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From S02E03 of the anime adaptation of the manga [The Quintessential
Quintuplets](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/93612/the-
quintessential-quintuplets-
aka-%e4%ba%94%e7%ad%89%e5%88%86%e3%81%ae%e8%8a%b1%e5%ab%81-is-%e5%b1%8a%e3%81%8f%e3%82%93%e3%81%a7%e3%81%99-it-
reaches-a-mondegreen):

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/soP2L.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/soP2L.jpg)

Is 'Koi no Summer Vacation' better translated as 'Love of Summer Vacation'
instead of 'Summer Vacation of Love' or even 'Love's Summer Vacation' ?

Afaik, 'の' in 'X の Y' is usually translated as

  1. possession like 'X's Y'. Eg from Yu-Gi-Oh! (RIP Kazuki Takahashi!) 'My turn' is '[Ore の taan/turn](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oxYnNDMb4o)'.

  2. reversing X and Y and connecting them with 'of' like 'Y of X'. Eg 'Teacher of the Japanese language' is 'nihongo の sensei'. Or idk...'Game of Thrones' is 'Thrones の Game'.

  3. Or some adjective thing. Eg from Kaguya-sama '[Secretary Chika](https://www.animesonglyrics.com/kaguya-sama-love-is-war/chikatto-chika-chika)' or 'Chika the Secretary' is 'Shoki の Chika' or 'The Attack Titan' is '[Shingeki の Kyojin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHvvkUATHFs&t=20s)'.

Ok, #3 (and possibly onwards) is a whole other story, but I believe it should
be #2.
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translation particle-の anime possession
The Quintessential Quintuplets: Is 'Koi no Summer Vacation' better translated as 'Love of Summer Vacation' instead of 'Summer Vacation of Love'?
It's "The Summer Vacation of Love"

"Love of Summer Vacation" feels awkward and clunky.

Like "BCLC-san no Inu" means "The dog of BCLC-san" /"BCLC-san's Dog"
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The Japanese possessive / genitive particle [の]{no} works kinda "backwards"
from the English preposition _of_.

  * A of B  
A belongs to B → B owns A.

  * A [の]{no} B  
A owns B → B belongs to A.

It might help to think of the [の]{no} as a little bit like the English
possessive _-'s_ ending. A [の]{no} B = A's B.

I think this is partly the reason why Japanese full names and English full
names have opposite ordering.

  * In English, the personal name is followed by the family name: "Personal" belongs to "Family".
  * In Japanese, the family name comes first, then the personal name: "Family" owns "Personal".  
_(In olden times, the family name was often followed by the particle
[の]{no}.)_

When translating then, we have to swap the ordering.

  * A of B → B [の]{no} A.
  * A [の]{no} B → B of A.

* * *

**Update**

Folding in some additional content from the comments.

The OP commented, _" it's possible the story is talking about love of summer
vacations like it's a movie about a series of summer vacations showing the
good things that happen"_ -- it's certainly possible, but in that case, the
title and the story wouldn't have much to do with each other. Considering the
meaning of the terms and the grammar, the title 「[恋]{Koi}
[の]{no}[サマーバケーション]{Samā Bakēshon}」 cannot accurately describe any story about
how someone loves summer vacations.

It could be about the summer vacations of someone _named_ "Koi", but in that
case, "love" really isn't the correct translation: names are names, best left
as-is. By way of example, the Japanese feminine given name _Megumi_ derives
from verb _megumu_ , and literally means "a blessing" -- but when we talk
about someone named "Megumi" in English, we don't call her "Blessing", we call
her "Megumi". :)
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(cw answer only, so please don't take this too seriously.)

Angelos answer:

> It looks like what happened was the Japanese version already had a clumsy
> English translation and the subtitler felt obliged to stick to it - I myself
> would not have

After I inspected:

Angelos is right. (You can guess from the font how the ff would turn out
though. Lol.) I turned off the subtitles, and then: the blue text on the upper
left is gone, but the pink text is still there. The 'Love of Summer Vacation'
is really the official English title of the movie. It's not necessarily an
incorrect official English translation. It could just be an official English
title that happens to mean a different thing from the original Japanese title.
Of course it's 94.9% likely it's just an incorrect official English
translation.

* * *

I'm going to put the next part in spoiler text because this is gonna be
insanely opinionated but not that it really spoils anything about the series
or anything really.

* * *

> Based on the comment discussion with naruto and Angelos: Actually just now I
> came up with this new insane theory based on another insane theory I have
> about [the series](https://anime.stackexchange.com/questions/66802/are-
> there-japanese-2-player-variations-of-sevens-fan-tan-domino-shichi-
> narabe-7#comment79235_66802). The series' English title is The
> Quintessential Quintuplets. The series' Japanese title is The 5 Equal Brides
> (or The 5 Equally Divided Brides or whatever 五等分の花嫁 means).

and

> Some people complain that either title is wrong based on the events of the
> series. (eg some of the characters were not really 'brides' or
> 'quintessential' or 'equal'). In re these complaints, I have an insane
> theory about the Japanese vs English title of the series. So now based on
> this comment discussion, now I have [this new insane
> theory](https://anime.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4509/is-it-ok-to-
> overanalyze-an-anime) that maybe the mistranslation of the fictional movie
> title is a nod about the impact of the different English vs Japanese titles
> of the original series.
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