[CHz]

Thoughts on the romanization of ateji loanwords?

Our policy with katakana loanwords is not to transcribe them phonetically but to instead use the borrowed word, like "soundtrack" instead of "saundotorakku." Since ateji is basically the same thing, except writing the borrowed word with kanji, for consistency I'd think we should do the same thing for those too.

Basically I just don't want to start an edit war with urutapu over 天鵞絨 being "veludo" or "biroudou." He seems to have a better understanding of Japanese than I do anyway so whatever we do's cool.

Actually this specific case is interesting in and of itself because "veludo" is borrowed from Portuguese and not English.