Forum:A suggestion for Jap titled articles

Forums: Index > Rin's Travel Agency > Archive > A suggestion for Jap titled articles

Just put them in English ffs. NO ONE is gonna know what "hoshi daijobu zimzam" whatever means unless they speak it. This is the ENGLISH FF wiki. Just translate it. It isn't that hard. Otherwise we'd be calling the games finaru fantasi fifuteeno or something 2600:1017:B115:BBCC:2144:2A5C:963:1472 05:25, October 26, 2017 (UTC)

If no English release exists, and there is no English name provided in Japanese media, a fan-translation of apt notability may be used as a placeholder; if no notable fan translation exists, a literal translation, or a translation close to related releases should be used. If a related media provides more information about the name, elaborating on it rather than contradicting, such as a surname or middle name for a character, it can be added to the title. Anything lacking any official name may use a conjectural name with {{nameless}} at the top of the page, and use a name most commonly referred to by players (such as Level grinding) or a descriptive name (such as Invisible woman of Cornelia).

Project:Naming Policy

If an article doesn't have an English name, either there's just no good way to translate it into English and we have to keep the name in Japanese, or the article is misnamed. If it's the latter, feel free to ask for a rename on the talk page (or here, I guess).

Also I think I'm supposed to yell at you for dropping racial slurs in your forum title, but it's funnier to just leave it as is so all the readers of the RecentChanges can bask in your shame.

Cat (meow ∙ hunt) 06:05, October 26, 2017 (UTC)

What? What racial slurs? I didn't put any in there. And one example is this http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Hoshi_wo_Meguru_Otome. There's even a translation in the first setence of the article. "a literal translation or a translation close to related releases should be used." Uh there is a literally translation in the article itself and yet the title is still in Japanese. So what gives? 70.195.136.71 19:04, October 26, 2017 (UTC)

"Jap" is a slur. It's hard to take your point seriously if that's what you open with.

Sounds like Hoshi wo Meguru Otome could be renamed. The article was created before the wiki had a proper naming policy, I think.Keltainentoukokuu (talk) 19:51, October 26, 2017 (UTC)

The naming policy for real works is different for in-universe things.

The "Fainaru Fantajī Fifutīn" argument doesn't hold because (ignoring the fact that it has been officially released in English), is that the logo in all countries clearly reads "Final Fantasy XV" in English text. Furthermore, ファイナルファンタジー is a transliteration of the English words "Final" and "Fantasy" so even if they never wrote it in English text, it wouldn't matter and we'd use "Final Fantasy" anyway because the intention is clear.

If we were to use an unofficial translation, we'd be picking one from many. You can say that no one knows it by its Japanese name, but the people who know by an English name only know it by that name because they were told it by that name. If they were told it by the Japanese name they'd probably be using that too.

Knowing things by Japanese names isn't uncommon. I don't know, were people calling "Ni no Kuni" on DS "Second Country" in English speaking countries?

Also take for example the light novel and anime Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei. This one's an interesting example because the Japanese logo actually includes the English text "The Irregular at Magic High School", yet still if you google both titles in quotation marks, the Japanese name gets well over double the results! In this case we'd still use the English name because it's official, but this case highlights that people get by fine knowing things by a nonsense name.

For a more comparable example, there's an anime called "Ashita no Nadja" which has never been licensed in English. A translation would be "Tomorrow's Nadja" or "Nadja of Tomorrow", and neither gets results anywhere close to "Ashita no Nadja".

Hoshi o Meguru Otome (this could open up another can of worms, but yeah it should be "o" on this wiki -- because that's our romanisation style) is certainly a strange case because the way English audiences found out about its existence was because bilingual people found it in the Ultimania and presented it with its translated name.

Though what are you suggesting we call it? Our article says it roughly translates to "The Girl Who Travels the Planet", and that is commonly known as "The Maiden Who Travels the Planet". Which should we be using?

(Also come on guys, "Jap" is just an obvious shortening from "Japanese" -- not even the race but the language. And it's only really America where it's a slur -- I'd never heard it or cognitively noticed it used that way in my media until the internet. Context matters.) JBed (talk) 20:32, October 26, 2017 (UTC)

I think there is a notable fan translation and even a fan audio book of Hoshi o Meguru Otome referred to as Maiden who Travels the Planet, which might be the best English name to use.

There is one more recent one too with Final Fantasy X-2.5 ~Eien no Daishō~. It was created as "2.5 The Promise of Eternity" but I think I had it changed to the Japanese name because I thought that was the policy.

Slurs are commonly shortenings of a legitimate term. Best avoid using terms that can be misconstrued. The OP is a bit ambiguous if it's intended as racist or not.Keltainentoukokuu (talk) 21:05, October 26, 2017 (UTC)

No I didn't mean it to be racist. Sorry, didn't know about it. I was just shortening it like saying Eng instead of English. I'll remember that in the future. But anyways, I think my point is even clearer since the policy as pointed out says titles for pages should be translated literally until/if square makes an official translation so. 2600:1017:B108:581:DAC:2BAC:CB24:8E97 01:29, October 27, 2017 (UTC)

Though that policy page doesn't make it clear, that policy of using a translation only refers to in-game/in-universe things and not products. Using romanisations of Japanese titles in the absence of English ones has been policy since long before that policy page was written: August 7, 2008 became precedence for October 16, 2008, and again in April 2009 and everything since. JBed (talk) 02:07, October 27, 2017 (UTC)

Yeah JBed is right, the policy for release names is: "Their name is based on the official name found on the case, logo, online store or the North American website." FFX2.5 is then clear-cut, but the Aerith story is not a stand alone release. Wikipedia also calls it Hoshi o Meguru Otome though. It is the name it was published with.Keltainentoukokuu (talk) 10:32, October 27, 2017 (UTC)