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  #1  
Old Sep 9, 2008, 11:48 AM
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Default British English vs. American English

England and the USA have some English spelling differences which can become an issue of conflict when translating from other languages. I have no preference which we choose, but I feel we should come up with a standard for consistency.
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Last edited by Kaleb.G; Sep 9, 2008 at 11:52 AM.
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  #2  
Old Sep 10, 2008, 12:49 AM
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Arguments for using American English:
  • (American) English is the official international business language.
  • Japanese soundtracks with official English tracklists in the first place uses American English-style spelling.
  • I assume the majority (50%+) of VGMdb users/browsers are American and so would prefer American English.
  • USA is the centre/center of the world (metaphorically, maybe literally).

Personally, I prefer British English.
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  #3  
Old Sep 10, 2008, 04:00 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by layzee View Post
Japanese soundtracks with official English tracklists in the first place uses American English-style spelling.
That was the only compelling reason right there. That said, American English.
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  #4  
Old Sep 10, 2008, 04:50 AM
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Considering that people from the US are our 2nd most frequent visitors (behind Japan), I'd vote for American spelling.
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  #5  
Old Sep 10, 2008, 06:13 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Gigablah View Post
people from the US are our 2nd most frequent visitors (behind Japan)
Japan, really? This is quite surprising!
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  #6  
Old Sep 10, 2008, 07:21 AM
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Well from running my own international site, most translate buttons on EU sites have British flag and not American. That being said I have never run into any problems with doing translations of the Japanese album information to English as far as regional words are concerned. Reviews and news articles will always have problems cause of localization by the authors slang, but the references in Japanese items will relate to British far more often then to American. American English is far from being a standard across the world and does not translate well to the EU area's. That last part is just my opinion from playing online many hours of the day with people who do not "read" English as native language.

If your looking for standard on song translation I would put up a poll and put the flags of various countries. I am welling to bet that even the Japanese will vote on the British flag. Its just that common on International sites. But if you just talking differences in the two dialects of English give this a look.

Btw great site guys, I just did a Google and found this place researching an old game CD. Good job !
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  #7  
Old Sep 10, 2008, 09:14 AM
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Actually, if we ever implement translation flag icons, I'd probably follow YouTube's example and use a "world" image for English rather than the American or British flags.

That being said, this is more about the translation spelling rather than dialect; it'll be good to ensure that whichever spelling system we use, we should strive for regionally neutral terminology. (For the record, I was educated in British English)
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  #8  
Old Sep 10, 2008, 10:19 AM
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Interesting for the first response on these boards I feel that your response is somewhat heated. As some one who has made many forums for groups the flag translation icon is built into the systems. The vbulletin does not but there is a mod for it. You will find the reason you make forums is to have people respond to it whether you like there ideas or not and as admin you should not take things so personal. Not one thing in my post mentioned you or your heritage in the least and most is fact. Go lock for yourself at places like CD Japan or Yes Asia other sites that deal with this very problem.

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Still very interesting to see how new sites grew. I do wish you luck with this one but I would remind you keep your admin regionally neutral, too.

Last edited by tebian; Sep 10, 2008 at 10:23 AM.
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  #9  
Old Sep 10, 2008, 11:02 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tebian View Post
Interesting for the first response on these boards I feel that your response is somewhat heated.
We're clearly not reading the same post. Gigablah had a pretty mild-mannered response. :-D You seem to be getting touchy on "regional dialect," even though he said "whichever spelling system we use, we should strive for regionally neutral terminology."
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  #10  
Old Sep 10, 2008, 11:19 AM
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ah well maybe i am wrong and it was lost in the translation.... from reading the post above the original questions was "which one should we use"

now you saying you dont want to discuss the "vs" issue .... yeps lost me now on this one

Last edited by tebian; Sep 10, 2008 at 11:22 AM.
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  #11  
Old Sep 10, 2008, 11:22 AM
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Please do explain how you interpreted my post, I'm totally bewildered here.

(The reason I mentioned my education was to highlight that I'm essentially making a concession to use American-style spelling, even though I'm used to British-style. I don't see how that's "taking things personally".)
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  #12  
Old Sep 10, 2008, 11:41 AM
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Obviously I must have taken it wrong but then that is the problem with forums and words. The reason I had brought up the Flags is the are normally part of the menu translation features that then lead to feel of the text your displaying. This would then make it far easier to understand no matter whether you go with one particular set dictionary or another for you information. But that was lost in the translation and tossed out of hand via you short post. The funny part is that I do this all the time for the radio station I run with a lot of Japanese originated music that I have to manually translate, since I play it out long before the CD covers are translated. I was "just" trying to give you helpful experienced idea.

actually = "used to imply that one would expect the fact to be the opposite of that stated"

Last edited by tebian; Sep 10, 2008 at 11:45 AM.
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  #13  
Old Sep 10, 2008, 11:47 AM
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Perhaps it's not apparent from the thread title, but the first post specifically targets "spelling differences". I think it's a given that in whatever tracklist translations we do, we should aim for words and phrases that both European and American users -- not to mention English speakers worldwide -- are readily familiar with (that's what I meant by "regionally neutral terminology"). So the issue here is just whether we spell "neighbour" or "neighbor", "colour" or "color", and so on. It's simply (as mentioned in the first post) for the sake of consistency. If you know this already feel free to disregard it; I addressed it only because you linked to a site discussing the differences in dialects.

As for the flags: yes, I know that the British flag is commonly used to denote an English translation; however that would clash with the usage of American spelling, thus some sites have begun using a "world" icon as a compromise. I think it's a good one.

(Perhaps this is not so much an issue of translation but confusion over the main point of our posts?)
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  #14  
Old Sep 10, 2008, 04:23 PM
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I'd vote for American English as well, eventhough British English is also the one I was taught in school. It seems that most of the translations/translators all over the internet also favour American English. That's the impression I've gotten over the years anyhow.
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Old Sep 11, 2008, 12:19 PM
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I vote for American-English for the purposes of translating from non-English sources, especially since Japanese published material that has English in them use American-English.
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  #16  
Old Sep 12, 2008, 11:17 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Gigablah View Post
So the issue here is just whether we spell "neighbour" or "neighbor", "colour" or "color", and so on.
Yes, that's exactly what I meant to address with this thread.

tebian: Keep in mind that European sites are always going to have the British flag representing English because England is in Europe. We need to address this on a global scale rather than a continental scale.
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