I noticed the braver photon arts are Japanese named in nature. An example is guren-tessen. If I look it up, it means crimson lotus fan. Am I wrong to think that Flash of the Lotus would then be the wrong name for it? Unless fans have some sort of context of flashing...

As with many things in the localization, there are things that are not a direct translation/transliteration, but rather more about giving a contextual interpretation. In this case, I imagine the "flash" is to invoke the "flash step" trope where someone will use a burst of speed to get behind an enemy, as one does with this PA.

I think the worse translation comes from the objectives in extreme quest. But again, changes in translations are a common thing.

Adding to what @AndrlCh said, "crimson lotus fan" is just one of the possible interpretations of the original Japanese PA name of "グレンテッセン". Seeing the "グレン" part as "紅蓮" (scarlet lotus or just mean the red color of fire) is pretty common understanding I suppose, but some sees that part as "愚連" (rogue, hooligans). For the latter part, as you mentioned fan, I suppose that comes from an opinion to see "テッセン" as "鉄扇" (iron fan). But there's another opinion to see it as a flower name (テッセン、鉄線、鉄仙). See (https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/テッセン) for details.

Anyway, as the devs decided to give Katana PAs new names on NA, sticking to Japanese PA names is rather pointless, I feel.

@Fiona-Respha I understand what you mean, context is key as kanji determines the context. I suppose Strezwei for gunblades is not considered German and not considered under translation either.

I somewhat want to make a translation issue megathread, as aside from PAs I noticed other translation issues. I've gotten both 'its the official translation' and 'its a known issue' about the translations from my chats with the service. So I'm not sure if that will help or if it'll turn into a dead thread that turns into memes.

Gods be.