should we "fix" english track lists?

[MrMAGFest]

Ok, first look at this album page:
http://vgmdb.net/db/albums.php?id=750

Now, I'm not complaining about the submission.... it's good. We've got reasonable info, art, two languages of track lists, times, etc bla bla.

What I'm asking is really a lot simpler than it sounds. Sometimes the translated Japanese is very...,well....literal.

TEARS (Conversation Demo <Grey Fox>)
could be
TEARS (Conversation with Grey Fox)
or even
Tears (Grey Fox conversation)

Really, any permutation thereof would read more nicely and wouldn't really lose any "meaning". If I come across something like this in my personal collection, I generally re-tag things so that it reads more nicely. I'm inclined to do that when I see it on vgmdb, but I don't want to step on any toes. It's possible a very literal translation is what the masses of vgmdb want. I just think sometimes it looks a little silly when I see

FIRST STAGE (Stage 1 BGM)

I mean, let's just call it "First Stage" for crying out loud. And we don't really need the "BGM" connotation, even on stuff where the track name is something completely different, do we? I mean, we're talking about music from games here. Stuff like stage introductions or endings could still have a (Stage 1 intro) or (Stage 1 complete) or something but I'm all for eliminating redundancy and making things easy to read and I think someone out there has to agree. If there's no wish to "de-literalize" the translation, maybe there can be a "English (approximation)" language for the tracklist or some other way to do things.

Ok, off the soap box. Sorry this is so long.

[Gigablah]

I'm not a big fan of "de-literalizing" myself, but that's indeed one of the main purposes in mind when we implemented multiple tracklist functionality. It's been done with the Okami soundtrack. You can make an "English Ver.2" or "English (Adapted)" tracklist with your "cleaner" titles, with natural capitalization and so on.

[the_miker]

I'd say no way, or at the very least do what Blah said and keep any "corrected" info as a ver.2 or something. I'm a firm believer of WYSIWYG when it comes to music info, credits, track titles, capitalization, etc. If it's spelled wrong on the actual soundtrack, it should be spelled wrong on VGMdb and then if you so desire, add a cleaned up track list as ver.2 or English (revised). Whenever I update info on this site, I try to keep it as pure as possible. Good example of that would be this entry right here. You can clearly see on the front cover that the correct capitalization should read "DEWPRISM Original Soundtrack" (the reprint does it right) but for some reason it actually reads "DewPrism Original Soundtrack" instead. I think I'm like the only person on here who's really anal about that kind of thing.

Even just yesterday I changed the NW10102630 version of the Ys VI OST listing. The title used to read "Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim Original Soundtrack" but I changed it. Not sure where people got the colon from, or why Original Soundtrack wasn't split into three words like it is right on the cover/spine of the CD, or why ORIGINAL SOUND and TRACK weren't capitalized as they clearly are on the real thing. I know that probably sounds incredibly stupid to most people but for some reason it's a little pet peeve of mine.

So yeah, WYSIWYG.

-Mike

[seanne]

MrMAGFest: A translation needs to be as true to the original as possible, and when you're dealing with a tracknames like the ones in the tracklist you pointed out, which contain primarily short strings of kanji and some katakana, there's really not much room left for personal interpretation. The specific track you name, "TEARS (会話デモ ＜グライフォックス＞)", is a good example. There are really no two ways about it here. If you were to name it "TEARS (Conversation with Grey Fox)", like you suggest, it would no longer be very true to the original - a misrepresentation, really.

If you're dealing with a tracklist containing longer sentences, and featuring more grammar however, then you would be forced to use a greater degree of personal interpretation in your translation, and two people translating the same tracklist could well arrive at some differences.

So yeah, It's not that I don't see your point - I do - but personal opinion really needs to be kept to a minimum in an encyclopedia-like information database like this one.


And I really don't like the idea of adding "v2" tracklists either. Okami, as Blah mentioned, features two English tracklists for no other reason than for the premise that the Japanese soundtrack tracklist and the in-game titles in the English language version of the game differ. Personally I'm not so sure they do to such a degree that this is warranted, but anyway.

Originally Posted by the_miker

Even just yesterday I changed the NW10102630 version of the Ys VI OST listing. The title used to read "Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim Original Soundtrack" but I changed it. Not sure where people got the colon from, or why Original Soundtrack wasn't split into three words like it is right on the cover/spine of the CD, or why ORIGINAL SOUND and TRACK weren't capitalized as they clearly are on the real thing.

About this issue Mike. I think there's generally a difference between the tracklist and the title of the album here. The capitalization on most album titles can't be regarded as having been chosen for any specific reason, if you see what I mean. On the front of the booklet, generally it'll just be the game's logo (which will almost always be in all caps for marketing reasons). And on the spines you'll often just have the generic combination of katakana on one side and roman in all caps on the other, without any thought or intention going into the capitalization. This is painfully obvious on the KICA lineup.

So while I think it's of paramount importance that the original intentions of the publisher of the cd in question are respected and translated/represented properly, in cases such as these (e.g KICA), when there clearly weren't any to begin with, I think it's alright, or even preferable, to just use "proper" capitalization.

[Gigablah]

Just to add on to seanne's final paragraph, some albums also tend to tack on the original medium such as "PS2 game" and "TV animation". Adding those to the titles makes for some pretty bad indexing, since we usually want the title of the product at the very beginning. That's why we have a "display" title -- so that we can have reasonably formatted titles that are not necessarily true to the original. Although miker's examples of DEWPRISM and ORIGINAL SOUND TRACK are still somewhat tame and I don't have a problem with those changes, keep in mind that line 2 is useful for that kind of scenario.

[Secret Squirrel]

Originally Posted by MrMAGFest

TEARS (Conversation Demo <Grey Fox>)
could be
TEARS (Conversation with Grey Fox)
or even
Tears (Grey Fox conversation)

We could go further with this. The fact that the composer decided to name the track "Tears", is of no real importance to anyone who plays the game. Why not:

Grey Fox conversation
or even
Cutscene before Boss Battle 2

since that can help remind the listener where the music came from.

Of course, I'm being facetious, and you can see where taking too much liberty can lead us. We're here to provide accurate information, not interpretation.

Now, that isn't to say that translating isn't something of an art. A strict word for word translation can sometimes lose the original meaning, so the translator has to be careful, skillful, and sometimes clever.

On the titles, we had many discussions on them in the pre-alpha days, which helped us formulate the multiple title system that we use now -- a system that balances the need for accuracy, intended meaning, and ease of search.

[the_miker]

Originally Posted by seanne

The capitalization on most album titles can't be regarded as having been chosen for any specific reason, if you see what I mean.

...

personal opinion really needs to be kept to a minimum in an encyclopedia-like information database like this one

I do see your point but, as you said, personal opinion really should stay at a minimum. Who knows, maybe the guys at Falcom really wanted ORIGINAL SOUND TRACK to be capitalized for a reason. A better example would be this CD. If we stick to "proper" capitalization as you said, this would turn into Under the Blue Sky ~Include Gradius Arrange~ even though they clearly wanted the word GRADIUS in caps to emphasize it was a GRADIUS album above all else.

Originally Posted by Gigablah

Although miker's examples of DEWPRISM and ORIGINAL SOUND TRACK are still somewhat tame and I don't have a problem with those changes

Yeah, I'm not that insane, just a little bit, heh. If an album title, like DEWPRISM Original Soundtrack, is actually mixed case like that, I like to stay true to all the capitalization. However, if it's something like GOLDEN AXE THE MUSIC for example, where the title is ALL CAPS everywhere on the actual soundtrack, I'll leave it mixed case for VGMdb, GMR, etc. (Golden Axe The Music).

Basically if a title is at all mixed case, I try to keep it that way. If it's all caps, I'll most likely mix case it for database purposes. I manage my digital collection the same way, by the way.

-Mike

[Secret Squirrel]

I generally agree with you about mixed case, and I tend to reproduce the exact capitalization when that's the case.

Note that in your example, "UNDER THE BLUE SKY" and "~Include Gradius Arrange~" are on seperate lines on both the Obi and cover, so it's technically incorrect to put them both on the same line in the display title. And then there's the general issue of matching the text font and coloring. Of course, that's when we realize that we do have to make some sacrifices.

A long time ago, we had a big discussion on whether we should use the title from the album front, or the spine. There were cases where the two versions of the title had completely different capitalizations, spellings, and even content. We eventually realized that it often came down to a judgement call, and that we shoudn't lock ourselves into a title choice that doesn't make any sense.

Although the Japanese seem to have a reasonable familiarity with the English alphabet, there are some concepts, such as capitalization and inserting spaces between words, that don't have an equivalent in their written language, so they lack the perspective to see any difference between "Dew Prism" and "DewPrism". It's the same to them, so we sometimes have to accept that some of their titling needs some adjustment in order to fall in line.

Line 4 of the title block is used for alternates, like was done here.

[seanne]

Originally Posted by the_miker

A better example would be this CD. If we stick to "proper" capitalization as you said, this would turn into Under the Blue Sky ~Include Gradius Arrange~ even though they clearly wanted the word GRADIUS in caps to emphasize it was a GRADIUS album above all else.

Definitely, this is a case where I think you could keep the all caps parts of the title. It's a slippery slope sometimes, but generally if a title is only partially in all caps I can see good reason to keep those parts intact, as it were.

Yeah, I'm not that insane, just a little bit, heh. If an album title, like DEWPRISM Original Soundtrack, is actually mixed case like that, I like to stay true to all the capitalization. However, if it's something like GOLDEN AXE THE MUSIC for example, where the title is ALL CAPS everywhere on the actual soundtrack, I'll leave it mixed case for VGMdb, GMR, etc. (Golden Axe The Music).

I basically agree with you here too. It's just that game titles tend to always be in all caps (FF, DQ, etc.) and that tends to follow on to the soundtrack release by default. Another Square example of this is PE, the logo is all lower case, and so is the titles on the spines of the album releases.

But yeah, as SS said, the multiple title system, with a designated display title, was brought in partly as a result of the disagreements on this issue we had in the past. (I was in your corner at that time, by the way =p)

[Liontamer]

IMO, stick to being VERY literal except for ALL CAPS titles (which I basically treat as using a font where any letter becomes capitalized). That means literal translations, retention of spelling mistakes, and retention of any quirks in capitalization for mixed case album titles and any case for song titles, usage of colons and tildes, all that jazz. Don't mess with it. The only acceptable alternate is offering up corrections or separate tracklists, but aside from that, I'd want things very cut-and-dry and not open to subjective interpretation. Using Brendan's example, if a Japanese track title translated to "FIRST STAGE (Stage 1 BGM)", then that's exactly what I'd want to see in an English translation, and not anything else.

[MrMAGFest]

It's been a little bit. Just wanted to post and say loud and clear.... Either do purist titles, add a "revised" tracklist. Else do nothing.

[Rimo]

Sorry for the dust...

In the case that a title is written either all in upper case or all in lower case in a section of the album (e.g. tracklist) and that elsewhere (e.g. credits), it follows standard capitalization, what would you go with? I'd personally go with the latter, but I want to see if the majority shares my opinion.

[Kaleb.G]

Originally Posted by the_miker

Good example of that would be this entry right here. You can clearly see on the front cover that the correct capitalization should read "DEWPRISM Original Soundtrack" (the reprint does it right) but for some reason it actually reads "DewPrism Original Soundtrack" instead. I think I'm like the only person on here who's really anal about that kind of thing.

Well, you're not the only one. I just fixed it. I think how I have it now is the best possible way for searchability and readability.