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Reason for news hits (crime) are obvious, but this is by far the least-common (by ngrams) "common" term I have ever seen. Katakana form is 15x more common than this.
A 短銃 seems to be the subset of 拳銃 which have short barrels, which is basically the definition of pistol. (not sure why I am checking this point, "pistol" was already a gloss).
I guess I'll remove "revolver". Some revolvers are 短銃, not all 短銃 are revolvers, all 短銃 can safely be called pistols, there numerous ways to say "revolver" in Japanese if that is what you mean to say (回転式拳銃、リボルバー top among them)
Reverso gives "pistol" and "handgun".
Wikipedia page for ピストル: lots of guns that aren't revolvers. Listed as another term for 拳銃 or ハンドガン in the 拳銃 article.
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ピストル
English has "handgun", "revolver", and "pistol". Japanese has "拳銃" ”回転式拳銃" and "短銃". The rationale for choosing one over the other seems to overlap between languages. At the same time, it seems that the popular understanding doesn't disambiguate the categories terribly well (except that we know that a revolver specifically has a revolving chamber). ハンドガン, 拳銃, 短銃, ピストル might all be synonyms to a Japanese layman. pistol and handgun are basically synonymous to me.
In other words, the only difference between 短銃 and 拳銃 is that 短銃 is "more pistol-ish".
My compromise suggestion is to xref 拳銃, but not give "handgun" directly as a gloss. Surely the translator can do what they want with that... |