Method of Japanese Romanisation

[layzee]

Most people probably wouldn't care but perhaps there should be consistency in the way Japanese is romanised into English? The Hepburn romanisation method seems the most likely candidate.

This also brings the issue of whether to use accented characters or not. For example: 天地創造 can be rendered as Tenchi Sōzō or Tenchi Souzou.

I prefer Tenchi Souzou because accented characters are relatively harder to type and American/British English doesn't normally use them (accented characters) in the first place.

Discussions about standardised romanisations of other non-Japanese languages also welcome.

[Secret Squirrel]

I've wrestled with this as well. The problem for me is that there isn't a romanization that I entirely like. While I prefer using ou instead of the macrons, I also prefer using e and o for particles instead of he and wo. I think the majority of our titles follow this hybrid-style, but I've seen some romaji tracklists that are pure Hepburn.

I do agree that we should standardize.

[-Woodrow-]

regarding this topic - would someone shoot me if I went ahead and started changing the "false short o" with "ou" or "ô" whereever I could find it?

I just needed to know then which one of the two is preferred.

btw: IMHO, great database / website. You even surpassed Wikipedia, for me, personally.

[AkihikoSanada]

Personally I'd go for (modified) Hepburn, heck, the only people I'ver ever seen not using it are japanese who just write romaji like they type on the keyboard and a lot of romanizations in the internet which are probably more often than not done by people who romanize stuff without actually having any idea about the language. In academic circles, I can't recall a single remotely actual text (ie. 1960+) that uses something else.

Although I can understand people use "wo" instead of "o" (you still recognize it as what it is since the syllable is only being used for the joshi), "he" and "ha" are just wrong.

Further, although one is expected to paraphrase an "ou" as "ô" according to the mighty rules at least every German university does use, I personally prefer using "ou" and "oo" (like in 炎 honoo, 遠い tooi etc.) in private, it's faster to type for me than ô î â and the japanese kana have that difference too, although it's the same in spoken japanese...but if i'd do that in my papers I'd get murdered

Hepburn as a base is definitely better, in any case. The syllables like tsu and shi and chi etc. are at least being written like they're supposed to sound.

[Gigablah]

I'd just like to recommend this guideline: first and foremost, go with the official romanization, and if it's not available, then fall back upon whatever romanization standard we agree upon. In other words, romanization of album/game titles and artist names should be done on a case-by-case basis. Tracklist romanization can largely be standardized.

[-Woodrow-]

I was actually talking about the artist profile pages, for example of Kôji Kondô, who you list as "Koji Kondo" - which is a thorn in my flesh, actually ;^)
especially when the correct hiragana is right below it.

I didn't realize though that changing the names there would not affect each single occurance through all his albums. I agree that this should be romanized on a case-by-case basis and with the official version if available but only if it differs greatly from the norm (e.g. Shadow Of The Colossus' "Kow Ôtani" instead of "Kô Ôtani"). As you see, I would leave the "Kow" but I would change the big "O".

But it would be okay for me to do that, did I get that right?

Then I just need to know now "whatever romanization standard we agree upon" ;^)

[Gigablah]

If it's a question of adding macrons to characters, I have no issue with it since it doesn't affect database searching. To illustrate this, I've just changed Koji Kondo to Kōji Kondō (a quick glance at Wikipedia shows that they use macrons instead of circumflexes). If you search for "Koji Kondo" without the accented characters, the artist entry can still be matched. Artist linking for staff members is unaffected too. In other words, people can still input "Koji Kondo" into the various artist fields and have everything work as usual, regardless of the macrons in the artist profile.

And yes, changing the artist entry will affect all albums that are linked, unless the album entry has a text alias associated with it. In that case you'd need to edit the alias too (currently restricted to editors and staff).

[seanne]

I think using 'correct' romanization will end up being more trouble than it's worth. First of all, as far as I can see, the points of using romanization to begin with are; to give people an idea of how the name is pronounced, to make it more recognizable and to make it easier to type. Macrons and circumflexes don't really help with any of those, since I'm sure most of us don't use these in our own languages. I don't even think you can write macrons with most (western) keyboards - I know I can't with mine.

Basically, if you don't know how "Koji Kondo" is pronounced, having it written "Kōji Kondō" is probably not going make the bell ring.

Another problem, now when linking Koji Kondo to an album, "Koji Kondo" isn't recognized as being in the database so I guess one would have to add it as an alias/variation in any case. Example here.

[-Woodrow-]

"Koji Kondo" without circumflexes or macrons already is listed as a variation. At least on his profile page. Do you have to put it as an alias on the album? Can you even do that? "More Than Mario" lists him without macrons internally but displays his name with macrons. So I don't know what you mean, seanne. Does it have to do with the timing, when you put it in without macrons and when you change the profile page?

The way I see it, the purpose of romanization - especially of names - is to translate a name to our language as accurately as possible in order to show your respect for that person. Imagine you would be listed in a japanese database solely with the katakana version of your name which probably lacks much information - because that's the way it often is with katakana.

I mean, it's not that we aren't capable of writing their names properly - or more properly - through the use of macrons, circumflexes, "ou"s or whatever. We do have the possibility to do that so, in my opinion, we should do that. I mean, the more accurate the information, the more professional the database is, right?

Besides, if you read "Kōji Kondō" and you didn't know how to pronounce it, then I think it would actually depend on if you really wanted to know the pronounciation. If you did then you would look up what that signs above the vowels mean in the japanese language, if you didn't then you wouldn't give a crap anyway.

I do the the "macronized" vowels via Alt+332, 333, 362, 363 (doesn't work in every text area though). I admit it's not as easy as ^+vowel or just the vowel and you have to memorize a lot of numbers .. but I'm good with that so I offered you to do that for you.

Anyway, now I have changed this "short o flaw" for the first 1oo artists. If you like how it is, then I'll do it for the rest, if you don't then I'll change it back.

I have to admit though, I may have exaggerated it a bit with him ...

[Gigablah]

We're not out to list EVERY possible variation of a name, we only list those that are actually IN USE. Otherwise that's just adding noise to the database. (Plus the internal first/last name fields are used as fallback for artist matching, so if you change those as well, the system breaks.)

Also, some names like Yoh Ohyama are official romanizations, they should not be changed.

We need to discuss this a bit more. I'll undo the changes so far.

Most likely a change to the database structure is needed. The name variation field is not suitable for this sort of application.

[seanne]

Originally Posted by -Woodrow-

"Koji Kondo" without circumflexes or macrons already is listed as a variation. At least on his profile page. Do you have to put it as an alias on the album? Can you even do that? "More Than Mario" lists him without macrons internally but displays his name with macrons. So I don't know what you mean, seanne. Does it have to do with the timing, when you put it in without macrons and when you change the profile page?

Yes, it had to be added as a variation for it to be recognized, so it works now.

The way I see it, the purpose of romanization - especially of names - is to translate a name to our language as accurately as possible in order to show your respect for that person.

I honestly doubt anyone would take offense over how their name is romanized - it's not an exact science or anything, there are several different methods used. It's the same with romanization of cyrillic for example.

Imagine you would be listed in a japanese database solely with the katakana version of your name which probably lacks much information - because that's the way it often is with katakana.

We do provide the names written in the original "alphabets" though, in this case kanji and hiragana.

At the same time I wouldn't exactly take offense if a Japanese person preferred to write my name using katakana instead of the roman alphabet if he was more comfortable with that. Same goes for pronunciation. (If anything it's worse when different countries both using the same alphabet can't write and pronounce things the same way. For example, my home town of Göteborg is called Gothenburg in English.)

I mean, it's not that we aren't capable of writing their names properly - or more properly - through the use of macrons, circumflexes, "ou"s or whatever. We do have the possibility to do that so, in my opinion, we should do that. I mean, the more accurate the information, the more professional the database is, right?

If Kōji Kondō is more "accurate" than Koji Kondo can be debated though. The macros are more like small help sign than actual parts of the letters, imo. And it's no more accurate than any other form of romanization. If anything we should use what's officially used by the person in question.

Though, as I said, in my opinion it's more trouble than it's worth. If someone must know more precisely they can always use the hiragana as a guide as well.

[Kaleb.G]

Isn't "Koji Kondo" used pretty much everywhere already, even officially by Nintendo? If so, I would consider that the official romaziation and leave the rest up to variations or whatever system Blah decides to implement.

I'm against the use of circumflexes or macrons in romanizations. The whole point is to make it easier to read and write for non-Japanese. In our case, most people here speak English, and thus the romanizations should only use English letters.

[Zorbfish]

Kaleb expressed my opinion exactly. I think his example about how Nintendo officially romanizes Kondo's name is what Blah was getting at as well about judging each on a case-by-case basis. Had Nintendo chosen to use Kōji Kondō I'd be more receptive.

[Blitz Lunar]

could always have both listed somehow.

[Gigablah]

Yeah, Blitz Lunar has the right idea. Currently we have 3 internal name fields (latin / romanized, native script / kanji, and hiragana reading). The name variation field was added as a way to store different permutations or spellings, but then you lose the associated language attribute. What's needed is a separate table for storing names, which would also greatly simplify our current system for artist aliases.

[Hamu-Sumo]

I put my question here as it's related to the topic but instead talking about Hepburn & co. I want to ask how to handle katakana?

Looking about my correction for Fate/hollow ataraxia soundtrack I saw that it was changed again to what is was before. As I wrote the Romaji tracklist I asked myself how to handle the stuff and wrote the original word first but later I was asking a friend of mine who studys Japanology how they do it in university. He said they transliterate it syllable by syllable so I redone my tracklist after that.

Now we have for ロマンス "Romance" instead of "Romansu". Is that standard? Found no information about (and well, that's why I'm writing here). However, for Romaji (not English!) I prefer the syllable by syllable method but of course I do whatever the standardization says.

Thanks for reading!

[Secret Squirrel]

Well, this stems from a rule we have here for album titles, namely:

Also, please don't re-romanize borrow words (i.e., no Originaru Sandotrakku)

This decision stemmed primarily from readability. Whether we should follow this rule in the Romanized tracklists is probably another question altogether.

[Hamu-Sumo]

I see. Thank you Squirrel!