it needs to inflect to match the (feminine) gender of strada. Thus, it may be better translated as Strada del Futuro (if it is to be taken as "road of the future") or Strada Futura (if it is to be taken as "future road").
Momoko Togame: Edge of Universe
As "universe" is a non-proper, countable noun, it must always be bound to an article; thus, Momoko's Magia name would be better rendered as Edge of the Universe.
Rumor Sana: Elektron Schwert
German for "Electron Blade," it is spelled in Japanese with the center dot that represents a word boundary (エレクトロン・シュヴェールト). However, German forms such compound nouns without a space in the middle, so it should be Elektronschwert (エレクトロンシュヴェールト).
Rumor Sana: shutdown -r -t 21
shutdown is the Unix/Linux command to safely shut down a system. It must be run as the root user, and can take several command line flags to specify the type of shutdown, at what time the computer will shut down, and a message to broadcast to all users. In particular,
shutdown -r
tells the system to reboot. However, in a typical Linux system, there is no such flag as -t. The time is supplied to the command as a regular argument, in one of three formats: now tells the system to execute the shutdown immediately, +m tells the system to wait m minutes, and HH:MM tells the system to wait until HH:MM. To tell the system to reboot in 21 minutes, you would instead have to write
shutdown -r +21
However, in this Magia 2, Ai is seen initiating a crash instantaneously, so the 21 argument is completely extraneous and the command should instead be
shutdown -r now
Shizuku Hozumi: Myriad Meese
Meese is a rarely-used English word that can either refer to an English river, to a surname, or to a humorous plural of moose by analogy with goose, none of which make any sense in context. The official localization rendered her Magia name instead as Milia de Mense, French for "thousand moons," in reference to the chakrams she summons.
Ui Tamaki: Luce Speranza
Like her sister's, Ui's Magia name is two Italian nouns mashed together (luce meaning "light" and speranza meaning "hope"). However, luce can also be the third-person singular present indicative of lucere, an intransitive verb meaning "to shine," so it could be interpreted as meaning "Hope shines!" — except that Italian only inverts the word order in dependent clauses[Citation needed], which a standalone attack name is not. As such, if it is to be treated as a verb phrase it may be better translated as Speranza Luce, and if it is to be treated as a noun phrase as Luce della Speranza.
Umika Misaki: X File
Pronounced イクス・フィーレ (Ikusu Fīre). Like her teammates, Umika named her special attack with an Italian translation of the name of a TV series (The X-Files). However, the Italian word file in the attack name is specifically used for a "file" in computing; whereas the name of the show refers to a "file" (physical archive) of unexplained phenomena. As such, it may be better translated as X Archivio.
Names of witches
Misspelled witch names are extremely common in Kazumi Magica, since all of the named witches have German words as names. These may have been intentional, since they are fairly prominent.
Airi Anri's witch form: Nie Blühen Herzen
Translating to 'never blooming hearts', but 'Blühen' should be 'Blühende'; 'nie blühen herzen' would translate to 'never bloom hearts'.
Yuuri Asuka's witch form: Arzt Kochen
The name of the witch was likely supposed to translate to 'cooking doctor', but the order of words makes it 'doctor cooking'.
Song titles and lyrics
Naoki "naotyu-" Chiba — Forklore of 0
This song was supposed to be named after the enigmatic Folklore of 0 faction. However, there is a silly error in the title, likely due to the Japanse r/l issue.
Yuki Kajiura — Wo ist die Käse?
The title and most prominent lyric of Nagisa's theme is intended to translate to "Where is the cheese?" However, Käse is a masculine noun, so it would take the article der. This can be avoided by treating Käse as plural, so it takes die anyway regardless of its original gender, but then the verb is incorrectly conjugated — ist is third-person singular ("where is the cheeses?"), and the third-person plural would be sind. As such, it may be better translated as either Wo ist der Käse? (singular cheese) or Wo sind die Käse? (plural cheese).
Official translations
Puella Magi Tart Magica — Lapin
In the original Japanese, her name is spelled "Lapine". Lapine is the French word for a female rabbit. However, in the official English translation of Tart Magica, the spelling of her name is changed instead to "Lapin", which is the French word for a male rabbit.
Former
Named attacks
Hinano Miyako: Atomo Arrabiata
Like all Magia names in Magia Record, Hinano's is rendered in both katakana (アトモ・アラビアート) and Latin script. In earlier versions of the game, the Latin script version incorrectly used the feminine version of the adjective for a masculine noun; this has since been fixed and her Magia name is correctly spelled Atomo Arrabiato in both scripts.
Masara Kagami: Imvisible Assassin
Like all Magia names in Magia Record, Masara's is rendered in katakana (インビジブル・アサシン) and Latin script. Originally, the official Latin script spelling was Imvisible Assassin. In July of 2018, this was fixed; her Magia name now correctly reads Invisible Assassin in both scripts.