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  #1  
Old Jun 1, 2009, 06:18 AM
Prime Blue Prime Blue is offline
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__________

Last edited by Prime Blue; Mar 31, 2012 at 09:07 AM.
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  #2  
Old Feb 18, 2011, 03:37 PM
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Hey Nisto, you changed this to list the artist's name as part of the album title. I know it does this on some releases on the sides, but I always thought it was kind of clear that it was album / artist format. Are we changing albums written like this to exactly what it says now?
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  #3  
Old Feb 18, 2011, 07:55 PM
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Well, it was really only because it's got his name included along with the title on, like, all of the covers. But if staff insists that we should simply keep "Actraiser" only, then so be it.
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  #4  
Old Feb 19, 2011, 01:59 AM
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Well, that's true. Some of these I think are still gray areas, like all the Cave soundtracks and their STAGE THIS and STAGE THAT subtitles. Some people say put them, some people say don't (because it's not part of the song "title"). I had a similar feeling with the "title" here, but sometimes I wonder what the title of something really is.
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  #5  
Old Jan 6, 2014, 03:31 PM
SimonJXZ SimonJXZ is offline
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From a discussion in another thread, it seems we should only add the artist's name to singles CDs and the like, not to soundtracks... which honestly, I wouldn't even add it to singles CDs since the title is the title and the artist is the artist, but I suppose that's immaterial here. I'm removing the artist's name from the title of this entry.
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  #6  
Old Jan 7, 2014, 12:34 AM
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I agree with not putting the artist name in the title of any type of release (unless it's a case where it's really supposed to be there one way or another, like Meet The Beatles or Another Side of Bob Dylan). I'm sure we all have numerous popular music albums with the artist and album name printed together, but no one is under the illusion the title is "Elvis Costello / My Aim Is True" or puts that in the Album tag of their MP3s or whatever else.
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  #7  
Old Jan 7, 2014, 06:37 AM
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Think it's not mandatory to put the artist names even for singles although loads of anime related singles have made it look like it is. The tooltip part from edit mode:
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A slash (/) may also be used at the submitter's discretion to include the artist's name on an artist album, as Title / Artist.
I mean it says 'discretion' so that would be the user is neither right or wrong if he/she includes artist name or not.

Last edited by Efendija; Jan 7, 2014 at 06:54 AM.
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  #8  
Old Jan 7, 2014, 01:26 PM
SimonJXZ SimonJXZ is offline
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If it's explicitly left to anybody's discretion, I can see a lot of circular editing occurring . Of course I think *I* am the correct one and that the artist's name isn't part of the title but others will disagree as part of their discretion, and until the guideline is more concrete on that one, I'll let it be.
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  #9  
Old May 7, 2014, 08:32 PM
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Not really sure what the point of the "localized" tracklist is... unless someone plans to give the same treatment to every single album that is associated with a product that happens to have a localization from Japanese? (just typing that made me feel funny)

Honestly, I don't see the point in a translated tracklist at all, since we're given an actual romaji tracklist to go by. This is similar to Dodonpachi Saidaioujou but... not quite...
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  #10  
Old May 8, 2014, 04:36 AM
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Well, again, I'd say the point of a translated tracklist is so that people who don't understand one language but do understand another can get a decent idea of what the titles mean. "BIRTH OF THE PEOPLE" is much more clear to me and a large number of other users of this site than "HITOBITO NO TANJYO" and so we prefer to have a translation available alongside the original.
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  #11  
Old May 8, 2014, 04:52 AM
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We do allow translation of the tracklist even when there's no official one and that's an exception where it's fine to have it as 'unofficial'. Using English localized names/terms from games is a step forward and the best situation is when the whole album is officially released for English speaking territories and using the given tracklist.

What you're saying Despatche, (as many times before) is just your preference. There will always be people complaining why there's an English tracklist when there is Romaji. Nature of this site is to have English tracklists when possible and you're just complaining at the wrong place.
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  #12  
Old May 8, 2014, 07:32 AM
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But none of that means anything. Why are you so obsessed with prescribing meaning to something that specifically cannot have it?

"HITOBITO NO TANJYO", as silly as it looks, means a lot more than "BIRTH OF THE PEOPLE"; the former actually applies to something and can never be changed, while the latter is a completely fabricated and irrelevant phrase that is subject to change whenever someone decides "oops". This isn't "preference", it's the truth. It is not my opinion, it is reality. It's also why you'd never see a Japanese version of VGMdb (of which there are many) try to do the reverse; they use what they're given, and that's final.

Even aside from all of this, none of translations are ever treated as "unofficial". Instead, they end up being treated as the only tracklist due to always being shoved in everyone's face. Using any kind of translation like that, official or fanmade, is always a step backward. If you had only ever used the source, do you honestly believe people would force translations themselves? Maybe back in 2000, but not in 2014 (and some time before) when mp3 tagging comes from databases like VGMdb.

Just like good old Wikipedia, you decide what people use. You should be deciding the truth, which is in no way vague and is in no other way arbitrary... not what people think is "comfortable". This stuff isn't comfortable, and you can't force it to be... it certainly isn't "supposed" to be comfortable, either.

But hey, you guys are just going to treat this as another "mindless rant", instead of seeing it as me having to cover every known base while at the same time having to say the same thing in five different ways in the hopes that one way happens to be in words you understand. You guys always think I'm "angry", instead of serious. The only emotion I have ever felt about any of this is pure frustration at seeing the same thing happen, over and over again, no matter how many different ways I try to approach it; at seeing people completely ignore any bit of what I'm saying and just go on with their canned "defense". Even though it just seems like a bunch of tiny clerical errors that people keep saying they don't really care about, people are still obsessed with defending something.

Why can't you just accept that truth screaming in your face, instead of spending your days trying to get rid of it? I have asked that question of so many people, and they just give me blank stares, as if it's yet another truth they're desperate to avoid.

Last edited by Despatche; May 8, 2014 at 07:40 AM.
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  #13  
Old May 8, 2014, 11:22 AM
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Speaking for myself, I know you are serious and I don't really see you as being angry. I'm fairly sure I have a reasonably good grasp on your argument and I haven't ignored it (on the contrary, I wrote a lengthy response to your ideas in the Dragon Force II thread that you didn't reply to), I just don't find it terribly convincing. You're not mindlessly ranting, you're just of a mind that evidently no one else here seems to share. One particularly odd sticking point is your insistence that translations have no meaning. How can "Hitobito no Tanjyo" mean anything to me if I don't know those words? Yes, it means something, but it does me little good. "Birth of the People" does say something, even assuming it does so imperfectly, it still gives me a much better idea than the original. As I said before, all communication is imperfect in conveying exact meaning to all people, so you shouldn't be totally purist about that and get rid of anything that doesn't meet the impossible goal. And Romaji isn't really a substitute for English as it doesn't fulfill the same purpose, so that's why there's an English translation for this album in addition to the Romaji.

I think if we were to have a vote on whether or not to keep and continue producing translated tracklists, you'd likely end up in a pretty lonely camp. But you've made clear your rather elitist views on that in the past, saying people must be forced into it because it's totally better, even though they don't think so and they'd actually be losing a significant portion of the usefulness of this site. And it's not merely convenient usefulness either, in fact, it's part of VGMdb's purpose. It's an English-language database of game, anime, and related album/single/other releases and artists and information pertaining to them, like tracklists.

Nobody's actively spending their days trying to get rid of the truth. If you've asked people and gotten blank stares, it's probably because they're just confused about where you would get that idea. People are going about providing a service for themselves and to others that they find useful. And this is not at the exclusion of "the truth" and accuracy towards the original information; that is included as well. I suppose that perhaps unofficial translations could be labeled as such, that wouldn't be a bad thing, but it would definitely be a huge regression to get rid of them entirely. The reason you keep "seeing the same thing happen, over and over again, no matter how many different ways [you] try to approach it" is because people just honestly benefit from it happening and, I reiterate, this site was created with that goal in mind.

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Originally Posted by Despatche View Post
If you had only ever used the source, do you honestly believe people would force translations themselves? Maybe back in 2000, but not in 2014 (and some time before) when mp3 tagging comes from databases like VGMdb.
If this question is asking do I think people would want to make or use translations in 2014, the answer is yes. In the absence of anything else, I think some people would even turn to Google Translate, at least for things they care enough about that they want to do what they can to understand.

I don't intend to take a tone like "why-don't-you just leave", I mean to ask you sincerely, since you mention there are a number of Japanese sites that do the equivalent of VGMdb but in the way you prefer, why don't you use them instead? In what way are you not being served adequately by VGMdb? The original album titles and track titles are all preserved on each page. Is it really so bad that other people with different concerns also be served? You seem to think it's damaging in some way that people see titles that are translated because that's "incorrect", but I assert (not to get too sappy or anything) that it's beneficial for the game music community as a whole because it facilitates communication and comprehension, between people and between the listener and the music, and enhances enjoyment of the music, which I think is something the composers would want their audiences to feel.
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  #14  
Old May 8, 2014, 04:57 PM
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See? You're not actually understanding! You keep asking me the same questions that I've answered a thousand times. I read your Dragon Force II reply, and it was the same thing as it is here, literally the same thing. May as well answer it here.

These translations have no meaning because titles do not have meaning. Titles are made up of words, but once they are created, they lose all potential meaning they had and can never be changed. Titles resist everything, especially attempts by the creator of the work to change the title in the future. You're not "supposed" to know that "HITOBITO NO TANJYO" might mean anything in "English", because there is no meaning in ANY language.

The reason why this nonsense keeps happening is because people get "programmed" from the start to do a certain thing and cannot think about it once they have their orders. I'm not entirely like that. I somewhat care about what's being done here. All you know are these awful self-defeating patterns. You even ask me why I'm here, and why I shouldn't use some other place, even though there's a great handful of obvious reasons. Noone else has scans, noone else is trying to go beyond a single subject, and more importantly noone else is a giant database oriented to English-speakers that is that is mindlessly hurting those mindless English-speakers, of which I am one. Never mind that anything that happens at an English-oriented website ends up spreading to the rest of the world, because many other countries take their orders from you, oh no.

This isn't about the composer's feelings or intent, the publisher's feelings or intent, or anyone's feelings or intent. All of that crap needs to be separated from the database, and I argue that that is why we even have a thread for every album. This is about what was set in stone, because that's the end of it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the concept of translation. The problem is that you're literally lying to yourself and to everyone by writing up a translation for a title and shoving it in someone's face like this, forcing everyone to accept it because that's all they're really given. Hiding the source over in some tab is false choice; noone's really going to click over there.

What needs to be done is that any and all romanization or translation or whatever be removed from the album pages and put into the topic as scholarly research. That is correct, that is reasonable, and that solves the real problem for everyone. What you have right now is harmful and self-defeating behavior, and noone cares!

Last edited by Despatche; May 8, 2014 at 05:11 PM.
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  #15  
Old May 8, 2014, 09:34 PM
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I asked you the same question because I don't get how you can possibly say such a thing. Okay, how do titles lose all potential meaning once created? "Sky Palace", "Beast Appears", "Avarice", "World Tree", "Silence", "Birth of the People", "Offering", and "Peaceful World" are all words or combinations of words that communicate thoughts or images to me. And you're saying "平和な世界" also has no meaning, even if it also brings thoughts and images to mind to those who can understand it? They could have just been given numbers or even antonyms for titles and it would have been exactly equivalent in effect? You're right, this is part of your argument I don't understand. I absolutely guarantee you that in many, many cases throughout history, musical pieces have been given titles with specific intention to convey meaning. Their creators would be quite surprised to be told that those titles don't actually mean anything. You are making an extraordinary claim that I've never encountered anyone else make before. I don't know if you think you've explained your reasoning behind that stance well, but to me it seems like you're just repeating it without saying why it's supposedly true.

People aren't really programmed and just following orders blindly here or else nothing would change over time. For example, you just edited the title of the counterpart orchestral album to this to "Synphonic suite from ACTRAISER" after the site's owner decided to fix the typo in 2008. What you did was the proper thing according to the policy of today and reflects how the participating people of the site have decided together to keep titles accurate to what's printed on the cover or other packaging. If people had no capacity to change once given their orders, that obviously wouldn't have happened. Site policy can change because people can think critically, and I don't believe the reason the site hasn't changed in the way you want it to is that people are dismissive of you as just being angry or unserious. There are better reasons than that.

I won't agree that it's reasonable to move all translation and romanization off the album pages and into a thread until you can satisfactorily answer how then people with non-Japanese keyboards would even find albums whose titles are Japanese. You offered the idea of invisible Romaji tags in the Dragon Force II thread and I listed the number of issues I could think of with that even apart from creating the system.

Also, I've clicked on the Japanese tracklist tab for lots of albums, many times, for various reasons, and anyone who wants the original tracklist would have a strong incentive to do so.
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  #16  
Old May 9, 2014, 09:06 PM
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Of course you don't get it. Society as it is now is a bunch of ridiculous ideas forced into everyone's heads in a way where they literally cannot think of alternatives and are completely obsessed with nurturing and defending those ideas. These ridiculous ideas were formed randomly, the forcing of and the way they are being forced is random, and some of these ideas are actually being fought... chosen at randomly, and fought in random ways. There's no sense to any of it.

Quote:
They could have just been given numbers or even antonyms for titles and it would have been exactly equivalent in effect?
Completely correct, yet you still seem to miss the point: titles are made of words, but once a title is created, it is no longer so changeable and loses whatever intrinsic meaning it may have had. That is why any translation needs to be separated from the term.

I read your response in that thread back then. I didn't answer it because it was complete bullshit; just like you're doing now, you made all these ridiculous leaps in very basic logic and started putting words in my mouth. Let's revisit that thread now, in fact.

The entire bit about the site's purpose is nonsense. You say things like "it's useful to a lot of people" because it reaffirms the lies that have been forced on them, you keep going on about how you think this is just some crazy opinion, and you fail to understand that the concept of translation is not what I'm taking issue with.

You continue to go on about how translations are such a great thing are and you think it has anything to do with the basic idea that you cannot overwrite the source with a translation. You think you're not doing that, and that's the entire problem; you think you're doing good, or helping someone. You're not! You're actually making sure nothing gets better, almost intentionally!

At the same time, you seemed to parse "what's 'good' or 'bad' is irrelevant" as some kind of mark against accuracy (what the hell do you think I've complaining about all these years), not even bothering to equate it to another mark against translations as you had been doing, never mind that it means neither. What it really means is that regardless of any error or any strange usage of a language, that usage is the truth and it must be considered above all else. That is [i]not opinion, that is reality.

Quote:
You kind of didn't answer the question since you admit that your idea is unfeasible. But nonetheless, some careful consideration should readily expose how bad an idea it is even if it were implemented. For example, how do you propose someone learn the Romaji title to be able to search? The search results would be in Japanese so how would you know which one is what you're looking for if there are multiple options? If Romaji were made invisible on the album page you wouldn't even be able to learn it here to be able to find it again if you did manage to find it somehow. Catalog numbers would be an unwieldy thing to use since it's much harder to memorize those and that's more often information someone would go to VGMdb to get rather than to find something in the first place (not to say many people here haven't used that method in some cases though). Setting aside the trouble of creating that system, your idea would significantly break this site.
You don't seem to get that you already need to know Japanese to make any sense out of Japanese products. You think things "make sense" with these translations, and you're wrong, because that's not something translation can even do. It's already nearly impossible for an American to get American culture from just a few decades ago, yet people honestly believe that they can understand even a basic sentence from a completely different language and a completely different culture just by trying to find some analogues for specific words. With that in mind, your scenario wouldn't really happen, because people would be expected to learn those tiny bits of Japanese required to tell one title apart from another, never mind that many of these albums use Latin or English titles or track names anyway. By the way, it's already hard to find which album you want, and that's got nothing to do with VGMdb. Nothing would change in that area.

Fortunately, you actually get back into your pattern and go right back to the whole "opinions" garbage, trying to sell to me that I've got some sort of superiority complex. You really don't know how anything works, do you? Just what has society done to its people? You don't understand that "this site's mission" is completely at odds with what it is. You don't understand that I am taking issue with the deficiencies of people; it's not some scapegoat for anything, it's my entire point. You don't "agree" with reality, you accept it and you get the hell out of its way. I don't know what all that garbage about "sides" is, but people don't really care about these translations, they only care about what they're given.

Which goes into the next paragraph: what a ridiculous jump in logic. Translations were created before because people were expected to create translations. Translations continue to be used because places like VGMdb have them. This is also why old translations will never leave people's heads unless the last person to know that translation dies. Yes, people really are as mindless as all of these things suggest. Humans have been saying that about themselves for a very long time, and for even more reasons. It is the entire root of our leader-follower system.

More leaps of logic: no, whoever penned the tracklist didn't do it on purpose, they just didn't care. Why should an American care what Japan has to say on this or that title, when they're not selling anything to them? Please don't tell me you fail to understand this much.

Noone's supposed to "want" the original tracklist; it's not something you can just shove off to the side. It is forced on people, because there is no alternative. English-speakers have somehow been able to delude themselves into thinking that if the source is non-Latin or even non-English, it is "ugly" and must be cast out; they are taking reality and trying to invert it completely. That is not opinion, that is the fact of what you are doing, and it needs to stop already.

I'm fucking done, because here's what's going to happen: everything I've just said is going to get completely misunderstood yet again, just like in the Dragon Force II post I've pretty much replied to here. You, _if, are probably going to "challenge" me yet again in some future thread and whine about how I didn't read your reply here even though you are completely unable to say anything new and even though you keep misunderstanding everything I say, no matter how I say it. Alternatively I'll probably just get banned for this long in advance (ridiculous) and then you'll be free of what little challenge to your awful tyranny there is on this planet. No, you're not exhibiting anything even remotely resembling "critical thought"; you're parroting the same goddamned bandwagons that have been holding humanity back for hundreds of thousands of years. Good fucking job.
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  #17  
Old May 10, 2014, 04:27 AM
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I'm sure we're bordering on a staff member saying to take it to private messages, so I'll put this in a spoiler box and ask people to please excuse one more reply if they're annoyed or uninterested.

Spoiler:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Despatche View Post
Completely correct, yet you still seem to miss the point: titles are made of words, but once a title is created, it is no longer so changeable and loses whatever intrinsic meaning it may have had.
Why does a title lose its meaning once created? This doesn't answer why, you're just repeating it as if it's an accepted fact. I specifically asked for an explanation because this statement makes as much sense as you think society does. It is contrary to the fact that creators often give their work titles with specific intent to be evocative and you must have some very esoteric understanding of things to say what you do.

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Originally Posted by Despatche View Post
The entire bit about the site's purpose is nonsense. You say things like "it's useful to a lot of people" because it reaffirms the lies that have been forced on them, you keep going on about how you think this is just some crazy opinion, and you fail to understand that the concept of translation is not what I'm taking issue with.

You continue to go on about how translations are such a great thing are and you think it has anything to do with the basic idea that you cannot overwrite the source with a translation. You think you're not doing that, and that's the entire problem; you think you're doing good, or helping someone. You're not! You're actually making sure nothing gets better, almost intentionally!
I know translations alone are not your issue per se, it's "reality", it's "truth", but it appears the largest part of your objection to what the site is doing is centered around translation and romanization. You have not convinced me that the source is being overwritten by translation because the source is still easily available and recorded with care and I think that answers your points very well. You also have not convinced me that translations do not help and I think that's either a failure of articulation on your part or the failure of your argument to be sound. It could be me, yes, but I question whether anyone else has been convinced either. But never mind that, we're just parrots!

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Originally Posted by Despatche View Post
At the same time, you seemed to parse "what's 'good' or 'bad' is irrelevant" as some kind of mark against accuracy...
I don't know what I said that would make you think that, but I didn't take anything that way. I said because I believe accuracy is important we should have translations that are as good as can be. That was not a statement about you. I think we're in agreement on "What it really means is that regardless of any error or any strange usage of a language [in official tracklists], that usage is the truth and it must be considered above all else." If you're talking about recording the source faithfully, yes. I take it a step further and say it should definitely be on the album page, as well as a translation that veers closer to the original Japanese.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Despatche View Post
You don't seem to get that you already need to know Japanese to make any sense out of Japanese products. You think things "make sense" with these translations, and you're wrong, because that's not something translation can even do. It's already nearly impossible for an American to get American culture from just a few decades ago, yet people honestly believe that they can understand even a basic sentence from a completely different language and a completely different culture just by trying to find some analogues for specific words.
I see a good amount of legitimacy in this argument (all except translations being unable to make sense), but I don't agree with your bottom line. I know that a translation is a compromise from the source and that it can be difficult to interpret things as they were intended when removed by time, geography, language, or any other difference of situation from the author. I'm not willing to condemn the whole concept of communication across time and borders as a result of this as I think it does far more good for people as a whole to get even an incomplete understanding of whatever material they're interested in than to try to learn everything necessary to be able to appreciate it in full, exactly as the author intended, which there would not be enough time in a life to do for everything of interest. It's a compromise from the ideal, but it's a worthwhile one. And so I support translations on this site. Plus, a lot of people see value in being able to interpret things in different ways than the artist intended and I've heard many artists themselves in music, poetry and the like say they want people to get their own meanings out of the author's work.

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Originally Posted by Despatche View Post
With that in mind, your scenario wouldn't really happen, because people would be expected to learn those tiny bits of Japanese required to tell one title apart from another, never mind that many of these albums use Latin or English titles or track names anyway. By the way, it's already hard to find which album you want, and that's got nothing to do with VGMdb. Nothing would change in that area.
Many do use Latin characters or English but many don't. Looking at an artist's discography and getting much useful out of it would be pretty difficult if you don't know Japanese. I don't see how it would take only a tiny bit of Japanese to do either. And there's still the problem of being able to type it. In reality, people would just go to English Wikipedia or something and copy the Japanese title of the game and paste it into VGMdb's search bar. Moving translations off the page to threads would also break the freedb functionality for English, which I know would make you happy but no one else. You can think that usefulness is just an excuse to keep supporting the bullshit societal status quo, but the entire purpose of a database is to be useful. The pages are there to get information from and this would not be a very good database if that were a large burden. The cost-benefit ratio of what you're proposing is very large on cost and extremely small on benefit, although I'm sure you think what little benefit there is is of most supreme importance. I remind you, nobody else seems to.

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Originally Posted by Despatche View Post
Fortunately, you actually get back into your pattern and go right back to the whole "opinions" garbage, trying to sell to me that I've got some sort of superiority complex. You really don't know how anything works, do you? Just what has society done to its people?
I am aware of the large influence society and upbringing has on people's behaviors. I'm aware there are many major social constructs that are not based on good logic or truth that continue to be part of the core beliefs of people. I'm one class away from a political science degree and enthusiastically took the required psychology, sociology, and philosophy, so I know something, although I probably haven't gone as deeply into it as a philosophy student or something.

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Originally Posted by Despatche View Post
You don't understand that "this site's mission" is completely at odds with what it is. You don't understand that I am taking issue with the deficiencies of people; it's not some scapegoat for anything, it's my entire point... I don't know what all that garbage about "sides" is, but people don't really care about these translations, they only care about what they're given.
You are plainly, factually wrong here. You have a skewed idea of what the site is. When it's specifically an English language database of game music album/artist information and translations, etc., it is not at odds with itself to be in the English language or have English translations. I do understand your issue is with the deficiency you perceive in people. I addressed that before with my paragraph in the other thread about what you've termed a superiority complex. And people do care about the translations. It is your mistaken impression they don't. You say it's a problem that this site's English translations spread across the web; did it occur to you that means that other people find them useful too? The Japanese tracklists are on the Internet as well, here and in many other places. They have equal opportunity to be spread.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Despatche View Post
Which goes into the next paragraph: what a ridiculous jump in logic. Translations were created before because people were expected to create translations. Translations continue to be used because places like VGMdb have them. This is also why old translations will never leave people's heads unless the last person to know that translation dies. Yes, people really are as mindless as all of these things suggest. Humans have been saying that about themselves for a very long time, and for even more reasons. It is the entire root of our leader-follower system.
You are making the ridiculous jump in logic. I don't know what you think is supposed to have changed so significantly in people since the time translations were expected to be created and why you think that now people only want them out of habit. I don't really care about how arrogant you sound in saying this kind of thing, my issue is with your horrendously flawed impression of the reason translations are made.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Despatche View Post
More leaps of logic: no, whoever penned the tracklist didn't do it on purpose, they just didn't care. Why should an American care what Japan has to say on this or that title, when they're not selling anything to them? Please don't tell me you fail to understand this much.
Yes, I agree they probably didn't have much concern for foreigners in making the tracklist one way or another. But you're moving the goalpost. I said, "Nor do I think your claim is correct that 'the whole idea of 'foreign languages/cultures' is that their points are not known to you.' It's not as though the title of this album or any of its music was conceived as a secret code to keep foreigners from understanding." Then you replied, "Yes it is, and yes they are," and said that separate cultures and languages exist because they fear each other. That is what I objected to, I was not saying they had foreigners in mind in any way when doing the titling.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Despatche View Post
Noone's supposed to "want" the original tracklist; it's not something you can just shove off to the side. It is forced on people, because there is no alternative. English-speakers have somehow been able to delude themselves into thinking that if the source is non-Latin or even non-English, it is "ugly" and must be cast out; they are taking reality and trying to invert it completely. That is not opinion, that is the fact of what you are doing, and it needs to stop already.
I don't think non-Latin is ugly, I don't dislike having Japanese in my tags when I get an album. I lived with all Japanese track titles for Fantasy Life until a translation was finally submitted and then I changed my tags because it gives me a better idea of what the tracks were made for and a better way to refer to them. I think most of us who listen to Japanese music aren't so prejudiced against the language to have some compulsion to get rid of it. We just want something we can get more out of, as I would want Japanese people to translate English titles if they get more out of it that way.

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Originally Posted by Despatche View Post
I'm fucking done, because here's what's going to happen: everything I've just said is going to get completely misunderstood yet again, just like in the Dragon Force II post I've pretty much replied to here. You, _if, are probably going to "challenge" me yet again in some future thread and whine about how I didn't read your reply here even though you are completely unable to say anything new and even though you keep misunderstanding everything I say, no matter how I say it. Alternatively I'll probably just get banned for this long in advance (ridiculous) and then you'll be free of what little challenge to your awful tyranny there is on this planet. No, you're not exhibiting anything even remotely resembling "critical thought"; you're parroting the same goddamned bandwagons that have been holding humanity back for hundreds of thousands of years. Good fucking job.
I'm completely unable to say anything new? Maybe I'm just "having to cover every known base while at the same time having to say the same thing in five different ways in the hopes that one way happens to be in words you understand." I did no whining that you didn't reply, I addressed your claim that you've been ignored (although I guess you mostly have been by others). I think humanity will manage more or less alright without your insistence that VGMdb must not have anything unofficial on it because you have a narrow and false impression of what database means. Even expanding the implications of your position to a larger scale, I think you're wrong. People have many times upended tyranny, particularly in the Modern Era, and it's not a given that on important matters people cannot be changed from habit. If you wanted to have a discussion about history or political science I could give numerous examples of bottom-up change towards more humane and ethical society and culture. It strikes me funny that you think something that we have deemed to benefit us is tyranny. I mean, it's possible it could be and we just don't want to change it because it's good for us, but I see very little indication of it, and if what you've presented is your best case, I'm afraid we're not the tyrannical ones.
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  #18  
Old May 10, 2014, 06:52 AM
trypetide trypetide is offline
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Woaw... Out of space arguments are indeed... bleh.

Spoiler:
Human's reality and wording isn't set in stone, nor reserved for particular ones withing us.

It's like saying "japanese games can't be appreciated by others, they're not even made for the rest of the world in mind".

Even if the second part is most of the time correct, how do you think an author is thinking of the fact that "fans from overseas" exist ?

At 99.89%, he will just be happy with it. Strange, no ?

I'm not speaking japanese. I understand a good grasp of it's vocabulary though. So sometimes I can do my best to translate myself something because I don't find the translation I see really accurate, or missing the point, of discarding a pun or idea behind the words, or whatever.

It's my vision of the stuff as a non-native speaker. Having an English website doing "fan" translations can help, I don't necessarily go 100% for theirs but still that can be used to complete "my" translation. Again, it's a personnal thought, and I'm not even a native english speaker in the first place, so why care for this ? why not go directly with the japanese, or even learn it for good ? Because I don't feel the urge for it as I can understand enough for my taste with the "tools" I have learned from years now.



And frankly, the fact that there is a real meaning or not behind a title is a useless debate. Because wanting to know the meaning IS the only fact that matters here. Even if you're japanese, if you don't care at all for titles, then it's meaningless to make them in the first place. Hell, some artists don't even offer a proper name for their albums or tracks (the first 4 albums of Peter Gabriel ?).

Words are just something that have a meaning, a purpose, whatever its origin, even without the care for it. As an image does, or a sound, or a smell... A man will always want to know, even if he does it badly, even if he is mistaken by someone else or something else. But that's for this person to learn by himself how to make the difference, how to perceive the world with her own mind. But again, it's kind of pointless because nodoby is the same on whatever you can think of.

To end this, romaji is just a tool to be able to read more or less correctly the "sound" of the words written in japanese. Just that, nothing else. You have to "learn" the meaning by yourself, by referring to the original writing, learn that this kanji can be read as 10 different things coupled with this one, but because the situation is "this" or "that", then it can mostly only be "this" one... etc. It's strange, isn't the same for ALL the languages (or at least most of them ?). Then why learning only one language if we can't speak with each others... but hey, I'm (even badly) speaking english in here and you'll be surely able to understand my words. Strange things indeed.


So in short, all of this is meaningless to debate because there is no need in the first place :
- translation are for a kind of person that will be willing to use them for whatever reason.
- Romaji, idem.
- Original, for reference and because you need to have the original. You don't have to read it or even have interest for it, but for completion sakes, you need to offer it. (and respect too, in a sense).

And that's it.

So like 荒井由実 would say to you : GOOD・LUCK・AND・GOODBYE
( or グッド・ラック・アンド・グッドバイ because katakana CAN'T BE USED TO SAY SOMETHING IN ENGLISH, obviously).
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  #19  
Old Sep 11, 2020, 08:10 PM
JTurner JTurner is offline
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Yuzo Kushiro's liner notes for ActRaiser's memorable soundtrack have been translated some time ago, but on the second page is an essay with game critic Akira Yamashita, who gives a detailed account of the composer. It's in Japanese, so whoever is open for translating it is welcome to do so.

☆古代祐三の言葉で綴る「アクトレイザー」

「音には絶対の自信がありますよ」

私的に電話をしたときなどに、これまで何度となく聞いた彼—古代祐三の台詞だ。
僕が初めて「アクトレイザー」の曲を耳にしたのは、スーパーファミコン用ソフト初の展示会とも言うべき「第 2回初心会」でのことだった。
90年末にセンセーショナルに発売されたスーパーファミコンの特徴の一つに、「音」がある。サンプリング音 源8声—これまでの家庭用ゲーム機とはレベルが数段違う、豪華な音源だ。
しかし、誰にでも「凄い」音がだせるのかと言ったら、決夫してそんなことはない。作曲技術も当然だが、それ 以上にプログラム技術が要求される世界なのである。
音質に関して言えば、「アクトレイザー」は、並び立つ強力ソフト群を押さえ、間違いなく初心会の会場を独占 していた。
神名どころのソフトハウスの一流スタッフたちが、ロをそろえて「「アクトレイザー」の曲にはやられた」。
ひとつひとつの音に、耳を傾けてほしい。実際の楽器の音に限りなく近いサウンドが、奏でられている。
美しいストリングス。張りのあるトランベット。重厚なティンパニー。
「アクトレイザー」のゲーム・カートリッジの中には、間違いなくオーケストラがいる。

「今度のはね、クラシック風なんです」

90年の夏前、「アクトレイザー」の作曲活動を始めた頃、彼はうれしそうにそう言った。
ついにやるのか、と思い、僕もうれしくなった。
古代祐三ファンの多くは、「彼の音楽= ロックorプログレ」という図式を、イメージとして持っているかもしれない。
実際、これまでの作品のほとんどが、その路線を踏襲していた。それゆえ、「古代祐三はロックしか創れない」 という心無い発言も耳にしたことがある。
しかし、僕は知っていた。彼の作曲能力が、音楽全般に対する類稿な感性に裏打ちされているということを。
一流ピアニストであった彼の母親は、今をときめく久石譲氏(代表作:「風の谷のナウシカ」「天空の城ラビュ タ」等)と20年以上前から音楽友達として親交があった。そして、息子の祐三に音楽を勉強させるため、小学 生の時から久石氏のもとに通わせる。
そこで桁が違うほどの数の音楽を聴かされた彼すでにどのような音楽でも創れる創作感性を養われていたのだ。
これまでの彼の作品は、好きな分野に没頭していた感もあった。しかし、スーパーファミコンの音質を最大限に 生かすことを考えた彼は、クラシック、そして映画音楽風という新ジャンルに挑戦することを決意したのである 。

「とにかく、何十万人の人に聴いてもらえるというだけで、うれしいですね」

彼のこの言葉を聞いたとき、僕は胸が熱くなった。
ご存知の人もいるかもしれないが、彼がこれまで創作活動の中心としていたのは、パソコン・ゲームという、ど うしてもマニア色の強いジャンルだった。
日本を代表する大ヒットRPG「イース」「イースII」「ソーサリアン」(いずれも日本ファルコム社)のサ ウンド制作に参加、その後、PC-8801SRのサウンドボードIIという素晴らしい音源を駆使して「ザ。スキーム」(ボーステック社)「ミ スティ・ブルー」(エニックス社)の作曲を担当。さらに、メガドライブ用「スーパー忍」(セガ社)も手掛け はしたが、ゲームの性格や発売本数などの問題から、その音楽を子供から大人まで、すべての人に耳にしてもら うというわけにはいかなかった。
だからこそ、幅広いユーザー層を持ち、何十万本ものヒットが確約されている、スーパーファミコン用ソフトの 作曲を担当できたことには、格別の想いがあったのだろう。
クラシカルでありながらも、彼独特のメロディーラインが見え隠れする「アクトレイザー」。
少なくとも、このアルバムを聴いた人には、彼の才能の一端を肌で感じていただけたに違いない。
しかし、これだけの楽曲を創作しながらも、彼は現状のベルにまったくと言っていいほど満足していない。
古代祐三の音楽世界が底無しに深いことを、僕に再確認させてくれた一言を持って、この文章を締めくくろう。

「次ですか?きっとまた全然別のタイプの曲を創ると思いますよ」

ゲーム評論家
山下章
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  #20  
Old Aug 19, 2021, 03:57 AM
zierts zierts is offline
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Not to warm up that old discussion above (not having read it :-() but something is off about the English track list. "FILLMOA" is probably just a typo of "FILMOA" (as listed in the booklet).

But if the track list is named "English (localized)", shouldn't it use the English version's localized translations? I don't feel strongly about using those, but if they are not used, then the track list's name should be changed to "English" only as it has nothing to do with the localization, I guess. Here's a comparison of the terminology used in different releases (the clear and tree track titles are not directly corresponding to the game):

Code:
Japanese game	English localization	1991 albums		2018 album		2021 albums
===================================================================================================
—		—			OPENING			Opening			Opening
SKY CASTLE	Sky Palace		TENKUJO			Sky Palace		Sky Palace
—		—			KORIN			Advent			Advent
FILMOA		FILLMORE		FILMOA			Fillmoa			Fillmore
—		—			MAJU ARAWARU		Beast Appears		Beast Appears
ACT CLEAR	ACT CLEAR		ROUND CLEAR		Round Clear		Round Clear
BLOODPOOL	BLOODPOOL		BLOOD POOL		Bloodpool		BloodPool/Bloodpool (Blood Pool on the album's website)
CASANDRA	KASANDORA		CASANDORA		Casandora		Kasandora
AITOS		AITOS			AITOS			Aitos			Aitos
—		—			TEMPLE			Temple			Temple
—		—			KYOTEKI			Powerful Enemy		Powerful Enemy
ピラミッド	pyramid			PYRAMID			Pyramid			Pyramid
MARANA		MARAHNA			MARANA			Marana			Marahna
NORTHWALL	NORTHWALL		NORTH WALL		North Wall		Northwall
きょぼく		the mighty tree		SEKAIJU			World Tree		World Tree
サタン		Tanzra			SATAN			Satan			Satan
—		—			SEIJAKU			Silence			Silence
—		—			HITOBITO NO TANJYO	Birth Of The People	Birth of the People
ささげもの	offering		SASAGEMONO		Offering		Offering
—		—			HEIWA NA SEKAI		Peaceful World		Peaceful World
—		—			ENDING			Ending			Ending
レベルアップ	your level has increased—			Level Up		Level Up
DEATH HEIM	DEATH HEIM		—			—			—

Last edited by zierts; Aug 31, 2021 at 08:39 AM.
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  #21  
Old Aug 19, 2021, 04:11 AM
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Secret Squirrel Secret Squirrel is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by zierts View Post
But if the track list is named "English (localized)", shouldn't it use the English version's localized translations?
You are right. It looks like someone edited the tracklist after it was submitted as "localized". I've renamed it to English, since now it's just a translation of the Japanese tracklist using style and content cues from the official romaji tracklist.
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  #22  
Old Aug 20, 2021, 04:39 AM
zierts zierts is offline
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Great, this is much better. Thank you!

EDIT: "Avarice" might have been a mistranslation as the booklet and disc both say 強敵. I changed this to the official translation "Powerful Enemy" if no one minds.

Last edited by zierts; Aug 20, 2021 at 05:23 AM.
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