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Song/album titles written entirely in English with tildes

This page gives an example of Best: First Things and Best: Second Session (which are "BEST ~first things~" and "BEST ~second session~", neither of which fit in with the capitalization standards). However, the article W-B-X ~W-Boiled Extreme~ was recently created. The only aspect of the title that does not conform with the standards of any naming thing are the tildes. I argued that because the entire name of the article fits in with the standards, it should be perfectly fine to use the tildes. User:MS disagrees. All he seems to do is enforce this manual of style across the project, and argues against any exceptions for whatever reasons there may be.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 04:42, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

On April 25, User:Prosperosity also disagreed with the placement of the page, but instead moved it to W.B.X. (W-Boiled Extreme) which is not the proper title even if it was to be moved to remove the tildes. For four months, no one has bothered to argue against this, except on user talk pages and in improper moves. I still think that if the tildes are the only thing that is wrong with the title, if the name is parsed entirely in the English alphabet (WP:EN), and if it completely follows the standards for capitalization (WP:CAPS), then tildes should be fine, except for the wording of the manual of style on this project. WP:IAR can be applied here if this is the only "error" in the title that other users perceive.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 01:07, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Correct terminology for Cultural Properties of Japan

I just finished (together with User:Bamse) the article Cultural Properties of Japan. It contains all the correct terminology, in English and Japanese, for things like National Treasures, Important Cultural Properties, Historic Sites, Natural Monuments and so forth. I have linked it to hundreds of other articles and I noticed we badly need some standardization: most people have difficulty translating these terms exactly and, if the translation isn't exact, the link won't work.

Would it be possible/useful to put something about this in the Manual of Style, right after the rules for the names of temples and shrines? I think a couple of lines with the article's link would be enough. I can't think of anything else to attract attention to this resource, but any suggestion is welcome. Urashima Tarō (talk) 06:44, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Being more explicit about pseudonyms in the MoS

Hi all. Years ago, we discussed keeping traditional name order for kabuki actors, and settled upon that as the consensus, on account of slipping them in under conventions on stage names and pseudonyms, and in order to keep lineages looking cleaner and more streamlined (e.g. it would look messy and confusing to have Ichikawa Danjuro VIII but Danjuro Ichikawa IX).

I hope that that consensus still holds.

I wonder if it might be possible to expand the Pseudonyms section of the MoS-JA to be a little more explicit about it including kabuki actors, other traditional arts figures who bear art-names passed down through the generations, etc. (So far as I'm concerned, there's no difference between a kabuki actor like Ichikawa Danjūrō XII, who takes on different names over the course of his career, inherited down through the ages, forming a lineage, and someone like Imafuji Chōtatsurō, one in a long line of Imafuji nagauta shamisen players, who likewise has taken on this traditional-style name as an art-name and stage-name.)

I appreciate that kabuki (and some of these other cases) is a pretty small and niche topic. But on those occasions when people do start moving articles to Western name order, and I go and move it back, I'd rather not have to go and cite a six-year-old Talk page topic which, to be honest, doesn't really read like a solid consensus was reached. If the MoS-JA said more explicitly that it included "art-names passed down through traditional arts lineages, including those of those in the kabuki, Noh, and bunraku theatres" or something to that effect, I think it would be nice.

LordAmeth (talk) 20:28, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

I see no problem with that. Do you have some proposed wording? ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 20:47, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
How about just adding a separate sentence? "This also applies to those who bear art-names or stage names passed down through a traditional arts lineage, such as those in the kabuki, Noh and bunraku theatres. When an art-name or stage name from a traditional arts lineage resembles a name in traditional order (surname followed by given name), use the traditional name order even if the figure in question was born after 1867." It's a bit wordy, and I'd be happy to take suggestions on how to word it better, but I think that clarifying these two points is crucial - that names like Tōsha Roei (a kabuki musician) and Kiyomizu Rokubey VIII (a ceramics artist) *are* art-names (pseudonyms) and that they should be represented in traditional SN-GN name order.
Thanks for your help and understanding. LordAmeth (talk) 19:24, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
I update it to be more explicit. Does that work? ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 04:03, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
Looks good. Thanks! Now we just have to see if it holds, or if small edit wars continue to break out over moving articles to one name order or the other. Yoroshiku! LordAmeth (talk) 20:51, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Attributing translations of Japanese sources

Perhaps this is a question better asked in a more general discussion page, but I thought it's likely someone here has already dealt with this issue, so I wanted to ask here first in case any of you have some guidance. WP:NONENG says we should look for reliable English-language sources, and if not available, reliable translations. If neither is available, we can translate the source ourselves, and add our translation in the article text, ref, or talk page. Supposing a Wikipedian does this...

Surely it's important to cite the source of the translation, especially in cases where a Wikipedian is doing it themselves. So, how do we properly attribute it? I haven't been able to find any cite templates, Manual of Style or Citing Sources guidance on this topic. Wikipedia:Translation discusses attribution of translated articles, but not of translated quotes. Is there a template available, something that would perhaps add a note like quotation translated by User:John Doe?

Thanks, Joren (talk) 01:44, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

What type of Japanese sources for what articles are you asking about? If you are suggesting that you translate Japanese news sources to discuss Japanese subjects that seems pointless. If the subject is Japanese, it's very unlikely that you'll find English language sources about them.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 01:48, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
I am speaking of cases in which someone else does the translation of a source intended to support a claim in an already-existing article on a subject notable-in-English. I am generally not inclined to translate sources myself, but if I did, of course I would want to know any relevant precedent for how to do it properly. Joren (talk) 02:24, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
If they are doing a translation themselves in order to cite it, then the person adding the citation is the one who made the translation and is credited through the edit history of the article. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 02:00, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
Hmm... I guess. Just seems odd that there's not a more visible way to credit the user. If I were to do this, someone else might look at my edit and say, "Did user copy and paste it from somewhere, or did user provide it"? Looking at the history, it's not usually possible to tell. If there were some precedent asking users to credit themselves in the event of a Wiki translation, at least the rest of us would know they were claiming to have done it themselves, and thus (if they're honest) not WP:COPYVIO. I just feel there should be some affirmative way to attribute the translation, and it seems odd that there isn't any policy on this. Joren (talk) 02:24, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps bring it up at WP:CITE, then. That's probably the best place to discuss this. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 03:34, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, will do. Joren (talk) 04:56, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
I honestly do not think that this should be an issue unless you are using Japanese language sources for non-Japanese article subjects.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 05:00, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
I tend to agree. As long as the original source of the translation is provided, anyone who cares to do so can check the translation for accuracy. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 05:25, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
I was more worried about copy-vio/attribution than verifying the accuracy of the translation, but yeah.Joren (talk) 06:59, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
Seems like I encounter these translations more when reading articles about Japanese subjects which are notable in English but which don't have as much thorough source material in English as in Japanese; such Japanese-language sources serve in a supporting role to add detail to the article.Joren (talk) 06:59, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Daimyo vs. Daimyō, general macron usage

I just revisited Tozama daimyo, which I had edited some time ago to contain macrons for various Japanese names in there. However, it now came to my attention that "daimyo" was considered to be an English word by the next editor who thusly removed all macrons (including the ones not on daimyō, but on Mōri etc. as well (also breaking inter-wiki links)).

While I can see that there indeed exist dictionary entries for "daimyo", I would rather have this issue resolved. A casual, meaning not acquainted to Japanese, user would not know what "daimyo" or "daimyō" mean, so he would have to follow a link anyway, yet, with the macron version, he would also know the correct pronunciation after reading up on Hepburn following the little question mark on the first Japanese reference.

As I see it, there is no gain in leaving it "daimyo" -- even if it is in some dictionaries, maybe for a long period of time (I couldn't find dates for daimyo in major dictionaries). So I would put correct romanization over "colloquial usage" that went on before proper romanization systems were thought of. --Tauwasser (talk) 21:05, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Interestingly, there was a discussion related to macron usage just recently at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Japan#Naming about horse races. --armagebedar (talk) 00:17, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Well, we should most likely utilize the same translation/transliteration as we do across the project. If the term is "daimyo" and not "daimyō" on the English Wikipedia, then "Daimyo" should be used on any page referring to it.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 00:22, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
I don't think there's any way "daimyo" can be considered a household word in English, so it should definitely have the macron. Jpatokal (talk) 01:24, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Agree. It should be "daimyō", as it is certainly not an everyday word in English. --MChew (talk) 01:29, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Academics of Japanese history in Anglophone nations use "daimyo" over "daimyō". This more common transliteration (Google: daimyō -daimyo, Google: daimyo, Google: daimyo -daimyō) seems to be the norm.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 03:03, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
On the Internet, the macronless usage is more common for virtually every word (care to find me a counterexample?), but we're an encyclopedia and set higher standards. Jpatokal (talk) 04:44, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
It's a common usage whether you like it or not. Just because it's not Hepburn does not mean it should be forbidden entirely.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 05:48, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia's requirement is not a "household word" in English. See "Sustainability is not yet a household term, says Hartman Group"[1].　Moreover a word called "jargon" may not necessarily be a "everyday word" in English.－－ Phoenix7777 (talk) 01:51, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
The exact wording of the MoS that macrons are to be used "except in cases where the macronless spelling is in common usage". Do you think "daimyo" really is "in common usage", on the level of Tokyo and sumo? Jpatokal (talk) 04:44, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
At least, for the people who read Japanese history books, daimyo is "common usage". See daimyo -daimyō 4,274, daimyō -daimyo 219. "Common usage" is not indicating its notability in English speaking world, instead it is comparative one. Saccopharynx may not be a common name for a ordinary English speaking person, but it is a "common English name" among biologists. －－ Phoenix7777 (talk) 05:43, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
You're misreading the intention of the guideline, which is that if the word is also English, we use the English (macronless) form. But if the word is only Japanese -- and it would be quite a stretch to claim that "daimyo" has been adopted into English -- we always use macrons.
Incidentally, a casual browse of the first half dozen hits for "daimyo -daimyō" on Google Books above shows that, as far as I can see, the books in question never use macrons for any Japanese terms. Jpatokal (talk) 09:50, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Also, there already exists a reasonably comprehensive list of List of English words of Japanese origin (and, yes, "daimyo" is in there). It might be sensible to explicitly link the MOS-JP to this and state that only words listed there should be macronless. (Although this only shifts the problem, as there's plenty of debate about what belongs on that list and what doesn't over at its talk page...) Jpatokal (talk) 10:01, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Then who and how determines daimyo is an English word? Aren't these dictionaries and encyclopedias sufficient?
(Britannica is notorious for overuse of macron. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Japan#Naming about horse races.)
*1 Distinguishes daimyo from Japanese word daimyō.
―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 10:46, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
I do not consider it to be English. And neither does the OED. Bendono (talk) 13:36, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Having read some of those offline scholarly books for several papers, I can attest to the more common usage by academics offline of daimyo over daimyō. As you go further back, accents become more prominent. This is the same for North American publications and British.陣内Jinnai 21:43, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
As you go further back, the incidence of macrons in general decreases. How many of the sources you read used macrons at all? Jpatokal (talk) 01:11, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
Counting works with spanning multiple books as 1 work here, off the top of my head I'd say no more than 2-4. Of those, one I know only used it for less common words (at the time). "Common" words included daimyo. These works span from the 1950s through the early 2000s. This was some time ago so I don't know exact numbers, but I do remember noting that some did, but most didn't.
Books should still be at my library. I just have to remember which they were. I probably won't be able to get to them for a week or 2.陣内Jinnai 05:18, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
I can attest to Jpatokal's claims that most of these books on Japanese do not use macrons at all, even for more obscure words. I would consider it a special jargon used in this field of study, that are not understood by the general populace of major English-speaking countries. I would even be as bold to say, that most of these works don't use macrons because they were a hassle to deal with for the typesetter as well as the typist. I still think that "daimyo" cannot considered to be English, much like Reichstag, Blitzkrieg and many words originating from German words. These words are even used in a regular basis, yet, I think we can all agree that they are not English. Yet, you will also find those in dictionaries ([2], [3] etc.). Therefore, maybe macron usage guidelines should be refined so they cannot be interpreted the one or the other way. --Tauwasser (talk) 19:15, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
I agree that daimyo is not quite common enough to be used as English, but I note its usage is spreading in part due to the popularity of Japanese culture.陣内Jinnai 20:22, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Evangelion opening theme title

For the past however many years, the song with the Japanese title "残酷な天使のテーゼ" has been at the article "A Cruel Angel's Thesis". Sometime in the few weeks, Punk 911 (talk · contribs) attempted a cut paste move to "Zankoku na Tenshi no Thesis", which I reverted. Later, I realized that the page should probably be at the Japanese title, to which I moved it to "Zankoku na Tenshi no These", as "テーゼ" is derivative of the German word for thesis "These" as opposed to using "Tēze" or "Te-ze". A couple of days ago, AndrewTJ31 (talk · contribs) came to me asking me why I had moved the page from the English translated "A Cruel Angel's Thesis" to the Japanese romanicized/transliterated "Zankoku na Tenshi no These" and have been explaining it here. He has been citing other artists' performances of the song (such as Piano Squall) as well as the prevalence of the English translated title in Google, which I have been refuting by citing this manual of style. He has also pointed out WP:SONGS#Naming, despite the fact that I have been telling him this manual of style is what dictates the titles of Japanese song titles.

Where should the page be? The translated title used on Wikipedia for a long time ("A Cruel Angel's Thesis"), the incorrect Japanese transliterated title that shows up a lot in Google ("Zankoku na Tenshi no Thesis"), the translated title used within the ADV dub ("A Thesis of The Cruel Angel"), the version to where I have moved it to attempt to make it the most accurate romanicized/transliterated title ("Zankoku na Tenshi no These"), the Hepburn romanicized title ("Zankoku na Tenshi no Tēze"), or something else?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 01:45, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

It's had an English language release, and they translated the title as "A Cruel Angel's Thesis". Because of that, it should be at that title as that's the official English language release title, and hence the most common English language title. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 02:10, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
I wasn't aware it had ever been released to an Anglophone market.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 04:51, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
Neon Genesis Evangelion has been released in most (if not all) English language markets in the world. "Cruel Angel's Thesis" is the English language title used for the opening theme song in all of them of which I am aware. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 06:44, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
Also, three soundtrack volumes were released in North America, and "Cruel Angel's Thesis" (minus the "A") was the translation used for the theme song. So I would move the song to the title without the "A". ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 06:46, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
I'm referring to the song in an Anglophone market. I know the anime has.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 07:06, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
So am I. If the three soundtrack albums being released in English doesn't count as being released in an "Anglophone market", I don't know what would. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:51, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
You still haven't quoted the line in this MOS that proves your point. AndrewTJ31 (talk) 12:42, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
I was wondering that myself. Even if only the anime had come out, we'd use that translation, surely? I know of no MOS that recommends using Japanese unless there have been no English sources at all. Doceirias (talk) 13:34, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
I merely thought that seeing as it has always been a song composed, written, etc. in Japanese that we should use its Japanese name. I never thought that because there were English releases of the song itself that the translated English title should be used in favor of the Japanese title. Especially when there are multiple translated English titles ("A Thesis of The Cruel Angel" shows up in the English opening sequence, and "Cruel Angel's Thesis" appears on the soundtracks released to the Anglophone market) and only a handful of romanicized/transliterated Japanese titles, the variation only existing because no one was quite sure how to write the word "テーゼ" in the Latin alphabet.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 18:09, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
I suggest going with the soundtrack release version. Thats the translation I've seen and heard the most, as well. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:51, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
I had thought there was something in this MOS that dictated what to use, because AndrewTJ31 cited WP:SONG#Naming which I've never come across before as having anything to do with this subject area.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:23, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
It says to use the official English title (which is going to be the most common title, too). ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 07:44, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
Again, there are no articles on Japanese songs that appear to even pay attention to the fact that WP:SONG exists. Most are Hepburn titles and follow the naming rules of this manual of style. And there are two official English titles, "Cruel Angel's Thesis" (on the English soundtracks) and "A Thesis of The Cruel Angel" (in the English credits). And Google seems to show the Japanese title in romaji as more common than either English title. It was even pointed out to me by Andrew that there is an even more common romaji title (I have an album by a Japanese artist who uses this spelling for the name in the Latin alphabet).—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 08:03, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
Look, you asked about it, I explained what this MOS has to say about it. According to this MOS, the title should be "Cruel Angel's Thesis" (with or with the "A", your choice, really). If there is an English language title, we use it instead of a rōmaji title, regardless of how popular the rōmaji title may appear to be. This is the English Wikipedia, after all. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 08:16, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

What?

I've seen phrases similar to "the official English language release title, and hence the most common English language title" appear on this discussion page more than once. Yet that isn't logical reasoning. It does not follow that just because something is the official English title, it's also the most common title. For instance, Googling "Starzinger" gives 66300 hits and Googling the official English name, "Spaceketeers", gives 27100. The game "Soukyugurentai" gives 43900 hits, while "Terra Diver", the official English name, gives 16500. Ken Arromdee (talk) 22:28, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

A Google search isn't necessarily going to provide accurate results, though, as it doesn't take into account all of the copies of the product out there, or any print-only sources. Those will overwhelmingly use the official English title. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 22:41, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
Spaceketeers never had a release on DVD, so anything remaining is a moldering VHS tape. And it was never marketed as anime, either. It's impossible to count how many VHS tapes are out there, but I would suspect not a lot; none are on Ebay at the moment. Terra Diver was only an arcade game in the US (Japan got several console ports) and just this fact alone means that there are far more copies of the Japanese version floating around in America than the American version. An Ebay search returns 18 Soukyugurentai and no Terra Diver.
And neither of these is likely to have many print-only sources, and if they do they are probably just lists of TV shows or games with little real information. These products are pretty much discussed only by fans, and fans overwhelmingly use the Japanese names despite the existence of an official English name that doesn't match.
I didn't start randomly plugging names into Google until I found one that had more Japanese hits, you know. I used cases I know about, which already have reasons why the Japanese name is more frequently used; the Google search is just confirmation. Ken Arromdee (talk) 16:37, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
Like all these things, there should be exceptions made when a good argument exists, on a case by case basis. Doceirias (talk) 17:54, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
Yes, but the original statement, and its justification, were made as very broad, blanket statements phrased as if they settled the issue with no further argument needed. As such, they're wrong.
And these are just exceptionally clear examples of something that happens all the time. I'd think that something like a Google search would be positive evidence of the Japanese name being more popular, and that if you think it doesn't count because of some contrary possibility, the burden should now be on you to provide evidence for that possibility. Otherwise you're countering evidence with speculation.
There's also the issue of trying to interpret the phrase "most common English title" with extreme literalness. The point is to use the title that's most commonly used by people. Counting the number of copies of a source, in the sense of "this book has 20000 copies printed, so that's 20000 uses," is the wrong way to go about doing it, if human beings aren't using the name that's printed in the book.
(Would you support renaming Terra Diver to Soukyugurentai?)
Ken Arromdee (talk) 15:38, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
The manual is written at least partially with an eye on minimizing arguments about things that are largely impossible to prove. (Many editors reject Google searches out of hand, so it's usually a good idea to find something more authoritative.) When official English titles exist, they are usually assumed to be the most common for the sake of avoiding edit wars over the article title.
I have no opinion on Terra Diver in particular -- never heard of it. I assume you've got reliable sources proving the series is notable, so those sources would be a better argument for deciding the name used than Google is. Doceirias (talk) 15:55, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
You also need to take into account that your experience is likely very skewed, Ken. You are a fan (and have been one for a long time ("Sailor Moon FAQ" and all)), so your experience with what "everyone" uses is more that of "what involved fans use". For every person like you, there are likely at least 10 people who played the game who are not aware that it was originally from Japan, or what the original Japanese title was. Fans are not a good gauge of what the general public does, and that has to be taken into account. That's a big reason why things are worded the way they are. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:01, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

The game came out in arcades 14 years ago, and is considered rare anyway. It's safe to say that the chance of a member of the general public knowing its name is about equal to the chance of a member of the general public knowing something about a random Roman emperor. The only way to play it is to buy the Japanese version (since only the Japanese market ever got a home version), which requires 1) being a fan of 14 year old shmup games, 2) ordering from Japan or from a dealer in Japanese imports, at collectors' prices, 3) having a modchip/country switch or a Japanese console in order to play it, and probably 4) knowing that it's a good game (or why would you import it to begin with?). Anyone who fits those categories is going to be a fan, not a member of the general public.

And if you look at the links on the Terra Diver page, there are six. The first four go to Japanese pages which of course use the Japanese name (reliable sources don't have to be English sources), the next one uses both names but lists the Japanese name first, and the next one has separate pages for both names and appears as the English name only because that's the one the Wikipedia editor decided to link to. And even the image on our own Wikipedia page has the Japanese name in it.

The same goes for Starzinger. The English version was obscure, is extremely old by now, never appeared on DVD, and pretty much only fans care about it. Ken Arromdee (talk) 22:16, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

I'd suggest discussing this at the video game project page, as the specific projects would have more detailed knowledge of how to deal with gray areas like games that were never localized. Doceirias (talk) 23:08, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
Terra Diver was localized. It's just that it was only localized as an arcade game, and most people who deal with it deal with the home version, for obvious reasons (like, you can actually own and play the home version). Ken Arromdee (talk) 14:25, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
Also, as already pointed out, there will always be exceptions which come up. That doesn't mean we're going to change the whole MOS just for that exception. If you can make a good ase for an exception, we're fine with that. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:12, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
What MOS? The MOS just says to use the most common name. It doesn't add "... and the official name is the most common name." That's something that's brought up out of the blue in discussion, it's not part of the MOS. (And if it was in the MOS, we could easily add a qualifier such as "often" or "usually". That isn't really "changing the whole MOS".) Ken Arromdee (talk) 14:07, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
It's in the anime and manga MOS. Again, the particular issue you are dealing with would be covered by the Video Game Project MOS, and there is absolutely no reason for you to be having this conversation here. Go to the Video Game Project, make your case, and see if you can get consensus from the experienced editors there to make an exception to naming conventions -- assuming the Video Game Project even has a variant on this rule, which I wouldn't know, since I've never even looked at their MOS. Doceirias (talk) 15:41, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't see it in the anime and manga MOS. It does say that for characters, we should use the official name regardless of how well known it is, and to only use the most commonly known name if there is no official name. This is nonsense, but it's different nonsense. For titles it says:

Use the most commonly known English titles for article names and place the transliteration of the Japanese on the first line of the article. If it's translated, this is usually the official English translation. If there are multiple official titles, use the one that is best known and that has contributed most to the work's becoming known in the broader English-speaking world.

That statement has the word "usually" in it, so my objection doesn't apply. (It's also phrased strangely, such that the statement about official translations could be interpreted to refer to the transliteration and not the article name.) Ken Arromdee (talk) 15:21, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

MoS naming style

There is currently an ongoing discussion about the future of this and others MoS naming style. Please consider the issues raised in the discussion and vote if you wish GnevinAWB (talk) 20:56, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

How to romanize ここがヘンだよ日本人?

I saw the following article title: Koko ga hen da yo, nihonjin. Seems kind of random that a comma's been inserted in the romanization... what are your thoughts? And is there any established guidance as far as where to put spaces? (e.g. in between particles, da yo vs. dayo...) Thanks! -- Joren (talk) 20:04, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, first off, "Nihonjin" should be capitalized per standard capitalization rules. The comma could change the meaning of the title, depending on what it's supposed to mean. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 20:45, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
So, maybe Koko ga hen da yo Nihonjin? -- Joren (talk) 21:05, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
"Koko ga Hen da yo Nihonjin".—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 21:38, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
Yup, what Ryulong wrote. I've moved the article to Koko ga Hen da yo Nihonjin. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 22:39, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

RFC which could affect this MOS

It has been proposed this MOS be moved to Wikipedia:Subject style guide . Please comment at the RFC GnevinAWB (talk) 20:49, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Saneatsu Mushanokōji

I don't know anything about this guy, but I was looking up a reference to him, and read the Japanese article first. According to the Japanese article, his name -- while usually read Mushanokōji -- was actually Mushakōji, although the reading was occasionally given incorrectly. The man himself appears to have been pretty sure it was Mushakōji. The English sources listed give Mushanokōji, but it seems that might not be accurate. I'm not really sure what to do with this one. Doceirias (talk) 21:53, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

ja.wiki says his surname was once pronounced as むしゃのこうじ, but he apparently said it was an error in how people were pronouncing it?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 21:55, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
What do actual reference say? The following Japanese references at hand have entries for Mushanokōji Saneatsu:
  • Nihon Rekishi Daijiten
  • Nihonshi Jiten
  • Kin-gendai Bungaku Jiten
  • Britannica (Japanese)
  • Mypedia
  • Nikkoku
  • Daijirin
  • Daijisen
None of them attempt to even note an alternative reading, so the point is rather moot if even relevant. The Japanese article neglects to give any references. By the way, this has nothing to do with the MOS-JP. Bendono (talk) 15:39, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
I found a source. Oda Mari (talk) 15:51, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
That's a decent source for any additions we might want to make about alternative readings, but do people think it's enough grounds to move the article? Doceirias (talk) 16:47, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Other languages

The Other languages section currently says a direct katakana to rōmaji transliteration—without macrons—should be used (e.g. ドウモイ becomes "doumoi" rather than "dōmoi"). That's actually rather misleading: even if it were Japanese, ドウモイ would be transliterated doumoi, and even if not Japanese, ドーモイ is still dōmoi. Is there a better example of what this is trying to say, or should it just be nuked? Jpatokal (talk) 12:28, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

ドウ is "dō" in Hepburn romaji. The section should say not to use Hepburn romaji for Ainu or Ryukyuan or whatever other languages use katakana as their alphabet.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 13:44, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
No, it's not. (Didn't you learn anything from last time?) For foreign words (incl. Ainu and Ryukyuan), ドウ is IPA /doɯ/ (two distinct vowels), while ドー is the long vowel /doː/. The only exceptions are a limited number of Japanese words used primarily in scientific names.
ja:長音符 puts it well: 長音符は主に片仮名で外来語（例：テーブル）や擬音・擬態語（例：ニャーン、シーッ）の長音を 表記する場合に使われる。現代の日本語の表記では外来語や擬音・擬態語以外で片仮名を使う場合は限られているが、外来語や擬音・擬態語以外では、片仮名表 記であっても原則として長音符は使わず、下記の平仮名と同様の方法で長音を表す（例：シイタケ、フウトウカズラ、セイウチ、ホウセンカ、オオバコ）。(emphases mine) Jpatokal (talk) 22:52, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
The section has nothing to do with that block of text or that discussion we had twice, because this manual of style never changed and it still tells people that if it's ドウ or ドー, for all intents and purposes it should be written in Hepburn as dō if it is a Japanese word or one of the loan words the Japanese language has acquired over the past 200 years of foreign interaction (and let's please not go through that shit again). The "other languages" section is just describing what one should do with words of Ainu or Ryukyuan origin, such as アイヌモシㇼ being romanized as Ainu mosir (even though sometimes アイヌ is "Aynu" and other times it's "Ainu") and not Ainu moshiri, and ウチナー being romanized as Uchinaa and not Uchinā.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 00:04, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
Ryūlóng is correct: that section only applies to non-Japanese languages which use katakana. It applies to nothing else. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 02:13, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
I understand that perfectly, but what I'm saying is that the section as written makes no sense.
First, Ainu has an "accepted standard transliteration" directly into romaji, so according to the MoS we should be using "Aynu", not Ainu. And in fact we already are: see eg. Ainu language, which starts off with "Ainu (Ainu: アイヌ・イタㇰ, Aynu itak)". See List of Ainu terms for a handy cheat sheet of correct romaji spellings.
Second, if we use it as an example anyway, a "direct katakana to romaji translation" of アイヌモシㇼ is A-i-nu-mo-shi-r in Hepburn, or A-i-nu-mo-si-r in Kunrei. So is that section trying to say "use Hepburn", in which case it's redundant, or "don't use Hepburn", in which case it doesn't define what, exactly, should be used instead? (JSL!?) Jpatokal (talk) 06:47, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
Well, aside from the fact that all pages on the Ainu/Aynu on the English Wikipedia appear to be using the Japanese spelling (full sized イ), but this appears to be the fact for all websites that try to write in the Ainu language (because the smaller sized katakana outside of the vowels, tsu, and the Y's are near impossible to type). But the section says that the methods for romanizing those languages (which is not direct romaji for Ainu, but it is for Ryukyu) should be used and not Hepburn or Kunrei or anything. Your example for "a-i-nu-mo-shi/si-r" is not Hepburn or Kunrei, because the "r" phoneme does not exist in the language those systems are meant to romanize. Right now, the only issue that you think exists is that Hepburn means that ドウ should be dou and not dō, even if it is used in a gairaigo word. This is not the case. If it is in nihongo, wasei-eigo, or gairaigo, ドウ is dō.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 07:25, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
You keep using this weird phrase "direct romaji" -- what exactly does it mean? Katakana is a language-independent script, converting it to another script requires transliteration, and the acknowledged transliteration standards for converting katakana into Latin script are Hepburn and Kunrei. So do you mean one of these two, or something else?
And while you're at it, can you please explain why you disagree with the MOS and think that ドウモイ should be spelled dōmoi, while simultaneously holding the opinion that ウチナー should be uchinaa? Jpatokal (talk) 08:32, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
"Direct romaji" is effectively Wapuro or modified Hepburn, but doubling the vowel with ー instead of writing "[vowel]-". Also, I do not disagree with the MOS at all. In Japanese (Nihongo), ドウモイ is dōmoi in Hepburn romaji. There's nothing in the MOS that says that it should be written as "doumoi" as you believe. In Okinawan (Uchinaaguchi), ウチナー is Uchinaa because there is no standard method of romanizing the Okinawan and other Ryukyuan languages, so we go with the wapuro method.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 08:54, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

(undent) Now that's a remarkable piece of chutzpah -- because until you started screwing around with it yesterday, the MOS stated (bold mine):

If no accepted standard transliteration method for that language exists, and the word is generally written in katakana in Japanese, a direct katakana to rōmaji transliteration—without macrons—should be used (e.g. ドウモイ becomes "doumoi" rather than "dōmoi").

Your definition of "direct romaji" is nonsensical, since we're transliterating from kana into Latin. The issue is thus not "how to write a long vowel", but "how to represent the kana ドウ or ナー with Latin letters". And you're really tying yourself in knots here anyway, since if we "go with the wapuro method", then ウチナー is uchinaa and ドウモイ is doumoi! (ドウモイ, in case you didn't realize, is also an Okinawan word.) Jpatokal (talk) 09:31, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

My arguments are based on the fact that the word ドウモイ if it existed in the modern Japanese language it would be parsed as dōmoi in the romaji systems we use on the English Wikipedia. I am not saying that ドウモイ is dōmoi in romanizing Okinawan, which is why the table uses that word. The wapuro/modified Hepburn method is used only for the Ryukyuan languages. Revised Hepburn is used only for Japanese and Aynu/Ainu has its own method.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 09:41, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
OK, now you're finally starting to make some sense, and I'm glad to see you've changed your mind regarding Ainu and you've admitted your mistake re: domoi.
Now please explain why we should use modified Hepburn for Okinawan, instead of revised Hepburn? In addition to the obvious advantage of staying consistent, the macroned spelling seems more common as well: Google gets me 21,900 hits for uchināguchi, vs under 7000 for uchinaaguchi. Jpatokal (talk) 22:59, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
Both modified and revised Hepburn are for transliterating nihongo. There is no method for transliterating uchinaaguchi. Some people use Uchinaa. Some use Uchina. I was recently watching a video of a man teaching the language, and while he referred to it as uchinaaguchi (there were English subtitles), in various points when his speech was being subtitled in the English alphabet, the ー was used but the romaji did not make note of that extended vowel. I mentioned modified Hepburn because it appears the closest to what was originally meant by "direct kana to romaji", and wapuro produces its own problems.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 23:20, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
Nope: transliteration is the process of changing from one script to another. Since the kana used to write Okinawan are the same as those used for Japanese, the same transliteration systems can be used as well. But you didn't answer the question: why use modified, when we use revised for everything else on WP? Jpatokal (talk) 03:00, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
That's not right, just look at talk:Kiev the script conversion is from Cyrillic to Latin, but "Kiev" is Russian while "Kyiv" is Ukrainian. 76.66.195.196 (talk) 13:06, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
It's a different language. The rules in one don't apply to the other. And I only suggested modified Hepburn because it is the closest to what was meant for "direct kana to romaji" as it was originally written. Okinawan is not Japanese. They are related, but it is not a dialect. If there was a standard method to romanizing Okinawan, it'd be in use on the English Wikipedia. There isn't one so we have to decide on one. Because it is not Japanese, we do not use the system we use to romanize Japanese on this project. We use something else to show that it is a different language, in the rare instances where it is used (sata andagi, Okinawa Prefecture, Ryukyuan languages, etc.).—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 03:52, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
Let me get this straight -- you're arguing that you intentionally want to adopt a different style of Hepburn "to show that it is a different language"? How does that work when the word has no long vowels, and isn't that why we slap tags like "Okinawan:" or "Ainu:" in front of any non-English terms? Jpatokal (talk) 09:06, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
It's not Japanese. Let me bluntly ask you this: Why the fuck should we use a Japanese romanization system to romanize it?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 13:50, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
1) Kana is originally a Japanese script.
2) Both revised and modified Hepburn were originally designed for transcribing Japanese. Jpatokal (talk) 23:02, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
Uchinaaguchi uses kanji/hanzi, hiragana, and katakana in a method that is extremely separated from mainland Japanese. So we shouldn't use the system that we use exclusively for Japanese on this project.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 00:21, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

(undent) I'm increasingly puzzled by your assertions.

  1. Both modified and revised Hepburn are used for Japanese and for Okinawan (cf. the Google search above, which returns hits for both).
  2. Modified and revised Hepburn are phonologically identical, the only difference is in the rendering of long vowels. Both are thus equally suited (or equally unsuitable) for rendering Okinawan kana. Jpatokal (talk) 01:08, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
Okinawan and its related languages do not have a standardized method for romanization. To show it is different from Japanese, we here at the English Wikipedia, in the rare instances where we do discuss the languages, should use a different method to romanize it than we do for Japanese. Because most people who romanize the Okinawan languages use the "double all long vowels" instead of macrons or circumflexes, we should use that rather than revised Hepburn. The closest this comes to for methods that we do have a name for is modified Hepburn. That is why I suggested that name, because it is effectively the name for the method that was in use beforehand, such as at Okinawan language, sata andagi, Okinawa Prefecture, etc.
Exactly what about what I'm saying is confusing? Because we use Revised for Nihongo, we should use something else for Uchinaaguchi, and that something else is generally Modified.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 02:48, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Points

  1. a different romanization method would be useful to indicate that it isn't Japanese, if you use a wapuro like system as Ryulong suggests, that's fine by me, and would be useful in pointing out that it is different, especially in articles that use both Japanese and Okinawan/Ryukyu terms.
  2. just because it uses the same script does not mean it automatically uses the same romanization. Just look at Ukrainian, which uses the same script as Russian, but different romanizations. This is where the arguments that take up Talk:Kiev come up... where Ukrainian romanization is "Kyiv" and Russian romanization is "Kiev".
    • If you want an example of romanization closer to Japan, look at tongyong pinyin and hanyu pinyin, both used for Mandarin romanization, but for different countries. (well, formerly for Taiwan, and the mainland, respectively).

76.66.195.196 (talk) 13:14, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Isn't the "Okinawan:" and "Japanese:" label more than enough to indicate what language we're talking about? There are plenty of words that will look identical in revised and modified,
There is an accepted standard of romanization for Ainu, and we are using it. However, there is no standard that we've been able to find for Okinawan languages. Jpatokal (talk) 22:59, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
Stop going around in fucking circles, Jpatokal. Okinawan and the Ryukyuan languages don't have a standardized method. We know that. And this has nothing to do with indicating that an item is in either language. The thing is that in general when the Okinawan language is romanized, they go with writing ウチナー as Uchinaa instead of Uchina, Uchiná, Uchinà, Uchinâ, Uchinä, Uchinǎ, Uchinā, Uchinã, Uchinå, or Uchiną. So for all intents and purposes, we should use the system that uses that method of indicating extended vowels which is, as far as Wikipedia's articles on romanizing Japanese is concerned, "modified Hepburn". Except for the handful of phonemes unique to the Ryukyuan languages (てぃ ti, とぅ tu, をぅ wu, くぃ kwi), modified Hepburn will be fine as a romanization method for Wikipedia when it comes to romanizing these languages, and any other language spoken in Japan that is not Japanese or Ainu. This is what the MOS said before Nihonjoe and I's slight rewording for clarity, and until you thought that it was a travesty that we're not using revised Hepburn for a Japonic language's transliteration.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 23:15, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
Got cite for "in general when the Okinawan language is romanized..."? As stated earlier, Google gets me 21,900 hits for uchināguchi, vs under 7000 for uchinaaguchi. And oh, we're having this discussion because I questioned the MOS's odd choice of words. Jpatokal (talk) 08:29, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
Did you click the Omniglot link? Also Google makes no determination between letters with or without diacritics, so therefore you are getting all of the results for "Uchinaguchi" in addition to the ones you are getting for "Uchināguchi". To be more accurate, here's a search for uchināguchi -uchinaguchi (84 hits). So technically, the most common search result is for "Uchinaguchi" (18,800 hits). But this method does not show the extended vowels. Therefore, we should use the method that shows extended vowels and has the next highest hit count: "Uchinaaguchi".—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 13:24, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Ikimono-gakari -> Ikimono Gakari?

Recently, the article Ikimono-gakari has been edited to change the name first to Ikimonogakari and then to Ikimono Gakari. I reverted the changes based on the official website's use of "ikimono-gakari" as the title string and the lack of either "Ikimonogakari" or "Ikimono Gakari" anywhere else on the site (to my knowledge; I used various search strings on Google: see: "Ikimono-gakari" [4] and "Ikimono+Gakari"). I did this based on my understanding of MOS:JAPAN#Names of companies, products, and organizations, which favors the official Romanizations over what is "common". I pointed to the MoS in my edit summary explaining the reversion.

After I made this edit, the article was moved by a sysop to Ikimono Gakari with the justification that this is the more common name for the band. I'm concerned about the move for two reasons:

  1. I don't believe its actually been established which is the more common Romanization; no sources were supplied to substantiate that. So far, the only thing I can find is that Google suggests an autocorrection to Ikimono Gakari, which is hardly official. In fact, searching for the term "Ikimono Gakari" on google will list sites that use "ikimono-gakari" and vice versa as well.
  2. Even if it is more common, it seems that is not relevant to how we Romanize articles as long as there is an official reading. And since the official homepage ikimonogakari.com only has the version with the dash (ikimono-gakari), I believe the move does not conform with this manual of style.

However, the user that moved it is a sysop, so this is beyond my level of comfort in attempting to apply the MoS, so I've posted here in order that either my understanding of the MoS can be corrected, a more official source of which I am unaware can be revealed, or, consensus can be reached on how the article should be named in a way that reflects the MoS guidelines. Thank you,

-- Joren (talk) 19:21, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

What does the band use? That's always the one that is used regardless of any fandom spellings.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:44, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
Agreed. Their website uses ikimono-gakari and a discussion post in Talk:Ikimono-gakari has been made to the effect that ikimono-gakari is used in their albums as well.
-- Joren (talk) 20:20, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Official and literal translations in the first segment of the nihongo template?

Moved this down as it is a separate issue. The new endless discussion in the compromise section is already more than enough. Prime Blue (talk) 10:50, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

And as for putting independent official translations or literal translations first: As Jinnai said, you have to find a way to keep the sentence both factually accurate and/or verifiable. But I don't think there is a way to make it sound natural.
  • Sailor Moon, Japanese title officially translated to Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon (美少女戦士セーラームーン, Bishōjo Senshi Sērā Mūn), [...] Prime Blue (talk) 12:03, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
  • Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King, Japanese title literally translated to The Little King and the Promised Kingdom: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles (小さな王様と約束の国 ファイナルファンタジー・クリスタルクロニクル, Chiisana Ōsama to Yakusoku no Kuni: Fainaru Fantajī Kurisutaru Kuronikuru), [...]
I'll voice an honest "ew" there. First and foremost, we give foreign titles not commonly known in English-speaking countries, their translations are to be provided additionally if need be. Prime Blue (talk) 12:03, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
Couldn't we just have something like:
  • Sailor Moon, also known as Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon[1] (美少女戦士セーラームーン, Bishōjo Senshi Sērā Mūn)
or with more clarity...
  • Sailor Moon, also known as Pretty Soldier Sailor Moonofficial translation[2] (美少女戦士セーラームーン, Bishōjo Senshi Sērā Mūn)
or if we insist on having phrasing...
  • Sailor Moon, also known as Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon, officially translated[3] as (美少女戦士セーラームーン, Bishōjo Senshi Sērā Mūn)
  • Sailor Moon, officially translated[4] as Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon (美少女戦士セーラームーン, Bishōjo Senshi Sērā Mūn)
It seems usable to me. If there are ways we could make it more natural...? (I'm just trying to think of ways we can save space that don't require hiding/omitting the Romaji to try and arrive at a compromise.)
-- Joren (talk) 02:45, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

The problem with that is that to English speakers, works are not known by their translated foreign title in the overwhelming majority of cases (Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon being one of the few ambiguous ones). Take, for example:

  • Castlevania, also known as Devil's Castle Dracula (悪魔城ドラキュラ, Akumajō Dorakyura)[5], is a [...]

People will say "Huh? Never heard that one around here." The descriptive wording "in Japan" will have to be added to identify where it came from, otherwise giving the foreign title itself is useless. And by adding "in Japan", we create a contradiction as it is not known by this English title in Japan. For literal translations, it's even more problematic:

  • The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, also known as The Legend of Zelda: The Dreaming Island (ゼルダの伝説 夢をみる島, Zeruda no Densetsu Yume o Miru Shima), is an [...]

Italics for literal translations are highly problematic as these were never identified as the "right" work titles. On WP:VG, for example, people use quotation marks to signify a translation is not official, thus making it this going that route:

  • The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, also known as "The Legend of Zelda: The Dreaming Island" (ゼルダの伝説 夢をみる島, Zeruda no Densetsu Yume o Miru Shima), is an [...]

Oy.

If this is just about saving space, one could also drop the foreign title with official anglicizations (e.g. Zelda no Densetsu), thus making it:

  • Sailor Moon, known as Bishōjo Senshi Sērā Mūn (美少女戦士セーラームーン, officially translated Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon) in Japan, is a [...]
  • The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, known as Zeruda no Densetsu Yume o Miru Shima (ゼルダの伝説 夢をみる島, lit. "The Legend of Zelda: The Dreaming Island") in Japan, is an [...]

But it would not get around numbered titles like Baten Kaitos II (though there, the pronunciation does not even seem to be known). Prime Blue (talk) 10:50, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

My proposals were mainly aimed at the earlier objection that in some instances, it is preferred to have the literal translation appear first. I'm not actually a proponent of that system, but I wanted to come up with some ways to save space. I'm still not even sure why it's such a big deal, but then I'm not really familiar with the FA process either.
-- Joren (talk) 19:53, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
It is because the English wikipedia's aim to serve English-speaking people who a vast majority do not know every language they will come across in Wikipedia and that those people want English to always go first because everyone should be able to understand the English wording without their eyes glazing over. WP:FLC is in a similar boat, but they're a wee bit more lenient, but most of them also want literal English in tables and the like and actual names listed in the prose for reasons already listed. Neither of them seem to think the original text should (as a rule) should go first.
That's why I think finding some way to phrase items that won't cause conflicts and lead to angry wikipedian feature article/list nominators should be devised.陣内Jinnai 21:38, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

I propose the following solution:

  • English Title in the English World, known in Japan as as English Title in Japan (kana, romaji, translation), is a [...].

Thoughts? Megata Sanshiro (talk) 22:50, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

So if I understand correctly, we need a way to phrase it that's better than "known in Japan as", because that would imply that it is primarily known by its English title in Japan (which may or may not be true, esp. in cases of unofficial/lit. translation) ? Hmm... yeah that is difficult. Can't have the Japanese first b/c of FA process, and can't have the English first b/c it probably isn't actually "known" by that title. And I guess Romaji first isn't gonna please anybody?  :)
-- Joren (talk) 01:49, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
Why not the following?

English Title in the Anglophone world (kana, romaji, English Title in Japan and/or literal translation of Japanese title if it's different)

—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 01:52, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, that was kind of my reaction too, the first time this was brought up - the English already comes first, because of the Anglophone title being the first thing in the article. However, I think what Jinnai is saying may be that the English has to come first in all titles in the lede paragraph, and the released-in-Japan title (is/may be) an entirely separate product name from the Anglophone-world title. I believe the argument is that FAC/FLC requires all titles in the lede paragraph to lead with the literal translation. Am I getting this right, Jinnai? (and how can we do that, if that's the case, with something more accurate than "known in Japan as" for unofficial translations?)
-- Joren (talk) 02:13, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
Jinnai: Literal translations should always go in the third position in the parenthesis. I don't really see where the problem is. Official title first and literal translations in the parenthesis.
Example: Sailor Moon, known in Japan as Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon (美少女戦士セーラームーン, Bishōjo Senshi Sērā Mūn).
Or am I mistaken and Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon isn't an official title? If it's not official it shouldn't be there. Megata Sanshiro (talk) 09:36, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
Problem is, it will most likely be known in Japan as Bishōjo Senshi Sērā Mūn, not as Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon (verifiability issue). I explained here why wordings like "released/known as English title in Japan" only cause problems for literal translations and official translations independently released from the work itself. Prime Blue (talk) 09:52, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
Well if it wasn't released as Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon then that isn't the official title (official translation != official title). Official Title from the Front Page/Cover Box (kana, romaji, translation), with the translation in italics or quotation marks depending on who translated it. By the way, the reference used for the Castlevania title doesn't seem to verify Devil's Castle Dracula. Megata Sanshiro (talk) 10:19, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
Dorakyura = Dracula was a given, we just needed an official translation for Akumajō, which was often translated to "Demon Castle". Prime Blue (talk) 16:28, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
Sounds like original research to me. The literal translation should be used instead. Megata Sanshiro (talk) 17:37, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
Hardly original research, a source is given for the disputed part. If we want to take it in the absolutely strictest sense possible, it's "Akumajō officially translated Devil's Castle". But I see no reason to, since Dorakyura is just that: Dracula. For Konami, too. Prime Blue (talk) 19:37, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
Unfortunately that is still original research as "Akumajō" is not Akumajō Dracula. You can't just search for translations of parts of the title in other contexts and assemble them to make a full title that doesn't occur as such in official materials. When the translator wrote "Devil's Castle", he was translating a sentence in a game, not the title Akumajō Dracula. In this case it seems pretty straightforward but what if there were more than 2 or 3 words in the title, what if there were different translations of the terms in the different games? And what if there are different translations available for the proper names? For instance, would you say that Rockman Battle & Fighters is "officially translated as Mega Man Battle & Fighters"? I think it's much less controversial to just use a literal translation. Megata Sanshiro (talk) 08:26, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
I answered here, I think this is really nothing to be discussed at this talk page any further. Prime Blue (talk) 14:20, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

@Joren - yes. It's pretty much an uphill battle for anyone who doesn't want an English translation displayed first (doesn't matter where it goes in the wikicode).陣内Jinnai 19:16, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Ok, so let's work on that. The problem's gonna be that pesky "known in Japan as" phrasing. What do we do with it that will avoid misleading the user? Could we do something like "Translated as Unofficial Translation[6], Official 日本語 (Official nihongo ?) was released in Japan in 2011 by (etc.)"?
Also, forgive my ignorance, but is this codified anywhere in the Wikipedia:Featured_article_criteria? I tried looking through some of the links there, but didn't get very far finding anything regarding literal translations. It does say it has to follow all style guides, and MOS:Japan is a style guide, after all...so I'm wondering if there's another style guide encouraging the use of literal translations first that I'm not aware of.
-- Joren (talk) 20:21, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
I believe its been under 1a, "well written" is when asked. Did a bit more research and it seems they base it off of WP:PRON which requires English first.陣内Jinnai 23:25, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for digging it up. So... from WP:PRON#Foreign names:
When a foreign name has a set English pronunciation (or pronunciations), include both the English and foreign-language pronunciations; the English transcription must always be first. If the native name is different from the English name, the native transcription must appear after the native name.
The example provided is interesting; Venezuela, which (in Spanish) is known as the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. In the approved example, no provision is made for an actual English translation of the official Spanish name, but República Bolivariana de Venezuela is simply given as the Spanish name for Venezuela. What we are trying to do is more analogous to listing "Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela" as a separate name, with its own Spanish and the English translation -- which incidentally, the actual Venezuela article has done. Of course, in their case, doubtless that is an official translation...
I'm not really that opposed to listing the translation first; it's just a matter of implementation. So any ideas for how we can phrase it other than "known in Japan as" or "released in Japan as"?
-- Joren (talk) 00:36, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
Well we have 2 types of sentances that it would need to handle:
  1. Those that begin with the word(s), FE most opening lead sentences.
  2. Those that have the wording in the middle, usually secondary titles or related items in both the lead and body.
To make certain both work we could add another nihongo template for litteral translations coming first where it alters the text so that it reads School Rumble: Work-out Girl Raising released in Japan as スクールランブル ねる娘は育つ (School Rumble: Neru Ko wa Sodatsu). Maybe not that, but I think its going to have to be something along those lines with the romaji either shown or hidden.陣内Jinnai 02:15, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
Hmm... ok, but we still need to deal with situations where the product actually has multiple names (not just translations from the same name). I'm trying to figure out how this could work. Let's try an example. A-Train is a game known as "A-Train" in the Anglophone world (probably due to the naming of the EU ports) and "A列車で行こう" (Let's Take the A Train) in Japan. For the sake of discussion, let's pretend there isn't an official translation, and that I have a source for the assertion that it's known internationally as A-Train. Per WP:UCN, we would have to list the most commonly known name first. So how could we do this?
A-Train, or Let's Take the A Train[7] (A列車で行こう[8], A ressha de ikō) is a series of train simulation video games originally created and published by Japanese game studio Artdink, with some of the series being translated and released in English-speaking markets as simply A-Train.
How would this do? Does this have enough information, or do we need to clarify more? We could also consider using notations such as (official), (unofficial)or (translation) to make it clearer which is which.
-- Joren (talk) 04:56, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
Jinnai, to be honest I still don't understand what the problem was with English Title in the English World, known in Japan as English Title in Japan (kana, romaji, translation). "English Title in Japan" should be what's written in English on the Japanese front page/box art, and "translation" can be either official or literal. In which case would this format be problematic? Megata Sanshiro (talk) 08:26, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
I haven't read all of the above (only skimmed it), but I have a comment. We don't need a literal translation included unless it is materially different than the English title. In articles I've worked on, I've found the most natural way to list a title in the first sentence is something along the lines of this:

A-Train (A列車で行こう, Ei Ressha de Ikō, lit. Let's Take the A-Train) is a Sony PlayStation game...

It's short, simple, straightforward, and easy to read, and it incorporates everything it needs to. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 06:00, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for your comment; to summarize, I believe the idea is that titles that are materially different would be considered separate product titles, and Jinnai's been saying that each (Japanese) title would need its own English translation to be listed first in order to meet the featured article criteria, said to be based on WP:PRON#Foreign names. We've been trying to figure out a way to accommodate this concern.
-- Joren (talk) 07:46, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Sorry to say I am a bit confused. Is this a separate conversation than the adding of romaji to katakana names? Is there an article that has been promoted to featured article status that is about a product with different names in the UK and the US, for example. There is this list but there seems to be no standard there, either? XinJeisan (talk) 12:13, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

This is about titles that have no official English translation and only a litteral translation is there. Part of it may be Japanese loanwords as katakana and the rest as hiragana or kanji, like a main title being in katakana, but the subtitle in hiragana. Even if an official translation does not exist, an english translation goes first and we need to make it clear that if we use a litteral translation it is not an official translation nor was it ever released as such. Even if the title is all English words rendered in katakana this doesn't change.陣内Jinnai 01:01, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
Jinnai. How does the format

A-Train (A列車で行こう, Ē Ressha de Ikō, lit. Let's Take the A-Train) is a Sony PlayStation game...

not work and do you have a guideline or policy that states that it's not correct?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 01:38, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
I'm not saying that's not acceptable (although I still would prefer the pronunciation as a tooltip, but that's not relevant here). What I'm saying is we need a way for cases where there is no official translation. Ie using your above example, if A-Train wasn't a recognized translation and all you had to go on was the litteral translation, Let's Take the A-Train,陣内Jinnai 01:49, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
If there's no official translation, then

A-Ressha de Ikō (A列車で行こう, Ē Ressha de Ikō, lit. Let's Take the A-Train)

should be used.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 02:41, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
That's the problem. No place else uses that (unless its the commonly used word, which usually only occurs if its become a loanword to the English language. An English translation has to come first, not an romaji pronunciation as that is what it is intended for and how it will be looked at. The English equivalent for A列車で行こう is not A-Ressha de Ikō. It is Let's Take the A-Train and that is what will be required because, not only of WP:PRON, but because there is a larger consensus in Wikipedia that English comes first in the English Wikipedia. PRON just reinforces that and any FAC/FLC will have to conform to that therefore a solution that puts Let's Take the A-Train first is needed.陣内Jinnai 03:58, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
If there's no standardized English title, then it's providing false information to the readers to give them the literal translation first and say that that is the title of the game. If there is no official English title, you give the romanized title with items that are generally English translated into English. Look at the Fire Emblem games. Fire Emblem: Ankoku Ryū to Hikari no Tsurugi does not have an English title, but we still give the English version of "Fire Emblem" and the romanized version of the subtitle because that is what the game is known as in Japan. In the case of later games where the English title is different like Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, we have the official English title, and then a literal translation of the Japanese title, the Japanese title in Japanese text, and then the romanized version of that text. There's nothing wrong with that, nor is there anything wrong with the version I implemented at A-Train.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 22:52, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

If we don't specify the origin of the foreign title, the foreign title alone is useless and confusing to readers. And putting all titles in the same nihongo template will also cause immense readability issues in cases of long foreign titles, see the Oracle games. Also, as a general note because most don't seem to know, foreign titles not commonly used in English are not bolded per WP:BOLDTITLE. And on why I find the usage of italics strange for literal translations, see the second part here. Prime Blue (talk) 14:27, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

So in the case of the A-Train example above, if we were to do translation-first titling, how would you phrase it? The phrasing is what drives me batty; there just seems to be no natural way to specify the origin without specifying more than you mean to; e.g. NOT "released in Japan as English (Japanese, Romaji)" for reasons mentioned above. Should we do something longer but more specific, like "Unofficially translated, the Japanese release is Let's Take the A Train[9] (A列車で行こう[10], A ressha de ikō)"? If you were to create a solution accommodating these concerns, how would you phrase the A-Train example?
-- Joren (talk) 18:06, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
See my awkward attempts above, I can't think of anything (12:03, 7 August 2010). I don't think there is any way to make "translations first for separate foreign titles" sound natural, at least not with a short phrasing that is both factually accurate and verifiable. Prime Blue (talk) 18:43, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
How about you, Jinnai -- Any ideas? (e.g. how would you handle the A-Train example?) Otherwise then I guess we'd just have to go with adding phrases that explicitly state that it's a translation of a Japanese release title, which will make it take up more space :-) but at least it will be accurate.
-- Joren (talk) 19:37, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

About WP:PRON: As Joren noted above with the Venezuela example, I think WP:PRON talks about transcriptions rather than translations, so:

  • "Spain" first instead of "España"
  • "Quebec" first instead of "Québec"
  • "Moscow" first instead of "Moskva"

And, of course, it only applies to non-separate mentions of the foreign title. Prime Blue (talk) 14:47, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Shouldn't there be a translation in a reliable source? Whether its official or not? If a title isn't listed in an English language source with an English language title (or even the untranslated Japanese title), it is going to have verifiability problems. In that case, I would tend to agree with Ryulong that if there is no official translation, the Japanese title should come first -- unless it is translated by someone in a reliable source, then that English translation should be used. Redirects could be used for various English translations to help people find the article.

This might be unique to Japanese articles, but that might be due to the influence that Japanese pop culture has on the world today.

There is also the example of novels like Natsume Soseki's novels Kokoro or Kairo-kō, which have untranslated titles. XinJeisan (talk) 16:38, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

XinJeisan (talk) 16:38, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

About reliable sources for literal translations, see my comment above (05:25, 12 July 2010). I guess this is also covered by WP:UE, which basically says "translate it but keep it accurate and English". For official translations that were given independently from the work itself (e.g. in a later soundtrack release or an artbook), we use the primary source in which this translation is provided (for example Wander and the Colossus). These "independent" official translations must always have a reference. Then there are works that are given an official translation in the work itself, e.g. It's a Wonderful World. There, we don't need a reference as the title is on the box art and should be a commonly known fact. Prime Blue (talk) 18:55, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
@Joren - sorry for the delay. IMO it should be something like:
  • Let's Take the A Train,[Note 1] released in Japan as A列車で行こう (A ressha de ikō)
  • It flows much more smoothly and reduces the number of notations by one. Unfortunalty, I cannot figure out a way of doing it without any notes that doesn't sound clunky. The best without notations I can come up with is:
  • Let's Take the A Train, the literal translation of Japanese book A列車で行こう (A ressha de ikō), 陣内Jinnai 19:28, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, but that plainly doesn't work. What is the problem with

A Ressha de Ikō (A列車で行こう, Ē Ressha de Ikō, lit. "Let's Take the A Train") is a Japanese arcade game...

or

A Ressha de Ikō (A列車で行こう, Ē Ressha de Ikō), literally translated as Let's Take the A Train, is a Japanese arcade game...

? If it's not the official English title, then we should not be treating it as such. The article would be at "A Ressha de Ikō" anyway if the game was not known as "A Train". And I've yet to see any sort of commentary or references to other discussions that say a literal English translation always has to be first if no English trade name has been established.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 20:10, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
Namespace titles aren't covered by the same thing as text body because they serve different purposes. They are covered by WP:COMMONNAME and in this case for translations are covered by WP:PRON and its clear that English comes first. Romaji, as you've argued all this time, is not English. You can't say it is now when you've said its not before. Discussions don't need to be shown as PRON supercedes this guideline here.陣内Jinnai 21:40, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
I"m not saying it's romaji. I'm saying that the romanicized Japanese name is going to be the common name, rather than the literally translated English name. WP:PRON doesn't have any bearing on that.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 21:57, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
Commonname has no bearing on that and really, if you want to go with that logic, then the more common name would not have any of the non-standard characters like ō and ū. Instead they would use "o" and "u" or "ou" and "uu".陣内Jinnai 00:27, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
The most common name would be the Japanese one, which we would have to romanize in the method by which we romanize that language.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 02:25, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
Gotta agree with Ryulong on this one. Seems like someone has been blowing this part of the discussion way out of proportion. WP:PRON is about pronunciations - i.e. IPA. This has nothing to do titles. Pronunciations are generally not necessary when dealing with titles (unless the words are invented, like Pokémon). We should simply use English Title in the English World, known in Japan as English Title in Japan (kana, romaji, translation) and be done with. Unlike the big discussion above about romanization of loanwords, the problem here is totally imaginary. Megata Sanshiro (talk) 11:31, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
Also I moved this section down on the page as it as nothing to do with the discussion about romanization of loanwords. Megata Sanshiro (talk) 11:37, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Still a strong oppose for giving translations of work titles first because of reasons I already mentioned in this section above, and another oppose for putting foreign and common English work titles in the same nihongo template. Prime Blue (talk) 15:26, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Tildes in quoted Japanese text

When titles of things including tildes are quoted (for example...in "Tegami (Haikei Jūgo no Kimi e)," 手紙 ～拝啓 十五の君へ～), which tilde should we use? Should this be standardised? There are three possibilities:

  • 〜拝啓 十五の君へ〜
  • ～拝啓 十五の君へ～
  • ~拝啓 十五の君へ~

〜 is used predominantly on the Japanese Wikipedia, but seemingly nowhere else (with ～ being by far the most common on Japanese websites). --Prosperosity (talk) 07:58, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

I prefer the ～. It is the full width tilde, while 〜 is the wave dash.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 20:41, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Template:Contains Japanese text about to be spread again

Previous discussion: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles)/misc19#Contains Japanese text template

At Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of National Treasures of Japan (crafts: swords)/archive1, a reviewer has asked for the template to be added to the article. In the linked previous discussion, editors of this page indicated that they deemed the template redundant. I thought some of them might like to defend that position at the FLC. Also I wonder, if the template truly is redundant, then shouldn't a more permanent solution be sought? Goodraise 21:06, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Use of tildes around subtitles

The deprecation of tildes (or dashes or brackets or what have you) around the subtitles of Japanese media needs to be undeprecated. For one thing, due to the past several years wihtout enforcing that song titles should have parentheses instead of tildes, there are still several articles on Japanese songs that use the colon rather than the parentheses. Another issue is that it does not provide any sort of coverage for when there are actual parentheses in a song title (such as denoting a karaoke or an instrumental track). And on top of all of this, I have never really seen any sort of argument as to why the tildes/dashes/namidashes are detrimental to the project. They just seem to be taken as bad or unprofessional. There is no reason that we as an encyclopedia should enforce that the name of an object be changed.

And yes, this is most definitely due to my opposition to the move of W-B-X ~W-Boiled Extreme~, which I argued in the past should be a fine enough location for that article because the name is parsed entirely in standard English, except for the dash and tilde notations. I do not understand why we have to "normalize the orthography" as an editor put it at Talk:Move (Japanese band)#Requested move. As an encyclopedia we should provide to the user the actual name of an object, rather than our modified parsing of that name to fulfill our own internal rules. If Kumi Koda calls her best of album "Best ~First Things~" and if a song is called "W-B-X ~W-Boiled Extreme~" then we shouldn't bother changing either of those.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 01:18, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Was originally proposed and added by Hoary. MOS:TM probably comes closest to an explanation, though Hoary might be able to elaborate further. Prime Blue (talk) 02:10, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
They're detrimental for a simple reason: using tildes/dashes/namidashes as punctuation is not English, and thus should not be used for naming things on an English encyclopedia, which is what the article name is for. (See WP:ENGLISH.) There is plenty of precedent for Wikipedia not following random stylistic quirks, eg. Macy's is at Macy's and not "Macy*s", and the original Japanese styling is still available in the article itself so no information is lost. Jpatokal (talk) 07:46, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
I don't think they're "detrimental"; I think they're merely gimmicky and have a bogus significance that distracts.
In Japanese script, either longish dashes or nami marks (swung dashes, let's call them) are often used to enclose subtitles and thereby set off those subtitles. What's set off is a subtitle, that's all. Even in Japanese script, the very same subtitle can just as well be set off by a preceding full-width space or (if you're a librarian) a spaced colon.
Likewise, a western book whose subtitle is set off on the title page via a line break and a smaller font or on the spine via a preceding dash will see this converted to a colon for bibliographic purposes.
A book whose title is given in FULL CAPITALS or in purple sees this converted to the "up" or the "down" style, and in black, for sober, nonpromotional use.
The mass education of the Japanese people in both the romanization of their own language and in foreign languages is notoriously poor, inefficient, or both. Many reach university fondly believing that, for example, a book announcing itself as "HOWL" should no more be rendered as "Howl" than, say, 『細雪』 should be rendered as 『ササメユキ』. (And they have other [to me] bizarre beliefs about Roman orthography, e.g. that each of the numbers I, II, III, IV should be written with a single, discrete character.) They're most welcome to these beliefs, but there's no reason why en:WP should adopt similarly bizarre beliefs about the significance of Japanese orthography -- Hoary (talk) 14:46, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
I am not arguing that items rendered in all capital letters should be kept that way in our project. My question is why shouldn't we use the Japanese system of rendering subtitles when writing about Japanese media? I can understand that we don't want to have pages with titles such as "BEST ~first things~", but why can't we have that page at "Best ~First Things~" rather than at "Best: First Things"? It is clear that this titling system is pretty unique to the Japanese arts, and rather than changing a title to eliminate two tildes (as is being discussed at Talk:W-B-X ~W-Boiled Extreme~) because it's not present in English language media, why not just use the tildes or dashes or some method of denoting full-width spaces when they show up for these song titles or movie titles or manga titles or whatever it is lately?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 18:47, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
It's not standard punctuation and outside of very specialized pages devoted to the hardcore, you don't see anything like Best ~first things~ with any regularity. Instead you see Best: First Things or Best - First Things or more rarely Best First Things (yes the capitalization of the first letter for non-minor words is often done unless the subtitle is clearly a sentance).
Ocassioanly in the more mainstream RSes you'll see waves, but that's the exception because its not accepted as standard English formatting. The times you usually see them are when they have multiple subtitles or taglines such as Best: first things ~tagline/second substitle here~ - A review on Kumi Koda's newest album. At that point most people run out of standard punctuation to use as the two standard punctuation seperators for title/subtitle, the colon and dash, are needed elsewhere.陣内Jinnai 19:03, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
It's not standard punctuation in English, fine. But I just don't think that I've ever seen a review for something exclusively released in Japan that has been written in anything other than Japanese. The most reliable sources for something Japanese is going to be written in Japanese. The album "BEST ~first things~" is rarely ever going to be discussed in an English context outside of the English Wikipedia. In the context of writing about Japanese media, we should not change the entire way the title of something is written just the English language has a different method of parsing the title that the Japanese do use, but clearly have not decided to use in certain circumstances.
Wildflower & Cover Songs: Complete Best 'Track 3' has a subtitle that uses a colon. Best: First Things does not. On The Painted Desert - Rampant Colors doesn't. 薔薇が咲く 薔薇が散る does not. Why should we here at the English Wikipedia change the puncutation/translation?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:25, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
I agree with Ryulong. "Standard punctuation" arguments are totally moot because MOSJA/WP:JA doesn't care about real standard punctuation]; their arguments are openly IDONTLIKEIT arguments. Megata Sanshiro (talk) 08:24, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

[bouncing left] The Japanese book I happen to have in front of me now lacks a conventional title page. It has an informative and decorative front cover and a (decorative rather than merely functional) colophon. Each presents similar problems but I'll look at the former merely because typing with one hand while holding the book open to read the colophon is much more irritating than typing with two hand while looking at a book that's lying flat. So the front cover tells us (in large, embossed, minchō lettering): 

不石さ石
思はれは
議　い　
　　、

It also says (smaller, in goshikku, white): 

津
軽
・
石
の
旅

If you turn the book 90 degrees anticlockwise, you read: 

Rocks are beautiful, rocks are mysterious
Tsugaru: Land of amazing rocks

Now, when I apply even a very little brainpower to this, I realize that there's no significance whatever to the main title of the breaks I'll mark as "|" within 石は|きれい、|石は|不思議; whereas there is a significance to the division between 石はきれい、石は不思議 and 津軽・石の旅 and also to that between "Rocks are beautiful, rocks are mysterious" and "Tsugaru: Land of amazing rocks" -- even though neither of the latter two divisions employs a colon, dash, swung dash, or any other device.

Each is obviously the division between main title and subtitle. For books (I know little about pop songs), divisions between titles and subtitles are -- when you're referring to them (as opposed to doing package design) -- conventionally marked with colons (themselves spaced according to further conventions I shan't bother to go into here).

Further, each subtitle has a tiny complication that may trouble the most obsessive among Wikipedia editors. First, 津軽・石の旅 contains a nakaguro. English doesn't employ the nakaguro, so when there's a need to romanize this you use a sensible alternative. Secondly, "Tsugaru: Land of amazing rocks" itself contains a colon, whereas you want the colon to show the separation between title and subtitle. So here are my respective solutions: Tsugaru, ishi no tabi, and Rocks are beautiful, rocks are mysterious: Tsugaru, land of amazing rocks. This is the same principle as that which says that in direct quotations you can switch from double quotation marks to single, and/or vice versa, when doing so aids comprehension.

So if the convention for marking a subtitle in a pop song is to use parentheses, but an occasional main title or subtitle itself happens to use parentheses, then you substitute (square) brackets for the latter. And if you seriously believe that this substitution may either upset obessive fans or mislead, then you note and explain it in a footnote. Simple. -- Hoary (talk) 00:05, 3 September 2010 (UTC) slightly edited 01:11, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Let me put it in a clearer way: album covers and music distributores clearly and prominently feature the nami dash, the hyphen, the nakaguro, the period, the whatever, when it comes to the title of the music. It's clearly here, here, here, here, here, etc. Why can we not just use their formatting for the titles of these songs/albums/whatever. I understand you don't want m·a·z·e or L×I×V×E, but I don't understand why "W-B-X ~W-Boiled Extreme~" is a bad title.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 00:49, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
I don't see how it's superior to, or tells the reader any more of consequence than is told by, "W-B-X (W-Boiled Extreme)". -- Hoary (talk) 01:11, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
Using "W-B-X ~W-Boiled Extreme~" tells the reader that the Japanese call the song "W-B-X ~W-Boiled Extreme~" and not "W-B-X (W-Boiled Extreme)" rather going in a circle to say that we call it one thing and they call it another, or not even bother to include the "stylized" name at all.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 01:31, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
I'd guess that what they actually call it is daburuyūbīekkusu or similar (if rendered in Hepburn). That aside, various European languages use «these» or »these« or „these“, which each have their minor charm; but the choice among them is ignored in WP. If, say, a German publisher puts out a book in English but uses „these“ rather than “these”, then the former can be silently converted. What's so unusually significant about the nami character or Japanese typography? -- Hoary (talk) 01:48, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
Because the nami character doesn't require going through the character map. It's as easy to refer to the song as "W-B-X ~W-Boiled Exreme~" as it is to sign this comment. In addition, there is no real reason to remove it (or dashes, or full width spaces, or whatever else it is). A song titled "~The STAR Bridge~" in as featured in Kokoro no Hoshi or the song "The Birth of the Odyssey~Monkey Magic" on Magic Monkey could very easily be called by those names rather than going with "The Star Bridge" or "The Birth of the Odyssey/Monkey Magic".—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 03:44, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
Actually, it does. ~ is not a nami dash, it's a tilde. 〜 is a nami dash, and ～ is a Japanese estimation of a nami dash by using the unicode tilde (hence why everything on the Japanese Wikipedia now uses 〜). 〜 cannot be typed without a character map on an English keyboard. --Prosperosity (talk) 07:54, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
Well you have another issue with L×I×V×E and ~The STAR Bridge~ and that is caps. We don't keep titles in all caps.陣内Jinnai 17:54, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
I'm not arguing about "L×I×V×E". The song on Kokoro no Hoshi known as "~The STAR Bridge~" in Japanese could easily be parsed as "~The Star Bridge~" for this encyclopedia. And Prosperosity, I'm fairly certain that the Japanese IME allows for typing 〜 or ～ when entering ~.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 18:54, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
Well I'm neutral is its ~ instead of 〜 or ～ as the standard english keyboard has the former, but not the latter. However, the question remains what to do about the existing articles and other name translations if we go that route.陣内Jinnai 04:58, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
If anything uses tildes to separate parts of a song, use those (e.g. W-B-X ~W-Boiled Extreme~, Best ~First Things~). If they use hyphens, use those (e.g. On The Painted Desert - Rampant Colors, Nihon no Mikata -Nevada Kara Kimashita-). If it's a slash, use the slash. If it's anything other than something that cannot be typed outside of the standard QWERTY keyboard, then default to parentheses or the colon (e.g. UNCONTROL ♂狂喜乱舞 edition♂).—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 05:33, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

RFC

Thoughout the move discussion at Talk:W-B-X ~W-Boiled Extreme~ it has been repeatedly said that using the tilde is a stylization issue. How is it a stylization issue when it (or the nami-dash as it apparently represents) a stylization on the colon or the parentheses or the bracket? Several online music distributors merely use a tilde (fullwidth or otherwise) for these items or the dash. For example, "Returner (Yami no Shūen)" is parsed as "Returner - Yami no Syuuen" on the iTunes Store. Similarly, while we have "Faraway (Hoshi ni Negai o)", they have "Faraway -Hoshi on Negai wo-". Even when the Japan iTunes Store is parsed into English, W-B-X ~W-Boiled Extreme~ becomes "W-B-X -W-Boiled Extreme-", but within the Japanese store it's "W-B-X ~W-Boiled Extreme~". Why can't we here at the English Wikipedia just keep the Japanese method of dividing up parts of song or movie or book or whatever titles, instead of switching everything?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 18:37, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

As this would be a major stylization change that could potentially affect a lot of articles, we should probably let other wikiprojects likely affected chime in if there is a serious consideration.陣内Jinnai 18:28, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
The only WikiProject that this will affect is WP:JAPAN at most. WP:SONG and WP:ALBUM are not going to really care about this as far as I can predict.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:00, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
Well non-song titles also use tides. I've seen a lot of games use them.陣内Jinnai 19:10, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
At the very least WP:Anime and WP:VG will also be affected as many of those include soundtracks which use those stylizations.陣内Jinnai 19:20, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
I've notified WP:SONG, WP:ALBUM, WP:ANIME, and WP:VG of this discussion.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 21:01, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
  • Oppose Conceding on that point and we can start to say good bye to WP:MOSTM. Why to make an exception for ~ and not make exception for the rest? That's what people will eventually put on the table if that exception passes. So really goodbye WP:MOSTM. For example, we will be good a third take on Dears or DearS discussion. Note that i understand Ryulong concern and would have made a bid for W-B-X : W-Boiled Extreme instead of W-B-X (W-Boiled Extreme). However we know that people here rarely read explanations to the end thus if we start to use ~ for subtitles people will tend to use it for full article titles and add others special characters & caps in formatting along the way. --KrebMarkt (talk) 22:04, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
    • There is no exception being made for just the tilde in the titles. It's for all of the different formats used: the tilde, the hyphen, the ideographic space, whatever the method is that the subtitle is designated as in the Japanese system, would be retained. By implementing this change in style, it would not be in conflict with WP:MOSTM. The fact that the title of a song, album, television show, film, etc., is parsed with the ~ or the - or the · or the 〜 or the ～ should not preclude the fact that we here at the English Wikipedia should make an attempt to keep that formatting rather than throw it away because it's deemed as a stylistic choice or one that is merely a trademark. It's an aspect of the name of the other language media, and it would most certainly save space and time by keeping that aspect rather than changing it and then having to explain that it's something else in the original language (by saying "Best ~First Things~" rather than "Best: First Things [stylized as "BEST ~first things~]"). We'll keep in line with WP:MOSCAPS. It does not harm the project to have a page located at "Best ~First Things~" or "On The Painted Desert - Rampant Colors" or "Zebraman -Vengeful Zebra City-".—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 22:29, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
      • You have clearly eluded the point that there are many full titles using ~. ~ isn't just for subtitles. You do not have the means to enforce ~ for subtitles and a not ~ for titles guidelines. A quick search on Oricon database, done here, easily assert my argument. --KrebMarkt (talk) 06:52, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
        • There is some confusion here. This discussion is to end the deprecation of tildes, dashes, etc. in titles of all Japanese media. The song subtitle is merely an example of its usage. As it is stated somewhere up in the discussion, there is a song called "~The Star Bridge~" that, because of this manual of style, was renamed to "The Star Bridge".—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 07:46, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Romanization for short vowels ou

Previous discussion:Talk:Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteru#Romanization for "戸惑う"

Which is "ou" in the word "戸惑う" ("tomadou": written using in kana spelling) romanized to in en:Wikipedia, "ō" or "ou"? I'm sure that "ou" is collect because they are not a long vowel "o", but shot vowels "ou" in common Japanese pronunciations. Probably, the last u in a terminal form of each verb such as "集う(つどう)" is a separate vowel from the previous o.--Mujaki (talk) 12:49, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

It should be tomadō as the only exceptions are when the "o" and "u" are separate kanji (not just okurigana) or if the common English spelling either drops the "u" entirely in favor of just "o" (as in Tokyo) or the common English spelling includes the "u" for some reason (can't think of an example right off the top of my head). ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 15:48, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
I thought that because "戸惑う" is a verb and the u part is due to the conjugation of that verb, you pronounce them separately. Like with "背負う".—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 18:38, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
Yup, Ryulong's correct: romanization should follow pronunciation, and separate vowels should be romanized ou. Jpatokal (talk) 21:58, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
Are you sure revised Hepburn is like that? Provide a link or something.--十八 23:36, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
No, Ryulong is incorrect. The only exceptions are when the "o" and "u" are separate kanji (not just okurigana) or if the common English spelling either drops the "u" entirely in favor of just "o" (as in Tokyo) or the common English spelling includes the "u" for some reason. This applies to verb endings as well, so 行こう would be romanized as ikō or yukō (depending on how it's being used). ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 03:43, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
I don't know about that. The kanji/kana-romaji converter I use to check word spacing always separates the "u" from the "iko" whenever it comes across 行こう.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 03:59, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
Straight from the horse's mouth [5]:
o has the sound of o in no, so.
u has the sound of u in rule, moon.
The horizontal mark over the vowels; as, ā, ī, ō, ū, indicates merely that the sound is prolonged.
As the "ou" in 戸惑う is not "merely prolonged", but two different vowels, it's romanized ou. Jpatokal (talk) 08:33, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
Mmm.... I explained the following in the previous disccusion:
  1. "戸惑う" is pronounced /tomadou/ (トマド\ウ) in standard Japanese according to NHK Nihongo hatsuon accent jiten and Shin Meikai nihongo accent jiten; therefore, it is unquestionable that "ou" in the word "戸惑う" "are two short vowels ou.
  2. de:Wikipedia explains "the combination o + u is written as ou, if it is about an inner word-border or about the phrase-end of determined verbs".
  3. There are some spelling samples of verbal terminal form in external source for Hepburn.
思う(おもう) - omou (BS(British Standard) 4812/1972, ANSI Z39.11-1972)
問う(とう) - tou (BS 4812/1972, ANSI Z39.11-1972)
追う(おう) - ou (de:Wikipedia)
迷う(まよう) - mayou (de:Wikipedia)
I add a postscript to them, "the verbs conjugated in wa line such as "追う" /o.u/, "酔う" /jo.u/ and so on are pronounced /o.u/, and the utterance of /u/ is clear." in ja:Wikipedia.
By the way, "行こう" is defferent from the above because it is a combination of an imperfective form "行こ" of a verb "行く" and an auxiliary verb "う". It is changed from "行かむ" in ancient Japanese. The auxiliary verb "む" changed to "う" first and the last euphonic /au/ changed to /oː/ via /aː/ in colloquial Japanese. It is written "行かう" in classical Japanese language and "行こう" in modern Japanese. Incidentally, /aː/ ("行かー") is still lingers in some dialect such as Unpaku dialect.--Mujaki (talk) 12:54, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
"東京" is also defferent. It is a noun and "ou" are included in each kanji "東"("tou": using in kana spelling) and "京"("kyou"). Incidentally, "tō" and "kyō" are on'yomi.--Mujaki (talk) 14:01, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
Oh! I mistake an attributive form for a terminal form ("戸惑う" in this topic is a fore part of "戸惑うジュリエット"; varbal attributive form "戸惑う" + noun "ジュリエット"). but a pronouncement of attributive form is same as a terminal form.
By the way, is there any issue about spelling "ou" for "ou" in "戸惑う(ジュリエット)"?--Mujaki (talk) 16:45, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
What is Juhachi's authority for this edit? The only way you can show that your edit is not original research is to cite a reliable published source that contains the same material (WP:NOR).
After all, last "ou" in varbal terminal/attributive form are always spelt "ō" with macrons in en:Wikipedia in spite to "ou"(/ou/) in external source about Hepbern such as British Standerd?--Mujaki (talk) 14:26, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
Several people in these projects are resistant to change.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:01, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
I have thought it should be a valid option, especially when like with bishōjo mainstream western sources (those targeted at westerners who are not necessarily familiar with Japanese culture beyond what Hollywood brings them) use either bishoujo or bishojo. Since it violates WP:ENGLISH to keep it at such (as bishōjo isn't the commonly used term), at least the former of the two is at least gives a better reading for pronunciation.陣内Jinnai 21:39, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
Actually, the title of that article, "Bishōjo", goes against WP:TITLE and it should be changed to the one most commonly used (either "Bishoujo" or "Bishojo") regardless of the Hepbern system, just like Tokyo or ecchi. The content of the article itself may use the form with macron. I do agree that macrons do not seem to be widely used even by reliable sources in English, such as Nature or Encyclopædia Britannica (Britannica seems to use them completely at random, for example, Junichiro Koizumi is without macrons but Taro Aso or Toei Company have them and the editors there don't even bother with the family name + given name format.) Jfgslo (talk) 22:52, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
Not according to the article we are discussing here: "Where macrons are used in the title, appropriate redirects using the macronless spellings should also be created" Shiroi Hane (talk) 23:04, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
No. Because "Bishoujo" and "Bishojo" are used interchangeably, "Bishōjo" is the most accurate title, despite common usage. The only reason we have pages at "Toei Company" and "Junichiro Koizumi" is because that is how the subjects write their names in the English alphabet. "Tokyo", "Kyoto", and "Osaka" have entered common usage. "Bisho(u)jo" has not.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 23:23, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
I don't remember any English magazine ever using "Bishōjo" and I have yet to see an scholarly source using it. Also, while Google searches are not a definite test for common usage, they do give a good indication. Searching exclusively in English pages for "Bishōjo" gives 195,000 results, using "Bishojo" 722,000 results and with "Bishoujo" there are 4,390,000 results. The 4 million difference seems like common usage to me. Secondly, WP:TITLE is above WP:MJ, WP:MJ is meant to supplement and explain the WP:TITLE policy, not the other way around, and WP:MJ is at the same level as WP:ENGLISH and therefore should not contradict it or be used above it. Thirdly, "Bishoujo" is at least as accurate as "Bishōjo", as Mujaki pointed out with the British standard. Jfgslo (talk) 00:12, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
According to the BS 4812:1972, long vowels are indicated by a macron; "子牛(こ-うし)"[ko.u.si] is "koushi", but "格子(こう-し)"[koː.si] is "kōshi". In short, "Bishōjo" is collect in BS 4812:1972.--Mujaki (talk) 16:23, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
He's arguing that "Bishoujo" has entered the English vernacular long enough to be the preferred title for the article currently located at Bishōjo (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). Not whether or not it is [bi.ɕo.u.d͡ʑo]. or [bi.ɕoː.d͡ʑo].—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:06, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
I would think that WP:MJ has more hold over what the title of a page on a Japanese subject would be. Japanese terms are written in revised Hepburn romanization unless the term has entered general English usage or if there is an official name. "Bishoujo" isn't at that level.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 02:27, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
About Japanese articles, sure, but WP:MJ is not above Wikipedia policies. All other language-based manual of styles must adhere to the policies, therefore WP:MJ must also do it unless there is an overwhelming consensus and a good reason to ignore the policies in this project and not in other language-related projects. Otherwise, it would be special pleading for Japanese related articles. WP:TITLE specifically addresses that articles should have common names, not official names, and WP:MJ#Article_names also states only "common usage", not "official usage" or "general English usage".
I want to add that we only use revised Hepburn instead of the more commonly used modified Hepburn because there was a consensus about that. That doesn't mean that a new consensus for using modified Hepburn couldn't be reached should anyone propose it. It is not something set in stone. Both Hepburn romanizations are equally valid. Jfgslo (talk) 03:36, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
That's far outside of the scope of the discussion here, though.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 03:46, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
That doesn't mean it can't be discussed in a seperate section.陣内Jinnai 05:20, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
Just to be clear here, the modified Hepburn for 美少女 is bishoojo. The "more commonly" used style (in some otaku circles, anyway) of bishoujo is wapuro romaji and not Hepburn of any kind. Jpatokal (talk) 09:42, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
You are right, but that method is also considered as a Hepburn variation. As I see it, the modified Hepburn is more commonly used in science sources and in non-American sources while wapuro romaji is more commonly used in online resources (not only in otaku circles actually, it is also used by Japanese). Still, "Shinto" doesn't use either proper Hepburn or wapuro romaji but that doesn't mean that either of those variants should be used for the title. As the policies explain, it is the more commonly used form that should be used in the title, no the formal one, and "Bishoujo", for whatever reason, is the most commonly used form in English sources, as far as I know. But Ryulong is right, this discussion is deviating too much from the real topic of this section, short vowels ou. "Bishōjo" and article titles should be discussed in another section. Jfgslo (talk) 14:11, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
Agree that it should not be written ō, since macrons are for long vowels and in this case it isn't a long vowel to begin with. I'm wondering if we should add a note about short-vowel ou to the MOS?
-- Joren (talk) 23:49, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
"Bishōjo" has a long vowel. "Tomadou" does not. Is the latter what you're talking about?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 23:55, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
Yes, tomadou. I'd tried to indent it right to make that clear, sorry.
-- Joren (talk) 00:19, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
Adding a note could and probably should be done to the help page as well as it will be more pertinent there.陣内Jinnai 00:49, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Intended Integrity of Artistic Materials

I'm not a frequenter at Wikipedia and I only come here to maintain the pages for a boyband on the very little free time I do get in a week or month. I don't spend hours upon hours on this thing, so I don't know all the rules in the holy wikipedian bible, but I have been running into a lot of issues with formatting and what "determines if its _______ or not " with the articles I do work on... and I believe my biggest gripe has to be with titles.

Yes, I am beating that dead horse. I plan on turning into hamburger meat and when I'm finished, it's going to be a well done hamburger.

As someone who speaks Japanese and as an artist, I have a problem with the current system for titles used in artistic materials (music, movies, games, etc). Apparently the reason, or excuse, is that because it's " not english " it must be formatted " this way ". Well, if its printed and sold, then obviously the title was intended to be written in that way. I read someone bringing up an example with Macy's. Of course Macy's would be written like that because in the company's guidelines it states that Macy's must be written with an apostrophe, the star is only for the logo. I am a former employee, so I know. Same goes with JetBlue, the only time JetBlue is written as jetBlue is when its used as it's company logo. Again, I was a former employee, so I know.

What I'm trying to say is that there are guidelines and reasons behind why things are written the way they are and all I see going on here is people trying to dictate and change the artists' original intentions. If Wikipedia is all about conveying the truth and facts, then why change what's officially there? If a song is written as "ThIs Is A SoNg", then why should it be changed to " This is a Song ". I don't believe that English grammar comes into play when it's the title, especially to an artist piece. Now, of course, there are instances in the Japanese language where "~" is basically used interchangeably with "-", but why should both be changed to "()" if the parenthesis were not used in the title? It's not like we're writing an essay made up of titles here.

Basically, because my carpel tunnel is kicking in and I can't type much anymore, what I'm trying to say is that a title to an artist piece should not be affected by Wikipedia's standards because the title is a representation of that piece and it should not be changed or altered to fit the fancies of some editors.

Same goes for names. If an artist debuts with his/her name in caps, lowercase, LikEtHis, etc -- then there's an artistic reason behind it and should not be affected by the wikipedia standards.

And no, the " This is an English Wikipedia " isn't a good enough excuse for defacing the artistic integrity of the works of musicians, artists, writers, etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ladymercury (talk • contribs) 04:59, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, I don't know... I kind of mentally file away song titles in the same category as company logos. So reading "the only time ____ is written as ____ is when it's used as it's company logo" isn't far different from how songs with interesting formatting get treated in real life. Like *NSYNC for American bands... is anyone really expected to be writing that all the time? You're only going to see that on CDs and on promotional materials. Most people just write N'Sync, or N Sync or something.
I not hugely opinionated one way or the other (wait until the regulars chip in, I'm sure there's plenty of opinion to go around), but seems like a lot of articles will have something like 1. Song Title (stylized as soNg TItlE) and then for the rest of the article, they refer to it as Song Title for readability and use Song Title (song) as the name of the article. At the bare minimum, I think it would be good to have the stylized formatting somewhere in the article, maybe in the nihongo template? As long as it's in there somewhere, I'm not hugely concerned about whether the article title uses it or not. Or we can undeprecate and use the formatting, and have redirects. As long as people get to the article one way or another and the info's there, it doesn't matter that much to me.
Was there a specific article you were concerned about?
-- Joren (talk) 06:09, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
The artistic pieces are not affected by Wikipedia, merely the stylization used for commercial purposes. This doesn't only apply to Japanese-related articles but to all Wikipedia. Your concerns should be directed to MOS:#Follow_the_sources, WP:TITLE#Standard_English_and_trademarks, MOS:TM, MOS:MUSIC#Capitalization as those guidelines are the ones that treat these topics. Remember that the policies and guidelines are determined by consensus. You must relay a very good argument to change the current one. Jfgslo (talk) 15:04, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Other languages that use the Japanese writing systems, last call

The "Other languages that use the Japanese writing systems" section of the MOS-JP states that it's under discussion here and insinuates that Ryulong's suggestion of using modified Hepburn (eg. Uchinaa) for romanizing Okinawan, instead of using revised Hepburn (Uchinā) like we do for everything else, is established policy. Neither is the case, so I'm hereby raising this issue again, and will revert the romanization scheme to the MOS-JP standard -- that is, revised Hepburn with macrons -- unless Ryulong can come up with a consensus to the contrary. Jpatokal (talk) 08:00, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

First, this page isn't a policy. It's a guideline. And as I stated in the previous discussion before the WP:VG bullshit started, the Ryukyuan languages are not dialects of Japanese. As such, they should not be subject to the Japanese romanization system that we use on this project. When phrases such as 初みてぃ拝なびら show up, Hepburn romaji does not have the capability of romanizing the phonemes unique to Okinawan, and would render that as "Hajimitei hainabira" when the Okinawan people pronounce that "Hajimiti wuganabira". Several language sources show that there is no standard way to deal with the extended vowel or ː. Some choose to double the vowel (as Ominglot and this very Wikipedia do) while others choose to use the macron as in Hepburn. As we can even see in our own description of the syllabary, "O-Ki-Na-Wa" becomes "U-Chi-Na-(W)A", so clearly ー should not mean ¯.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 18:57, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
Yes, the Japanese writing system is not capable of faithfully representing all phonemic distinctions in Okinawan -- but unfortunately it's still the writing system they use in Okinawa, and since both revised "Uchinā" and modified "Uchinaa" are pronounced precisely the same, there is no advantage whatsoever to choosing modified over revised. (For the record, though, I'd be happy to add in IPA for any Okinawan words, in addition to the revised Hepburn kana transcriptions.) Jpatokal (talk) 22:03, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
Actually your wrong about Ryukyuian. It is under dispute whether it is a seperate subdivision of the Japonic languages or merely a dialect of Japanese.陣内Jinnai 21:47, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
@Jpatokal: It just seems inappropriate to use modified Hepburn (macrons) because there are three different methods of romanizing the Ryukyuan languages when it comes to the chōonpu: doubling vowels, macron over a single vowel, or just a single vowel. ウチナー is variably romanized as Uchinaa (modified Hepburn), Uchinā (revised Hepburn), and Uchina (whatever they god damn feel like). And as I've been saying, rather than treating it as a dialect of Japanese and using revised Hepburn because that's how we treat Japanese throughout Wikipedia, by designating it separately by having ー double the previous vowel sound, we show that it is unique, and we can still use the same templates.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 22:28, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
We can show that it is unique 100% of the time simply by starting the gloss with "Okinawan: Uchinā". If anythign, I would oppose using a template called "nihongo" for a language that even you agree is manifestly not the same as Japanese. Jpatokal (talk) 05:59, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
It's still the only template we have that will ensure the proper encoding of Japanese text, which is what Okinawan uses. Would you prefer if we developed an {{uchinaguchi}} and an {{aynuitak}}?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:24, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
You mean {{lang-ryu}} and {{lang-ain}}, I hope. Jpatokal (talk) 22:27, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
I'm referring to making entirely new templates along the lines of {{nihongo}} that includes both the original language and a romanization of that language.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 22:52, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
Lang-ryu is used by one (1) article at the moment and lang-ain doesn't exist, so it would be easy enough to modify them to include include the romanization. Jpatokal (talk) 00:03, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
Well, those templates are used just to put a link to the language in front of the word, and those are mostly standardized. I think making a template like nihongo would be better. Outside of sata andagi I don't think it's going to get much use, anyway.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 00:06, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
@Jinnai: It's phonetics and phonemics are different enough to warrant treating it as more than a dialect.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 22:28, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

So, going once, going twice, last chance... Jpatokal (talk) 22:27, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

What part of "No macrons for uchinaguchi" don't you understand then?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 22:29, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
I understand perfectly well that that is your opinion, and I'm looking for anybody else who shares it. Unless you can muster up some support, I will revert to the MOS default, which is to use macrons. Jpatokal (talk) 01:12, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
I agree with Ryulong. Megata Sanshiro (talk) 05:05, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
And could you tell us why? Jpatokal (talk) 07:49, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
I agree with Jpatokal. It uses Japanese as written in Japan for representation. Also, it shouldn't use the Template:nihongo when not recognized as being different from standard Japanese (as spoken in Japan) by at least this guideline. If anything, a language template could be made similar to the nihongo one that uses the right language tags, so browsers can support the distinction. --Tauwasser (talk) 22:49, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Ryukyuan romanization

I've plunged forward and changed the MOS back to what it said originally, namely revised Hepburn. Jpatokal (talk) 23:55, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

The MOS never said to use revised Hepburn when dealing with Ryukyuan. The consensus here is against you so you don't modify the MOS to how you want it. There was no change to the manual of style in dealing with Ryukyuan and similar languages. It was merely clarified, seeing as Ryukyuan does not have Hepburn (or anything in particular) as a standardized romanization schema. And you did not change the MOS to back to what it said originally. The rule is if it's not Nihongo, it doesn't get Hebon-shiki.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 00:11, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
Wrong revision there, my friend: the original states "If no other accepted transliteration method exists, the Japanese transliteration as described here [that is, revised Hepburn] should be used." There is certainly no consensus in your favor: the only person who has agreed with you in this discussion is Megata Sanshiro, and they have yet to explain why they would favor modified over revised Hepburn. Jpatokal (talk) 00:35, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
My revision (June 2008) comes before yours (May 2009). Also, I believe you are reading that tacked on sentence entirely wrong. Because both feature the sentence "If [there is] no accepted standard transliteration for that language, and the word is generally written in katakana in Japanese, a direct katakana to rōmaji transliteration — without macrons — should be used (e.g. ドウモイ becomes "doumoi" rather than "dōmoi")." So frankly you're still wrong. It's "Doumoi", "Saataa andaagii", "Uchinaa", etc., and not "Dōmoi", "Sātā andāgī", "Uchinā", etc.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 01:40, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
I would like to stress this issue again, since consensus wasn't reached and Jpatokal still plunged forward to change the guidelines. Maybe we could get a proper and concise statement why it should be changed from Jpatokal and then reach a consensus without editing going on behind each others' backs this time? --Tauwasser (talk) 17:22, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

I've apparently mixed up the diffs before, but that sentence in Jpatokal's diff completely conflicts with the rest of the section, which is why it was removed in the first place (by the original editor who put it there). It should be blatantly clear that Hepburn romanization should not be used on languages spoken in the Japanese archipelago that are not nihongo Japanese, because Hepburn is only for Japanese. Not Ainu or Ryukyuan or Nivkh or any of the others if they even exist.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:09, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

So are you now saying that we shouldn't be using modified Hepburn either? <boggle> Even though you're the one who put it there? Jpatokal (talk) 21:06, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
No. I am not saying that (it was easier to refer to revised Hepburn as merely "Hepburn"). What I was saying is that I have realized that the original wording of the guideline from November 2006 conflicted itself, and that was eventually corrected in July 2008. I have said nothing along the lines of "we should not use modified Hepburn for Ryukyuan". My argument all along is that modified Hepburn is the closest named romanization system that was described in the original wording of the section of the guideline as follows:

If there is no accepted standard transliteration for that language, and the word is generally written in katakana in Japanese, a direct katakana to rōmaji transliteration—without macrons—should be used...

Am I being clear?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 22:13, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Proposal for change

My "proper and concise" statement: revised Hepburn romanization is the global (and Wikipedia) de facto standard for romanizing the Japanese script, which is also typically used for writing Okinawan. Unlike Ainu, Okinawan does not have a standardized alternative. Ryulong's concerns of confusion over people mistaking Okinawan for Japanese can and should be trivially addressed by adopting the {{lang-ryu}} template, which prepends "Okinawan:" to the script and its romanization. (I have, experimentally, already modified it to behave like nihongo for parameters etc otherwise.) Jpatokal (talk) 21:06, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Except {{lang-ryu}} should not be used as {{nihongo}}; they're completely different language templates. —Ryūlóng (竜龙) 22:21, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
{{lang-ryu}} is effectively unused (it's transcluded from one article), so it's up to us what to do with it. Lang-X templates only take one argument, so we can simply extend it to support the other arguments given to nihongo without breaking compatibility. But if the consensus is that this is still too confusing, then I'd be perfectly happy with a {{okinawan}} or even {[tl|uchinaguchi}} template instead. Jpatokal (talk) 22:34, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
And Okinawan is still a unique language that should not be romanized in the same method as other languages. It still stands that the Ryukyuan languages are not Japanese and should not be romanized as if they were Japanese. The original wording of this guideline (minus the contradictory sentence) clearly states that not using the revised Hepburn notation (macrons for long vowels) is how the Ryukyuan languages should be treated. And that is how they are treated for the most part online if they bother doing notation of long vowels at all. So it is better to use the modified notation (double vowels and ou over ō) rather than the revised notation (always āīūēō).—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 22:21, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
I fail to see how you fail to see the sheer illogicality of your argument. Okinawan is written with the Japanese script, both modified and revised Hepburn are methods of romanizing Japanese script, and the ambiguity of the original wording (what on earth is a "direct kana to romaji transcription"?) is what led to this silly debate in the first place. Jpatokal (talk) 22:34, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
You don't understand "direct kana to romaji transcription"? Perhaps "direct kana to romaji transliteration" would be better? In this instance, the meaning is exactly the same. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 22:52, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
The only issue you (Jpatokal) have with this aspect of the template was when I decided to simplify "direct kana to romaji trans(crip/litera)tion" into "modified Hepburn", which is a direct kana to romaji trans(crip/litera)tion system. Okinawan, Yonaguni, etc. are not Japanese, so we shouldn't use the same system as we do on Wikipedia to trans-whatever Japanese into the English alphabet, particularly when that system is never used for the language in the first place.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 23:21, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
No, you cannot transcribe or transliterate something "directly". Any conversion from one script to another has to follow a set of rules for performing the conversions, which is why we have various ways of doing it: Hepburn, Kunrei, Nihonshiki, JSL, wapuro, etc. If "directly" was trying to say that faithfulness to the original script is preferred over faithfulness to the original sounds, ie. a transliteration instead of a transcription, then wapuro or Nihonshiki would be the closest match, not Hepburn. Jpatokal (talk) 02:58, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
Im sorry if that's not clear enough for you. At the top of MOS-JA, it very clearly states we use revised Hepburn, so it follows that any transliteration mentioned below that point uses the same unless an exception is noted (which is also the case here). "Directly" means "one-for-one" (using "Toukyou" instead of "Tōkyō" as the kana would be とうきょう). MOS-JA was written assuming that every last jot and tittle wouldn't have to be repeated over and over throughout the entire page. There's no reason to keep repeating things just because some people are focusing on one tiny area rather than taking the whole MOS-JA as one thing. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 06:55, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
Your suggestion of "Toukyou" is wapuro style, but the modified Hepburn for とうきょう is "Tookyoo". Which one of these was "clearly" meant? Jpatokal (talk) 09:34, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
Now you're just being difficult. It was used as an example. We use Revised Hepburn (not modified) as described on the MOS-JA page, and it's very clearly described there, too. If your only purpose here is to throw logs in front of people trying to actually do something useful, then you're not welcome to participate. We're trying to clear the log jam here, not make it worse. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 17:23, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
Quite the contrary, my friend, I have made an extremely simple proposal to "clear the logjam": bring romanization of Okinawan in line with the rest of the MOS by using the same revised Hepburn that we use for all other Japanese script. It is quite obvious that the current description is not clear at all, since neither you nor Ryulong appear to have understood what "modified Hepburn" actually means. And this confusion has been going on a long time, viz. the previous is-too-is-nots over whether ドウモイ is supposed to be "doumoi" or "dōmoi". Jpatokal (talk) 21:38, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
So... it looks like "direct kana to Romaji transcription" got replaced with "modified Hepburn". Nihonjoe seems to think that "direct kana to Romaji transcription" means revised Hepburn, whereas Ryulong thinks it means modified, hence the apparent miscommunication above (my guess anyway). Jpatokal, I think everyone knows what modified and revised is, but the confusion seems to be which one is more suited to a "direct" transcription and which one isn't. At least, that's as far as I can follow the conversation. I do hope the logjam gets sorted soon...
-- Joren (talk) 22:21, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
I hope your summary is correct, since that would imply that Nihonjoe actually agrees with me and that revised Hepburn is the way to go ;) Jpatokal (talk) 00:25, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
I'm confused as to what the argument has boiled down to lately, so I've decided to cut out the offending "confusing" statement.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 18:29, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
Modified Hepburn and wapuro are not the same thing. When did you achieve consensus for this change, and which of the near-infinite varieties of wapuro did you have in mind? Jpatokal (talk) 21:38, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
I have restored what is closest to the original wording of the guideline (without the contradictory sentence that was removed two years ago). Can we move on and stop obsessing over this, Jpatokal?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 22:47, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
With all due respect, "using doubled vowels and ou ... for long vowels" is the most confusing attempt at a definition yet. Try romanizing this list to find out why: おう, おお, 大きい, 王, 追う. Jpatokal (talk) 00:34, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
Ou, Oo, Ookii, Ou, and Ou. Working on a better explanation.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 01:22, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

(undent) So, instead of merrily WP:OR-ing our way into completely homebrewed methods of random romanization (while simultaneously proclaiming that they're the Google-certified standard, of course), we could use a real romanization for Okinawan, namely that proposed in 内間直仁-sensei's 「琉球方言文法の研究」. Regrettably the tome is not online and it costs a cool 2 man to buy from Amazon, but fortunately the Japanese wikipedia provides a handy romanization table, and in a real 灯台下暗し moment there's even an Okinawan writing system right here on en-wiki explaining how it use it (in several variants) for transcription. At least in scholarly circles this seems to be as close to a standard as it gets, given that the 1963 沖縄語辞典 apparently uses the same or at least a very similar style (cf. [6]). A few samples: ウチナーグチ is "ʔucinaaguci", ドウモイ is -- presumably -- "doːmoi". Jpatokal (talk) 09:40, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

That system at Unilang won't work here because it's inserting IPA symbols (the glottal stop, mostly) into their romanization, and they've changed all "ch" (tʃ) sounds into "c" for reasons that I can't really fathom, as well as changing the English letters for other consonants that would normally be digraphs (ja, ji, ju, je, jo are za, zi, zu, ze, zo; shi and she are si and se; etc.). Using a modified version of the revised Hepburn system has worked fine for Wikipedia (and plenty of other organizations and people when they want to romanize Okinawan and the other Ryukyuan languages). Doubling the vowels rather than using macrons, and leaving the ou, oo, and uu digraphs as they are works perfectly fine.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 18:58, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
"Won't work"? The only IPA symbol used by 沖縄語辞典 is the glottal stop mark, and there's an alternate 'spelling' at Okinawan writing system that uses the plain old apostrophe instead and Hepburn-style ch, y as well. (The c, j etc are the universal representations of the sounds in question in linguistics, it's in fact Hepburn that's out of line by adopting (English-style) ch, y etc instead.) You're also ignoring the real benefit of using a romanization actually designed for Okinawan; it accurately represents distinctions that get lost with Hepburn, such as the difference between ʔu ('u) and u. "the Ryukyuan languages are not Japanese and should not be romanized as if they were Japanese", no?
Also, I love the way you're using the description "modified version of revised Hepburn" to describe your own invention, which is manifestly neither revised Hepburn nor modified Hepburn ;) Jpatokal (talk) 21:19, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
It's the Hepburn system without macrons. Why do you keep belittling me for suggesting we use that format which is used for the most part throughout the internet when it comes to the Ryukyuan languages (and a good portion of Japanese as well)? Using the revised Hepburn system is fine for anything other than long vowels when it comes to the Ryukyuan languages, and I have stated that over and over and over but you keep throwing it out because "it's not a real system" or "stop making things up". People use it. Just because it isn't written in stone like the Hepburn styles does not make it any less valid a method for romanicizing Japanese.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 00:22, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
"Hepburn without macrons" is modified Hepburn. "Revised Hepburn, except with doubled letters for long vowels, unless the kana are おう, in which case you should use ou" is your invention. Jpatokal (talk) 10:31, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
I can't have made it up if people use it all the time. Parts of the discussion below concerning the short ou sound should be proof enough that people use "ou" over "ō" outside of Wikipedia. And you can't be serious that you expect to romanize "ドウモイ" as "doomoi".—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 18:40, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Straw poll

Please sign below. To keep this section clean, no commentary here please -- do so above instead.

In my opinion, Okinawan written in Japanese script(s) should be romanized with...

Revised Hepburn

All long vowels marked with macrons: Uchināguchi, sātā-andāgī, dōmoi, Tōkyō

  1. Jpatokal (talk) 21:46, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Modified Hepburn

All long vowels doubled: Uchinaaguchi, saataa-andaagii, doomoi, Tookyoo

Wapuro

As entered into a Japanese IME: Utinaaguti, saataa-andaagii, doumoi, Toukyou

Discussion

God damn it Jpatokal, just drop it. "Uchinaaguchi" and "Doumoi" should be used. And the name of Tokyo would not be something that would come up in discussions of Ryukyuan subjects, so I don't know why you're bothering with that (or why you have "Uchinaaguti").—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 22:46, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Well spotted! Fixed to Utinaaguti, which is how Japanese people would enter it wapuro-style in most IMEs, although I have a sneaky suspicion that this isn't what you had in mind? Jpatokal (talk) 00:23, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
I dunno. My computer's IME can identify "chi" and "tsu". The only times that those are parsed as "ti" or "tu" would be Kunrei.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 01:37, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
I originally had a poll in mind as well, however, WP:POLL clearly states this shan't be used for these kind of problems. Having said that, here's my POV:
In my opinion the most confusion occurred above when mixing the romanization subject with the usage of a language template for Ryukyuan. My personal views are as follows:
  • I am a big fan of using revised Hepburn, always have been.
  • I think the language templates are a whole other issues, and we should not recommend to use nihongo for both, simply because of language tagging and confusion.
  • As for the romanization, I'd mostly go with what the table in Okinawan_language#Syllabary says, mostly because it seems appropriate (in the sense that it can represent the sounds, so a roundtrip conversion would be possible, i.e. from Japanese script to romanization and back without loss) and as Jpatokal said, is widely used in Japanese research works.
I would also like to take Jpatokal up on the offer to put IPA on Okinawan words (and I'd be happy to edit the language template in case this happens to be a problem to include and keep compatibility with {{nihongo}}). --Tauwasser (talk) 18:21, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
The content at Okinawan language#Syllabary is what we have been using. However, Jpatokal's issue is when it comes to long vowels in Okinawan. All of our articles that feature the language currently use the wide spread method of doubling vowels extended by ー and turning オウ into ou rather than using āīūēō for all of those.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 18:43, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
Okinawan language#Syllabary says that long vowels should be represented with... drums, please... macrons. Jpatokal (talk) 10:35, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
It also says "Some authors may choose to double the vowel" and that's only when using Hepburn, which is not the system in the Okinawa jiten.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 18:42, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
The reasoning that Okinawan words are often written in Japanese katakana and thus should be transliterated as Japanese is wild! The orthography may sometimes be Japanese, but the source language is not, and when recorded in an encyclopedic environment should be treated as separate. Treating the Japanese and Okinawan languages as separate is a good idea, since it would be misleading/seemingly imperialistic to treat Okinawan languages as if they are Japanese...it sounds like that, in the absence of an "official" (approved by a government body? approved by ten linguists? one hundred? one billion?) Okinawan-language transliteration system, some people think Okinawan language should "default" to a Japanese transliteration system. This "default" is false. Further, reduplicated vowels are more helpful than macrons when doing a full-text search of transliterated material. They are also (imho) less annoying to type. DaAnHo (talk) 16:24, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Talk pages by size

Please see the new page Wikipedia:Database reports/Talk pages by size (to be updated weekly).

Perhaps this will be a motivation for greater efficiency in the use of kilobytes.
—Wavelength (talk) 21:11, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Not sure if this comment is meant as a slam or not. If so, please don't make comments like this in the future. If not, I apologize for reading it that way. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 02:10, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
If you mean "an insult", then it most certainly was never meant in that way, and I apologize for any such impression. I meant my message as a friendly encouragement, in the interest of Wikipedia's resources, but apparently I used faulty judgement in how I presented my idea.
—Wavelength (talk) 02:42, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

One thing Ryulong is right about

{{editprotected}} Please restore this tag (placed by Ryulong, so I presume he still agrees with it) and the other section tags; and mark the page as protected. These are disputed - and should not appear to be consensus. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:17, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

The tags added should be put back for obvious reasons. I also would like the tag under WP:MOS-JA#Other languages that use the Japanese writing systems removed, again, as that discussion is no longer on this talk page.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 02:22, 11 December 2010 (UTC)
That would be this section. It is up to the visiting admin whether this has ended in consensus, or in victory by exhaustion. In the latter case, it would be simpler to bring the section back to this page; or to amend the {{underdiscussion}} link. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:32, 11 December 2010 (UTC)
I'm hardly an impartial party, but there clearly is no consensus on the current wording -- but neither is there a consensus on what to amend it to. Jpatokal (talk) 03:22, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I have made the requested changes to the tags. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:43, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

romanization style and conforming with policy

This was brought up earlier in another discussion, but the current format for having article titles with macrons, such as "ō", is uncommon. This is the case even among schollarly sources, both offline and online, where such marks are used inconistantly at best, such as with daimyo. This has the case historically as well.

Right now the guideline is in violation of WP:COMMONNAME as it requires revised Hephbrum for all article titles unless an official title or a more common one is shown. Even if the minority is that the non-macron title is widely used, but used in different spellings, the guideline does not allow for either one because "no common name can be shown" according to this. This was the case with Bishojo game where I could show that that the macron spelling was clearly the minority and yet because there was fairly even division between bishojo game and bishoujo game the effect was to say I've not shown a common name and thus citing this guideline it should remain as such. However, bishōjo game is still not the most commonly used term.

I therefore think the guideline needs to be updated to better conform with policy by allowing flexibility in the type of Hepburn, whether revised, wapuro, modified or another. We can still say not to use specific types at the same time. The problem is the status quo contradicts policy.陣内Jinnai 01:58, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

WP:COMMONNAME requires reliable third party sources. Not "common usage in a fan community".—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 02:07, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
How nice that you did not note that all the sources in the one I showed were all reliable. It also does not address the problem the guideline conflicts with policy.陣内Jinnai 02:09, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
The policy is straightforward and consistent. Words that have entered the English languages and thus have English common names are rendered without macrons; words that are not English and do not have common English names are rendered with Hepburn, which means macrons. Bishojo falls squarely in the latter category. Jpatokal (talk) 03:13, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
But WP:COMMONNAME only requires that the terms are used in English-language reliable sources, not common usage in English-speaking countries as Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(Japan-related_articles)#Article_names states. They don't need to enter into the English language.
WP:COMMONNAME also allows to use search engine tests to help determine the most commonly used form in English sources. Using Jinnai's example shows:
I think there is a significant difference to consider that "Bishoujo game" is the most commonly used term, particularly because "Bishōjo game" is used in sources that recycle the text from Wikipedia.
This example is not unique. Several concepts, places and people from Japan have a more commonly used form without macrons in reliable English sources than the one with macrons used by Wikipedia. I agree with Jinnai, the current guideline is in conflict with WP:COMMONNAME, which is one of the major content policies. I believe that the current guideline must be updated to avoid this. Jfgslo (talk) 03:28, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
Google results do not beget a "common name". The majority of the non-Japanese speaking Internet communities who focus on these subjects do not use the standard romanization scheme that is used in scholarly resources. "Bishoujo" has not entered the English vernacular in any particular spelling, so the default is to the Hepburn romanization. Just because the Internet has decided to go with a modification of the Kunrei-shiki romanization system does not mean Wikipedia should.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 03:35, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
Actually, it has. If it hasn't then mainstream sources like Wired (magazine) would not be using the term to describe such games. Nor does COMMONNAME required to have " entered the English vernacular". If it were, a lot of article titles would be different. Wapuro is clearly used in many types of reliable sources, including academic and scholarly level ones. Also, even ignoring that, there is more than one type of Hepburn. The guideline does not allow for flexibility as it should to conform with policy.陣内Jinnai 04:40, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
Kunrei-shiki is not the romanization scheme used on Wikipedia. Besides, the sources you pointed out at Talk:Bishōjo game contradict each other (the same source uses "Bishojo" and "Bishoujo" in two different articles). To avoid this, we use the revised Hepburn romanization which has no ambiguity. The only problem that apparently arises is when there is a question over whether or not the ou is a long o or a short o followed by a short u. And there is no contradiction with this guideline and WP:COMMONNAME. As I have said in the past, the only guideline that contradicts this one is WP:VG/GL.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 06:05, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
But if we stop using macrons, how the readers who do not know ja well could tell the difference among shōjo/少女, shōjō/猩々, shojō/書状 and shojo/処女? These four are different and not a homonym in ja. I think we should avoid ambiguity and use macrons. A similar kind of discussion is going on here. Post your comment, if you are interested. Oda Mari (talk) 06:28, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
The point is not to stop using macrons in the text, but to use the most commonly used form in English sources for article titles per WP:COMMONNAME. The content of the article may use a different form, as exemplified in Hirohito. And I disagree. This guideline goes against WP:COMMONNAME because that policy specifically addresses "common usage in reliable sources is preferred to technically correct but rarer forms" which is not the case in this guideline where the technically correct form is emphasized over the commonly used one. Also, this guideline emphasizes common usage in English-speaking countries in the sense of words that have entered the English languages, which is not what WP:COMMONNAME emphasizes. And reliable sources are not exclusively scholarly sources. Even scholarly sources don't always use macrons. Jfgslo (talk) 07:02, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
What about the other article using "shōjo" like shōjo, shōjo manga, Shōjo Comic, etc.? What about shōnen related articles? How about wikt:shōjo? How about other articles with "shō" like Shōsōin ? Move them all? As for Hirohito, it's not a different form, but different names used in the article body. And the "Showa" spelling is officially used by the Imperial Household Agency. Daimyo is a word you can find in reliable English dictionaries, but shojo and bishojo are not. The google search results cannot be the standard of the common name. If Google searched, all article titles with macrons would be the minority like bishōjo game. WP is an encyclopedia and we have our own MoS. See the footnote of article shōjo. It says "Because of the difficulty of inputting macrons on many computers, "shôjo" and "shöjo" are also common and acceptable renderings, although "shōjo" is preferred". That is the reason words with macron hit the minority. I endorse Ryulong and Jpatokal. Oda Mari (talk) 08:18, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Exactly. "Shojo" and "Bishojo" (or "shoujo" and "bishoujo") have not entered common usage in the English language, no matter how many esoteric video game media outlets use them.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 08:20, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

If all those words are referred by reliable sources in English without the macrons, that is the form that should be used. If "Shōnen" is referred without the macron in reliable sources in English that's the form that should be used and if "Shōsōin" is referred with macrons then the article title should use macrons. That is how an article title is determined, by how reliable sources in English refer to a topic more commonly, not if a word has entered into common usage in the English language. That is not what's stated in WP:COMMONNAME. In fact, it clearly says "Articles are normally titled using the name which is most commonly used to refer to the subject of the article in English-language reliable sources. This includes usage in the sources used as references for the article", not "entered into common usage in the English language", and also "Common usage in reliable sources is preferred to technically correct but rarer forms, whether the official name, the scientific name, the birth name, the original name or the trademarked name." So, if the "Shōnen" article cited reliable sources in English that do not use the macron for the term, the article title also should not have the macron and the same would apply if the form with a macron was used in sources in English.
And yes, the appropriate way would be to move them all according to the usage in reliable English sources. And a manual of style is not above a content policy, particularly if the MoS conflicts with the policy and other guidelines. This is not the only language-related MoS, but this is one that goes against a content policy, which is the point that Jinnai made and I agree with him. This guideline is in conflict with WP:AT because it ignores altogether the common usage in reliable English sources, emphazising technically correct but rarer forms even if they are not supported by sources in English and putting the interest of specialists above those of a general audience.
The point with the Hirohito example is that the form used in the title may or may not be different to the one used in the text, not the macron. And it wouldn't matter if "Showa" was not officially endorsed if that's how it's used in reliable English sources. Jfgslo (talk) 15:21, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia uses a different romanization schema than all of those reliable sources you are going on about. They use a modification of Kunrei-shiki that allows use of "shi", "chi", "tsu", and "fu", while we here at Wikipedia use revised Hepburn. There is no reason to believe that "shojo", "shonen", etc. are written that way for any reason other than a stylistic one. There is no conflict with the WP:COMMONNAME policy, other than the one you want to create so the articles can be at your preferred titles rather than the titles dictated by the way the Japanese language is treated in an academic setting.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:29, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
Again, I remind you that the point of WP:COMMONNAME is common usage in reliable sources in English even if it is not technically correct. Wikipedia only follows the sources, it does not favor any particular stylization even if it's used in academic circles. For this I point you to WP:DIACRITICS for specifics about that "The use of modified letters (such as accents or other diacritics) in article titles is neither encouraged nor discouraged; when deciding between versions of a name which differ in the use or non-use of modified letters, follow the general usage in English reliable sources." In other words, the usage in English reliable sources is what determines an article title, not a formal romanization style as this guideline states. Jfgslo (talk) 20:34, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
WP:COMMONNAME and WP:DIACRITICS does not really help when the subject comes from an East Asian language. What Wikipedia uses are the approximations of the pronunciations of these other languages, which as the style guide currently recommends, should use the revised Hepburn method which uses ō and ū in place of long o and long u sounds. What you are saying is that this standard method should be thrown out because English language reliable sources can't be bothered to use the most common method in academia of romanizing the Japanese language. This doesn't particularly help anyone, because for the most part, the only people who have any sort of major issue with this guideline are the video game article editors who find the Hepburn system superfluous to the content of their articles. In fact, I find it incredibly wrong that the people who normally discuss the article name policy have not been notified of this discussion until earlier this evening.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 20:49, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
No, what I'm saying is that this guideline, as every other guideline, should use what the reliable sources in English say, not use a different standard for Japanese-related article titles exclusively. If a majority of reliable sources in English sources use a macron-less form, even if it's technically incorrect, that is the one that belongs in the article title. The content itself may correct the form emphasizing the technically correct one, but the article title should use the common one as any other non-Japanese-related Wikipedia article. And non-Latin transliterations are covered in WP:EN: "Names not originally in a Latin alphabet, as with Greek, Chinese or Russian, must be transliterated into characters generally intelligible to literate speakers of English. Established systematic transliterations (e.g. Hanyu Pinyin and IAST) are preferred. Nonetheless, do not substitute a systematically transliterated name for the common English form of the name, if there is one; thus, use Tchaikovsky or Chiang Kai-shek even though those are unsystematic". Even if an article title contravenes a transliteration system, it should always use the commonly used form as found in reliable English sources, particularly when those sources are used as citations within an article.
I'm under the impression that very few people ever bother to read the guidelines and that is the reason why editors don't complain with them until they enter in conflict with one, as I assume happened with video game article editors. Even here, only five editors have participated in this discussion. But even if few people are concerned with this possible issue doesn't mean it's not an important one. I particularly believe it is important to sort this out because, when in conflict, a policy takes precedence over a guideline and therefore WP:COMMONNAME takes precedence over this Manual of Style. Jfgslo (talk) 00:55, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
It still stands that there is no common English form for "shōnen", "shōjo", and their derived terms. Just because a bunch of google results and a bunch of websites commonly accepted as "reliable sources" use other forms, does not mean Wikipedia should. There is no established preference for either spelling, which means the Hepburn version is best for Wikipedia. A macron over an o does not make it confusing.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 01:14, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
If said websites are considered reliable by Wikipedia consensus and a majority of them use those terms without macrons, then yes, that is common usage even if they are a bunch of websites commonly accepted as "reliable sources." And a common form in English can easily be determined by checking these reliable sources. For example, a major English-language media outlet like The New York Times. That is the whole point of using reliable sources in English for determining article titles. A macron is confusing if the majority of reliable sources use names without macrons and for people who don't know about the Japanese language at all, particularly because article titles are not focused on the specialists that know these topics but on the general audience. And these anime/manga/video game related terms aren't the only problem. Take, for example, Tōru Takemitsu which has been shown to use the macron-less spelling in reliable English sources like Britannica and per WP:COMMONNAME and WP:DIACRITICS it should use that form. Also places like Hokkaidō which are by far more commonly known in English sources without macrons. Jfgslo (talk) 02:10, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
Things should be taken on a case by case basis. Not by having a blanket policy thrown at them. And for the umpteenth time, there is no standard spelling for any of these items. "Shoujo" and "Shojo" are used equally, so "Shōjo" is the only sensible option. Likewise, Mr. Takemitsu has released an album with the ō in his name. And I don't know why that island is located at "Hokkaidō" rather than "Hokkaido". Again, case by case basis. Not "this guideline is wrong and it should be changed everywhere it is used". And also again, other websites and publishers have different style guidelines when it comes to dealing with the Japanese language than the English Wikipedia does. Style choices of other entities should not affect our guidelines and policies. And now neither of us are bringing anything new to the table, so I am just going to ignore your next comment until someone new shows up.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 03:12, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
Sensible according to whom? That is not a criteria for deciding an article title. It is not about a standard spelling but about the most commonly used in English sources. You said it yourself, case by case. Reliable sources in English that talk about a topic will tell us what is the common name for that topic, which is not stated in any part of this guideline. On the contrary, it favors macrons in article titles ignoring the policy in WP:AT of common English names as used in reliable sources on the subject. If there are no reliable sources in English about a subject, then the macroned form should be used. But if the subject is covered in reliable English sources, then the form most commonly used in said sources is the one that should be used over the technically correct one per WP:COMMONNAME. Jfgslo (talk) 03:41, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
But there is no common name. The reliable sources you keep touting are not consistent in their usage of the terms. That is why the Hepburn romanization should be used and that is why there is absolutely nothing wrong with this guideline.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 04:39, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
The common name is simply the term more frequently used in reliable sources even if it's not used consistently by some of them. A majority of the sources uses a particular form more often than another, particularly the more reliable sources are. That is the common name. And that is also more consistent for an article title than a technically correct Hepburn romanization that is rarely used in English sources and that is almost alien to the non-knowledgeable readers. Jfgslo (talk) 05:00, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
The fact that there is ambiguity between titles, even if one is used slightly more frequently than the other, means that the neutral Hepburn title should be used instead.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 05:11, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
If a name is used more frequently in sources and the point in article titles is to follow what the sources most commonly use, how is it more logic to use a rarely used romanization, even if it's the correct one? How is it ambiguous to use the term more frequently used even if some sources do not use it always in the same way? Using Hepburn for a title without it being backed up as commonly used in reliable sources is not using a common name and it's going directly against the policy. A case could be made for some of those words, but that still doesn't resolve the problem that this guideline completely ignores the common usage in reliable sources in English to determine an article title. Jfgslo (talk) 15:47, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

@Ryulong = Actually no. That is not supported and no place in Wikipedia policy is anything remotely like that supported. If there are 3 possibilities and 2/3 are about the same and a third is less used, you never use that last one per WP:COMMONNAME. Instead you pick one of the two more common ones. If there is a dispute as to which of those two, then you seek opinions and look at guidelines (if applicable, which currently there are none and why I say this MOS needs to change). Even if the 3rd is more technically correct, it doesn't have any support in TITLE under those circumstances.

That's what needs to change. Not that revised Hepburn is removed from the default one, but that if evidence is shown that revised Hepburn is not the most commonly used, but there is a dispute between which is used that we have some kind of suggestions what to do then that conform with COMMONNAME.陣内Jinnai 21:48, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

But it's still incorrect. Why should the entirety of the guideline change because you do not like to use Hepburn in article titles?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 23:55, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
Whether or not its technically correct it doesn't matter. It's quite clear this guideline goes directly against policy. If you think it shouldn't be that way change policy otherwise the guidelines cannot supercede it.
The reason common name exists is to assure the reader they are in the right article and thus the most widely recognized versions of a word should be used, barring a compelling reason, such as it being unclear which it is. In addition to be really technical Japanese, not Hepburn romanization, is the most technically accurate version of a name, but we don't use that.
Inside the article its different; there revised hepburn can still be used.陣内Jinnai 03:30, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
It's only suddenly against policy when you want it to be against policy.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 05:13, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
It's actually been at the back of my mind for some time. A year or so, but I just finally decided to voice it.陣内Jinnai 03:50, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Clarification

I haven't been following this too closely, but from what I can see, people are completely misinterpreting WP:MOS-JA#Article names. The important part is (and I quote), "Article titles should follow all of the points above, with the following exceptions" (emphasis added). The important point in the "above" is #9 under WP:MOS-JA#Body text: " Japanese terms should be romanized according to most common usage in English, including unconventional romanization of titles and names by licensees (e.g., Devil Hunter Yohko and Tenjho Tenge—see below), and words used frequently in English (such as sumo or judo)" (again, emphasis added). Also note that directly under the section header for WP:MOS-JA#Article names, it refers you to WP:NAME and WP:ENGLISH.

This very clearly shows that COMMONNAME is 100% applicable here, and yet people are ignoring that (or falsely claiming it doesn't agree with it). There is nothing in this MOS which goes against policy unless you are twisting it to say something it doesn't. Special care was taken to make sure of that. Now, the only issue at hand is to come to a consensus on what that COMMONNAME is, and this is the point people seem to have trouble determining. MOS-JA tells you very clearly to use COMMONNAME (as well as the rest of WP:NAME), and anyone who argues otherwise doesn't understand this MOS at all. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 05:41, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

But the problem lies in the wording of this guideline. Specifically, this guideline doesn't say something like "to determine article titles follow Wikipedia:Naming conventions and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English)." Instead, it only says "Article titles should follow all of the points above" and it doesn't seem to me that new editors read Wikipedia:Naming conventions and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English). Instead they seem to believe that the points above refer exclusively to the text that's above the section "Article names" in this guideline. That is, the policy and the use English guideline appear above, but the basic premise, commonly used form in reliable sources in English for article titles, is not referred as part of this manual of style and it's pretty much ignored when determining article titles in favor of what some part of this guideline say. So, if editors do not know WP:AT and WP:EN, they follow what says here and it causes the usage of rarely used names in article titles when an English alternative is used by reliable English sources. For example, check the discussion of Tōru Takemitsu.
The other point is that WP:COMMONNAME says "articles are normally titled using the name which is most commonly used to refer to the subject of the article in English-language reliable sources", a point also established in WP:EN where it says "the title of an article should generally use the version of the name of the subject which is most common in the English language, as you would find it in reliable sources." It is the usage in reliable sources that I feel it's ignored because it is not emphasized in the text and instead editors only follow "Article titles should use macrons as specified for body text except in cases where the macronless spelling is in common usage in English-speaking countries". And I also think that part of the problem lies in the interpretation of the text in this guideline that says "common usage in English-speaking countries", which appears to be interpreted as "words that have entered the English language" instead of "common usage in reliable sources from the English-speaking world." For example, linked with the first problem, editors appear to assume that all location names should use macrons in article titles because the section "Body text", one of the mentioned "points above" in "Article names", says "Location names (municipalities, prefectures, islands, etc.) should include macrons in all cases with the following exceptions" and so Hokkaidō uses the macron in the article title because it isn't "a word that has entered the English language", despite the fact that it is commonly known without the macron, even in other encyclopedias. Several other locations also have this problem.
Another problem are words that are commonly used by mainstream media but not by scholarly sources, like "shōjo", anything related to anime/manga/videogames and some similar terms that are more commonly known by their bastardized forms instead of their technically correct forms. Mainstream media and non scholarly sources that are considered reliable by WikiProjects, are not considered by some as a determining factor to establish common names for article titles, because this guideline doesn't say that at all. I believe that this also happens with names of people related to those environments.
So I think this guideline should address those points with more emphasis because, otherwise, it causes confusion for editors who only follow this guideline without reading WP:AT and WP:EN. Jfgslo (talk) 07:16, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
So, your point again Jfgslo, is that "shoujo" (or is it "shojo"?), "Hokkaido", and "Toru Takemitsu" are more common in English and therefore the articles should not be at bishōjo game, Hokkaidō, and Tōru Takemitsu, despite the fact that usage of the terms is varied with other spellings when reliable sources' own style guidelines do not proscribe the use of the ō or the ū.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 07:22, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
Every last jot and tittle don't need to be spelled out in every MOS. If another MOS or another policy or guideline is incorporated by reference, then—unless something is specifically excepted from following them—then they should be followed. However, since some people can't seem to figure things out without being led around by the nose, I've added a clarifying statement near the top of the WP:MOS-JA#Romanization section. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 07:33, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
Also, we can't necessarily give precedence to scholarly reliable sources over mainstream media reliable sources as they are both reliable sources. In cases such as that, where one can't be seen as being any more common than the other, the MOS clearly states it should revert to the macronned form and have redirects created for all other forms. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 07:36, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
With the changes you made, I think that should clarify it for editors. I think this addresses the concerns I had at least. Jfgslo (talk) 15:01, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
That is one of the problem I have. If there is clearly evidenced that the macron usage is in the minority, but its unclear what non-macronned use is the most common, it should not revert to the macron. That is not what WP:COMMONNAME says. Instead one of those two should be used. You don't choose the minority one because there is disagreement on the majority ones.陣内Jinnai 16:49, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
If you can't figure out which is most common, then it needs to revert to something. Otherwise it will simply be argued about forever, causing edit wars and other things we have seen already from some of the participants here. COMMONNAME only applies if there really is a COMMONNAME. If one can't be determined, then MOS-JA indicates how it should be done until that COMMONNAME can be determined. How, exactly, is that a bad thing? ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 17:00, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
I think that perhaps the problem that Jinnai has is when two of these forms that don't use macrons are both commonly used and there is not a clear difference in usage between themselves, but, individually, each of these macronless forms is overwhelmingly more commonly used than the technically correct form with macrons. For example (and I don't claim that the following statements are true, this is just an example), Shōnen gives 89,900 results, while Shonen gives 2,430,000 results and Shounen gives 2,130,000 results. In this example, both "Shonen" and "Shounen" are much more commonly used than "Shōnen". Yet, since the difference between them is not decisive, in this guideline the macroned form may be given preference in the article title despite that it is even less used than the difference between the other two. Is this something similar to what you are referring Jinnai? If this is the case, the problem lies mainly in how editors determine common usage between two or more commonly used form more than with this guideline, in my opinion. Jfgslo (talk) 19:02, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
I think that the MOS-JP adopts archaic and minor Hepburn romanization. For example, "Hokkaidō" is spelled "Hokkaido" by Hokkaigo government[1] and "Tōru Takemitsu" is spelled "Toru Takemitsu" in external links of the article.
Both the style without distinction of short vowel and long vowel and the wapuro style are common now.[2] The former is adopts on English newspapers[2][3], Japanese passport standard[4], Japanese road sign standard[5] and so on. And Hepburn romanization article explains "Tokyo – not indicated at all. This is common for Japanese words that have been adopted into English. This is also the convention used in the de facto Hepburn used in signs and other English-language information around Japan, mentioned in the paragraph on legal status." Many Japanese get used warpuro style (kana spelling) because Japanese word (kana and kanji) is usually typed in wapuro style and "ou" is permited in Japanese passport standard now[4].
The micron often is served as a circumflex such as Kunrei-siki manner because the circumflex is used in French etc, and the micron is not on the keyboards[2]. In fact, the circumflex style is a little commoner than the micron style ("bishōjo" 37,600 results, "bishôjo" 53,400 results). By the way, the genuine Kunrei-siki manner (ISO 3602, Japanese Standard[6] and so on) is not so common (bisyôjo 5 results).
Ref: 1.^ Hokkaido Official Website, 2.^ a b c 通用ヘボン式の概観(2009-05-25 版), 3.^ ローマ字の長音のつづり方, 4.^ a b パスポートセンター ヘボン式ローマ字表:神奈川県, 5.^ 案内標識のローマ字(ヘボン式)の綴り方, 6.^ ローマ字のつづり方 --Mujaki (talk) 18:07, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
That's basically what I mean and it has been used as an argument when I have shown reliable sources not favoring macron usage and favoring non-machron usage, but not a particular style. However, while those have a clear majority even by themselves (let alone together), it was argued that since I couldn't show one clear usage that used the majority per WP:MOS-JA, that the macron use, which was clearly in the minority, should be used even though it violates WP:COMMONNAME. This has happened on multiple occasions so its not just 1 isolated incident.陣内Jinnai 21:19, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

This is really an issue of "What exaxtly is the common name?" in this case, and with no clear answer, Wikipedia has defaulted to the uncommon but more accurate romanization of the name. Things like this should be taken on a case by case basis, rather than saying "This entire guideline violates [insert policy]".—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 21:34, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Umm... I don't think the MOS-JP refers to accurate romanization. At least, the following (bold) indication is not based on revised Hepburn, but based on modified style and/or wapuro style.
  • "All other long vowels are written without macrons: ああ → aa, いい → ii, and ええ → ee."
variation ああ(/aː/) いい(/iː/) うう(/uː/) ええ(/eː/) えい(/eː/) おお(/oː/) おう(/oː/) ああ(/a.a/) いい(/i.i/) うう(/u.u/) ええ(/e.e/) えい(/e.i/) おお(/o.o/) おう(/o.u/)
traditional[1][2] ā ī ū (y)ē (y)ei ō ō aa ii uu (y)eye (y)ei oo ou
revised[1][3] ii ē ei ee ei
modified aa ii uu ee ee oo oo
wapuro ei ou
de facto standard a i,ii u e e,ei o o
British Standard[4] ā ii ū ē ei ō ō
American Standard (abolished)[5]
Japanese Standard[6] â,AA î,II û,UU ê,EE ê,EE ô,OO ô,OO
Note:1.^ a b 『和英語林集成』各版ローマ字対照表, 2.^ A JAPANESE AND ENGLISH DICTIONARY; WITH AN ENGLISH AND JAPANESE INDEX (1st Ed.), 3.^ A JAPANESE AND ENGLISH DICTIONARY; WITH AN ENGLISH AND JAPANESE INDEX (3rd Ed.) 4.^ BS 4812:1972, 5.^ ANSI Z39.11-1972, 6.^ exceptions of Japanese Cabinet Order (instructions 2, table 2, notes 4&5)--Mujaki (talk) 13:43, 11 December 2010 (UTC)
@Jinnai When the problem that you described arises again, bring the discussion to Wikipedia talk:Article titles if is given again the argument about any of them not being more commonly used than the other and thus the rarely used macroned form should be used for article titles. As Nihonjoe stated, this guideline should default to something. But this is not a guideline meant to discern between two or more commonly used terms that are widely in use. I'm sure there have been similar cases in English and in other languages and how they were solved will bring a stronger argument when meeting these complicated issues. Also, it would be a good idea to bring this concern there as you presented it here to see if it would be convenient to create instructions in WP:AT when cases like these arise. This manual of style cannot favor either form because that would meant that it favors an specific romanization for article titles, which would go against following common use in reliable sources. How to handle those cases when there is no consensus between the editors of an article is more in the area of WT:AT.
@Mujaki I believe that you bring some good points that deserve a detailed discussion. But I would suggest that you open a new topic to differentiate body-text romanization from article titles because this discussion is already too crowded and your points might get lost if you put them here. Jfgslo (talk) 21:48, 11 December 2010 (UTC)
Do you notice the following? In short, the body text section explans romanization standard for article name too.
  • Article titles should follow all of the points in the Body text section above, with the following exceptions:
Before anything else, what is authority for "bishōjo"? - After all "bishōjo" is based on the MOS-JP in spite of non-revised Hepburn style such as "aa" and "ee". "Bishoujo" is found in some online Japanese to English dictionaries, "bishojo" is found in a little dictionaries and news media site[7][8], but "bishōjo" is not so. Is "bishōjo" more accurate than "bishoujo" and "bishojo" in WP:AT(WP:COMMONNAME)/WP:MOS-JP? --Mujaki (talk) 16:03, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
I think you did not read Nihonjoe's comments on this topic. WP:AT and WP:EN apply to this manual of style. That's why they are referenced as "Main pages". That is the point of Nihonjoe's clarification, that this guideline does abide by those two. In other words, per WP:AT and WP:EN, if reliable sources in English use "Bishoujo" or "Bishojo" more commonly then the article should be named like that, but that's up to editors of that article to determine. The exceptions refer to topics that are known in English-speaking countries, in which case the commonly used form in reliable sources is favored over correct romanization. But when there are no romanizations commonly used in English about a topic, then Hepburn romanization is used. As I understand it, the problem that you identify is that the Hepburn romanization emphasized by this guideline has mistakes and is anachronic and not widely in use. So your concern is not directly related to how article titles are named, but with the romanization employed by this guideline. This is why I think you should open a new section. Jfgslo (talk) 16:52, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
Um - I don't support Nihonjoe's opinion. Nihonjoe's clarification grounds on this guideline. But Jinnai raised a question about macrons for long vowels in this guideline in parental section romanization style and conforming with policy. So Nihonjoe's opinion doesn't have resolved first problem. And Nihonjoe also explains "Japanese terms should be romanized according to most common usage in English, ..." of this guideline at first in this section.--Mujaki (talk) 18:51, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
Yes, but the policy that Jinnai was referring to was WP:COMMONNAME, which covers article titles, which is followed by this manual of style as Nihonjoe clarified. This is exactly the wording problems that I expressed with this guideline and how I felt it conflicted with WP:AT. But I also think that Nihonjoe's changes to the guideline have already made that clear, as you exemplified with his quote. Jinnai's other concern refers to how this guideline defaults to an uncommonly used romanization and how this point has been used by other editors to use Hepburn romanization instead of the one commonly used in the sources when there is more than one commonly used macron-less romanization in the sources. This is not directly related to macron for long vowels in the sense that this manual of style does not favor macrons in article titles if there is a commonly used macron-less form in reliable English sources, which is in accordance with WP:COMMONNAME.
Did I explain myself clearly? Jinnai's original concern was that this guideline ignored WP:AT in favor of using romanizations with macrons, which he exemplified with the "ō" and the other long vowels, even if the topics were covered in reliable sources in English using other unconventional romanization styles. I was also concerned about that. But Nihonjoe has clarified that in fact this manual of style follows WP:AT first and, thus, how a topic is most commonly romanized in reliable sources in English should be how to decide article titles and, so, Nihonjoe's clarification has solved the problem, in my opinion. But if you still feel that the wording should be more clear about article titles, please exemplify it here by writing what you would propose to change from the current text in the Article names section of this manual of style. Once again, I believe that your main concern is the default romanization used by this guideline, which is indirectly related to article titles, and I feel that that concern should be covered in a different section to have a more complete discussion and avoid confusing it with article titles. Jfgslo (talk) 20:39, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
  1. ^ Official translation taken from blah blah blah
  2. ^ Official translation taken from blah blah blah
  3. ^ Official translation taken from blah blah blah
  4. ^ Official translation taken from blah blah blah
  5. ^ Konami Digital Entertainment Co., Ltd. (23 October 2007). Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles (PlayStation Portable). Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc. Japanese: 悪魔城の城主、邪心の神、ドラキュラ伯爵の復活であった。 Konami translation by Ken Ogasawara: Dracula, lord of darkness, master of the devil's castle, walks among us.
  6. ^ this is not an official translation
  7. ^ This is an unofficial, literal translation of the official release title in Japan
  8. ^ Official release title
  9. ^ This is an unofficial, literal translation of the official release title in Japan
  10. ^ Official release title


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