Quote:
Originally Posted by Liontamer
Style guide question: what makes it more appropriate to use dashes vs. colons? Just wondering if there's any sort of standardized reasoning behind it besides personal preference. :-)
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_punctuation#Colon
Though used uncommonly, the fact that colons are used in Japanese at all eliminates them as a designated replacement for those gaps. Besides, there are times where it just doesn't feel right.
ex. 中間ステージ デューオ戦 (Midway Stage - Duo Fight) (From Rockman 8 OST)
The stage itself reuses the opening stage music and yet the stage is not simply just the fight with Duo. A colon would not do here. If the track title translated to "Midway Stage - Path to Wily Tower," then I would definitely change it to a colon. The spaced dash (i.e. [word] - [word]) is just not seen in Japanese since they don't space their words normally, so this not only feels right, but it also looks right, since we already put spaces between what originally did not have spaces. Is also has to do when a single wave dash between words is not there.
ex. 登場ファンファーレ～ブリンスタ (Entry Fanfare~Brinstar)
I also think colons are best kept to subtitles to avoid confusion and allow spaced dashes to then go unchallenged.
ex. ロックマン7 宿命の対決! オリジナル・サウンドトラック (Rockman 7: A Fated Confrontation! Original Soundtrack)
NOTE: Putting spaced en dashes between mostly katakana is unnecessary, since they essentially did it for us.
ex. スーパーメトロイド エンディング （アレンジバーション） [Super Metroid Ending (Arrange Version)]
For square quotation marks (「), I make them double quotation marks and any double quotations marks (") within them are made single ('). I have yet to see the case where all three are used at one time.
Lastly, for interpuncts (・), aside from the obvious case (i.e. オリジナル・サウンドトラック), I would make it a slash whenever regular dashes, wave dashes, ambersands (&), plus signs, or even と ("and") are, for whatever reason, unused, and also because commas, like colons, are used in Japanese, thus designating slashes as the translation for interpuncts due to their general non-use.
ex. ナナシマ４・５の島 (Nanashima 4/5 Island)
ex. 戦闘！ディアルガ・パルキア (Battle! Dialga/Palkia) --> Official English translation for SSBB [The part that uses the slash, I mean].
ex. 戦闘！ユクシー・エムリット・アグノム (Battle! Yuxie/Emlit/Agnome)