Eh, but “superdrive” still conveys the meaning of having some sci-fi engine that travels in space.
I have noted in what little foreign languages I know, this is fairly common, including in American sign language. They will make a up a new word where the literal translation is a bit clunky, but one understands what the new word means. For example in German glove is handschuh - which is literally hand shoe. It’s not a literal shoe so that’s not a accurate word to use - but we understand when used together. Still sometimes when there is a new word, they just use the new world from another country.
I remember my Polish ex-MiL and her sister talking and there would be English words like “blue jeans” sprinkled in.
And with Native languages, there are so many new modern words and concepts IRL, much less in a sci-fi world where there is magical tech - they have to figure out words for. Like in your example,yes “hyper” means a “hyper dimension” - but then they would have to figure out a word for the whole concept of hyper dimensional physics. Which they make just settle on “super” as well.
Anyway, is is cool to hear it in Ojibwe. I know they share a lot of words with Potawatomi, I wonder if my cousin Justin could understand most of it.
I wonder if they use English and French for the alien languages, like Star Wars used snippets of other languages for the alien ones.
Also, re: bad translation. I had a pen pal in Singapore and he sent me a copy of the Star Wars on VCD, which is a subpar video format that was common in Asia. It was dubbed in English, but with Mandarin subtitles. He said the translation was pretty good, but some times defaulted to phonetics. I recall on example where Vader says “What is thy bidding, my Master.” and “thy bidding” was just translated “tie bing ding” phonetics.
