On this episode of "Lost in Translation": We have to go deeper. As in, also check out a translation impossibility from the event story.
The setup for "Princess Activities" (the alternate translation's title) was basically completely rewritten.
Originally, it references a scene from the Event Story where Honoka misunderstands the proverb "馬子にも衣装" - "clothes on a packhorse driver", but the closest English equivalent would probably be "clothes make the man". Hearing the proverb from Maki, Honoka understands the "packhorse driver" (馬子) as "grandchild" (孫) as both are pronounced "mago", and gets confused as to whose grandchild she is.
The original title of the strip was this proverb, and for the setup Riko tells her that the "mago" is written as "馬子" so she understands better. However, her her imagination drifts off as "馬子" is the kanji for horse ("馬") and child ("子"), so she starts imagining a small horse ("子馬"), dressed in a costume, as her version of the proverb now goes "clothes on a foal".
I couldn't think of an English proverb that covers both clothes and horses, and I didn't use "clothes make the man" as I would somehow have to make Honoka's logic leap from "costume" to "horse"? Instead, I decided to reference a different part of the story - where Honoka wonders what else princesses do - to introduce the topic of "horse", because I can see Honoka's next step of imagination being "put the horse in a costume" way more easily than the other way around. That way, I was able to leave the original punchline (Maki getting the hard read on Honoka's thought process) intact, too.
As a result, needing reinforcements!
Even a packhorse driver looks fine in proper dress.
A Japanese version of the English proverb "Clothes make the man," or, alternately, "Fine feathers make fine birds; the tailor makes the man."
