Hi all,
I realize there is another suggestion (Use official English titles for Japanese TV shows) which also mentions this in a subordinate clause, but since it isn't discussed there and I don't really agree with that suggestion as a whole I'm going to suggest this seperately.
The romanization of Japanese shows and especially names is first of all not consistent but more importantly not representative/accurate. In Japanese, names and meanings of words change with how long the syllables are spoken (e.g. Oba-san = aunt, Obaa-san = grandma; Sato = village/hometown, Satou = sugar; etc.). As it is now, most of the time the vocal will just be written as it is heard by the average english person e.g. kousei (highschooler) -> kosei (quirk), which might be all the same to the average user but is irritating for people in the know. Where it really starts to become annoying though is with peoples names, for example these:
They have the same last name 近藤 (Kondou) but are written differently. Because I wanted to know, I had to check both people externally on how their names are pronounced correctly. This is also true for names such as Koki/Kouki, Kato/Katou, Sato/Satou, Oizumi/Ooizumi, Yo/You, Yugo/Yuugo/Yugou, ... I think you get the point.
This randomness has always been an off-taste to the site for me, since I don't want to have to recheck every other name and I can't be sure how to properly introduce new names to the site. That's why I think a standardization is overdue.
For that, I suggest the most widely accepted Hepburn-System, since it is intuitive and accurate. (If you are interested in other romanizations you can check Wikipedia.) I think this would clear potential misunderstandings and clean up the site a bit as regards alternative titles/names (look at this mess: Toura Rokkou).
As to how it would be implemented, I think it's sufficient to add the standardization to the guidelines so that new entries are proper, and the rest will be done automatically over time by people who are triggered like me.
Thanks.
Proper Hepburn romanization (original or modified) wouldn't work well on MDL because it uses macrons, and I've discovered the body text font used on MDL dosen't support macrons, so they show up in a different font from other characters: e.g., oō uū aā iī eē when they're adjacent one can see appear with different sizes and weights. The differences are more noticeable when they're italic: oō uū aā iī eē.
MDL could therefore either (1) change the font or (2, which would be easier to implement) use circumflexes instead of macrons, which Hepburn allows when macrons are not available and is what IMDb uses, as the old text-encoding system it uses for Roman-character titles doesn't support macrons. Circumflexed letters do appear in the same font as unaccented letters: oô uû aâ iî eê oô uû aâ iî eê.
I would, if my voice counts for anything, also vote to use Hepburn romanization as the default, but with circumflexes, and specifically modified Hepburn (which is a bit more consistent, with less exceptions than older forms). It's not perfect (it doesn't distinguish between when certain subsequent vowels such as ai, ii, ei, and oi are pronounced as part of the same syllable or the end and start of different syllables in Japanese words), and other systems are more indicative of how the sounds are written in Japanese, but it's the system that is the most intuitive for people who know nothing about Japanese. Also, it's what other sites such as WikiMedia sites, IMDb, and Anime News Network use as their standard system, so it would make exchanging romanizations between those easier (though macrons would need to be switched to circumflexes and the other way around, and not everything on those sites follows their own rules, so they can't be trusted blindly).
Another big question is how to capitalize romanizations of titles. But as that is purely aesthetic and dosen't affect searching, it's not as important.
However, my opinion differs in that I would only use Hepburn romanization for real people and companies' primary names when no official Roman-character spelling or one commonly used by reliable/authoritative sources has been identified by MDL users so far. The modified Hepburn romanization readings should be given on all real people and companies' pages as a standardized guide to pronouncing them, and they should be entered as an aka for search purposes.
Bumping this because this site desperately needs some romanization guidelines. I'm against using standard Hepburn, though, even with circumflexes instead of macrons. I think the syllables themselves are fine (exceptions being を, which should be romanized as wo, and へ, which should be romanized as e specifically when used as a particle), but long vowels should be closer to how they are written in hiragana (おう --> ou, えい --> ei, etc.). That's probably as good and clear as you can get it. In general, I think MyAnimeList is the golden standard for romanization of Japanese. They don't have an official guide yet, unfortunately, but it's pretty easy to see how it works just from browsing the site.
The sites linked under the guide for romanized names that are supposed to give the "correct romanizations" don't even give consistent results. The first one does consistently gives Hepburn-style romanizations using macrons (as well as "English translation" which returns names without marking long vowels in any way), but the second one gives varying results based on what name you put in (as seen in the table below). It goes without saying that these sites then disagree on a lot of words.
Examples:
| Input, kanji | Reading, hiragana | Output | Proposed System |
|---|---|---|---|
| 本堂 | ほんどう | Hondou | Hondou |
| 工藤 | くどう | Kudō | Kudou |
| 裕二郎 | ゆうじろう | Yūjirō | Yuujirou |
| 帽子 | ぼうし | Boushi | Boushi |
| 大石 | おおいし おおし おういし | Ōishi Ooshi Ouishi | Ooishi Ooshi Ouishi |
The latter also doesn't return romanization if you give it a word that isn't also used as a name, which makes matters even worse if the people entering these titles can't even read kana. Regardless, any system is better than no system. I'd love some consistency in the titles and names. I could personally go through the entire Japanese part of the database alone to fix titles and names because the lack of consistency is super annoying.
