GFCA-34~5: Akumajo-Dracula -Yami no juin- Original Soundtrack

[Secret Squirrel]

I'm glad you posted, because when someone makes changes to an existing tracklist, I think that its' very beneficial to discuss the changes.

For the album titles, we felt that the important forms of the title were the romanized version, the original language version (Japanese in this case), and an English language version of the album title. Album titles often contain a game title, and when they do, I think it makes sense to use the official name of that game in the English language because it provides relevant information to someone searching for info about that album. To take an example from a famous anime movie, Spirited Away has several title options:

Romanized Title: Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi
English Literal Title: The Spiriting Away of Sen and Chihiro
English Official Title: Spirited Away

Only two of those are real titles (romanized and English official.) The English literal is a valid translation of the Japanese title, but that's not what was used for release. For example in gaming, consider Terranigma. The Japanese name is Tenchi Sozo, which means The Creation of Heaven and Earth. No one calls the game The Creation of Heaven and Earth, so there isn't any point to using a literal translation of the Japanese titles for cases like this. They just obfuscate.

I think a similar argument can be made for the name translations. We don't just use straight romanizations for them (or else Cloud & Barret would be Kuraudo & Baretto). Of course, I do know that we aren't completely consistent on this. I think that in this case, both of the names you changed (Jigramunt/Jigrumunt and Eneomaos/Eneomaios) are practically homophones, and both versions of each of these could probably be rendered with the same katakana, given English's inexact relationship between spelling and pronunciation.

One more thing about translation, and this is one that I struggle with all the time. What we're trying to do is capture the full meaning and spirit of what is being said, rather than just rely on a literal translation, and I often fail at this. "The sound can be heard" is an accurate literal translation, but "I can hear the sound" is a better one because that's the true meaning. Tenchi Sozo the game is Terranigma in English, and not The Creation of Heaven and Earth for the same reason.

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So anyway, looking over your edits, and after reading your explanations above, I agree that your grammatical changes are all improvements, so we should go with those.

I disagree on most of the capitalization changes, mostly because I think that some words like Who and Your should be capitalized in the titles. I think I missed a "to" though, which should have been lower case. There are so many different title capitalization schemes out there that, in effect there's really no official one. We could probably define one, though I'm not nearly as picky about these as I might appear to be.

Thank you for replying and voicing your rationale. We have to evaluate all of the public tracklist edits just based on what we know, so I wish that more people would post a justification when they make subjective changes.

[layzee]

I was wondering about this (Disc 1 Track 29):

アンニュイな椅子部屋のワルツ

Using Robo-Ky* as a reference, アンニュイ most likely translates to ennui, an English word based on the word (Pardon my French) enui. In other words, ennui is already English in the same way words like Tsunami are, so there is no actual need to translate it.

*Robo-Ky is a character from the fighting game Guilty Gear XX and he has the word "ennui" etched onto this belt. Robo-Ky is a robotic imitation of another character, Ky Kiske, who is French.

Originally Posted by Jousto

I was always under the impression that when translating (or romanizing, actually), the Western names matter not.

I agree with this. We should translate from the source by itself although the official translations can provide a good reference. I've always felt that just because something is officially translated, it doesn't guarantee the translation is right since professional translators have other things to worry about.

Originally Posted by Secret Squirrel

For the album titles, we felt that the important forms of the title were the romanized version, the original language version (Japanese in this case), and an English language version of the album title. Album titles often contain a game title, and when they do, I think it makes sense to use the official name of that game in the English language because it provides relevant information to someone searching for info about that album.

So the English album title line (i.e. what it is officially known outside Japan) is less about translation and more about providing terms for English-speaking users to search for?

In that case, Rockman is a little lacking in that regard; I barely get any results searching for "Mega Man". There's also the Tales of Destiny 2/Tales of Destiny 2 (PS1 USA)/Tales of Eternia problem.

Originally Posted by Secret Squirrel

Romanized Title: Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi
English Literal Title: The Spiriting Away of Sen and Chihiro
English Official Title: Spirited Away

Only two of those are real titles (romanized and English official.) The English literal is a valid translation of the Japanese title, but that's not what was used for release.

I'd note that the English official title is also a valid yet incomplete translation but is useful because it provides search terms for English-speaking users, as you intended.

Originally Posted by Secret Squirrel

What we're trying to do is capture the full meaning and spirit of what is being said, rather than just rely on a literal translation, and I often fail at this. "The sound can be heard" is an accurate literal translation, but "I can hear the sound" is a better one because that's the true meaning. Tenchi Sozo the game is Terranigma in English, and not The Creation of Heaven and Earth for the same reason.

Hmm, well I'd have to disagree with this point. Terranigma (i.e. Mystery of the Earth/Earth Mystery) while a clever title, is more or less made up.

Your "I can hear the sound" point sounds... sound but in the case of 天地創造, in my opinion, it's pretty straightforward as far as translation goes: Creation of Heaven and Earth is both accurate and literal, and reflects the true meaning.

So "Terranigma" and "Spirited Away" are both valid yet incomplete translations but are there, not because they are accurate, coherent and complete translations that reflect the true meaning of the original Japanese title, but mainly because that is what they are known outside Japan, and that is what search terms Westerners will use?

With that in mind, I still think there needs to be 2 English titles to accomodate for this. 1 line for the English literal translation (for informational purposes and to address Jousto's point about Akumajou Dracula/Demon Castle) and 1 line for the official English "translation" (what it is known to Western audiences).

[Secret Squirrel]

Originally Posted by layzee

Hmm, well I'd have to disagree with this point. Terranigma (i.e. Mystery of the Earth/Earth Mystery) while a clever title, is more or less made up.

Originally Posted by layzee

With that in mind, I still think there needs to be 2 English titles to accomodate for this. 1 line for the English literal translation (for informational purposes and to address Jousto's point about Akumajou Dracula/Demon Castle) and 1 line for the official English "translation" (what it is known to Western audiences).

I suppose it could be added as an alternate translation in the optional 4-and-beyond line. It'll mean for some albums we will have 5 titles, which would be getting kind of long. However, I still disagree with it being a valid title, because a name is a name, and I think a game title acts more like a name in this context. When you translate Touhou Vocal Collection into Oriental Vocal Collection, you've completely lost all meaning. Maybe it's something for the notes field.

I think that Google searches somewhat verify that, for this Castlevania album, the majority seem to be following what I'm perscribing here:

"akumajo dracula" -- 66,200 hits
"akumajou dracula" -- 56,400 hits
"demon castle dracula" -- 6910 hits
"akumajou doracula" -- 1 hit

I tossed that last one in there because, I forgot to mention that we've been treating the somewhat piecemeal, where some zones get romanized while others are translated. The game name often stays romaji, while descriptive stems like Music Collection get translated to English. More to the point, we almost always un-romanize the katakana borrow words, so Dracula instead of Doracur(l)a. This is for readability as much as anything. I'd hate to see an Orijinaru Sandotrakku on every page because I don't think it provides anything useful. The romanized fields are there tell us how to pronounce the Japanese titles in English, so it's silly to re-romanize a word of English origin into something that looks like jibberish.

[layzee]

Originally Posted by Secret Squirrel

Yeah, I know that's the official name outside Japan (I owned the game at one point), it's still (partially) made up though (in terms of translation accuracy) . Terranigma = Official English title? Yes. Terranigma = translation of Tenchi Souzou? ...partially.

To use another example to show what I'm getting at: Gyakuten Saiban/Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. In this case though, the latter was completely made up and has nothing to do with the original title.

Anyway, I'd rather call it Akumajou Dracula myself, and I also agree with your katakana loan word issue, which I don't think anyone is arguing against.

[Phonograph]

Originally Posted by layzee

..., アンニュイ most likely translates to ennui, an English word based on the word (Pardon my French) enui. [...]

note that "enui" is archaic, current use of the word is "ennui"
(btw, saundotorakku)