Due to the way Maya writing works (it's similar to Japanese in many ways) we have no idea how to translate or pronounce some glyphs.
One particular glyph of a verb that could mean in context "fight a big war" or "fight a decisive war" was translated to "fight a star war" because the glyph contains the glyph for "star" on top and there seems to be an astronomical correlation between the course of Venus (the planet of war to the Maya) and the timing of those wars.
Such a conflict is still called a 'star war' in Maya studies.