This is about the following RC allowance:

If a Unicode Song title has either an official translation or romanisation provided by the artist, either or may be used in the romanised title field.

I am assuming that this allowance was supposed to include official translations for the source field too and not only for the song title because some recently ranked maps use translated sources. But technically this is not allowed as no rule mentions it. Nevertheless, I will include translated sources in the arguments below given that this was most likely intended.


With that being said, the main point of this proposal is to prohibit official translations altogether for the following reasons:

1. Preserve the authenticity of song/media titles.
For example, if a Japanese song has a Japanese title, why should it be translated? The only reason would be to make more people understand the meaning of the title, but this is not really necessary and also not the purpose of metadata. Using the romanized title is much more authentic and recognizable, especially if the words from the title are part of the lyrics.
The same logic applies to source names, except those can be even more problematic because not only english translations exist. Many series or movies are translated into various languages and the titles are often translated as well. It would be very odd to use a translation into an arbitrary language instead of the original language. The main argument I've seen for translating Unicode sources is that no romanized field exists for sources and therefore most people can't read it. However, this is simply a flaw in the metadata template. If someone wants to know more about that source, they can easily copy and paste it.

2. Mappers should not be forced to use translations if they map an already ranked song.
The current guideline to follow the metadata of previously ranked maps of a song basically turns this allowance into a rule if someone else ranked the same song with a translated name before and this should not be the case. While this also applies to other metadata-related things, it's usually not as big of a deal.

I'll add a reason #3 that this makes "romanised title" the correct name for a field that is currently hosting both romanisations and english translations. I support 👍

Serizawa Haruki wrote:

This is about the following RC allowance:

1. Preserve the authenticity of song/media titles.
For example, if a Japanese song has a Japanese title, why should it be translated? The only reason would be to make more people understand the meaning of the title, but this is not really necessary and also not the purpose of metadata. Using the romanized title is much more authentic and recognizable, especially if the words from the title are part of the lyrics.

This is simply not true, official translations if prominent are often how the song is known to audiences outside the original language. To say romanised = more recognizable all the time is simply incorrect. Authenticity is already covered in that we have to follow official sources to use this to begin with.

Serizawa Haruki wrote:

2. Mappers should not be forced to use translations if they map an already ranked song.
The current guideline to follow the metadata of previously ranked maps of a song basically turns this allowance into a rule if someone else ranked the same song with a translated name before and this should not be the case. While this also applies to other metadata-related things, it's usually not as big of a deal.

I don't see why this is a reason to disallow official and recognizable translated song titles and metadata. Consistency keeps it recognizable across different maps in osu so that balances out. This would still be an issue between what version of romanisation to choose if there's official romanisation anyways so what would that really change

>Using the romanized title is much more authentic and recognizable

This is not always true. I've mapped many VGM tracks and much more of the audience would recognize the tracks' official english names as opposed to the romanized versions of the japanese names.

It might not always be more recognizable but it's definitely more authentic and makes more sense to use for the reason mentioned by clayton and because of the lyrics as I said. Just because translations are official doesn't mean they are authentic, those are two very different things.

I don't see why this is a reason to disallow official and recognizable translated song titles and metadata. Consistency keeps it recognizable across different maps in osu so that balances out. This would still be an issue between what version of romanisation to choose if there's official romanisation anyways so what would that really change

This isn't really the case because the consistency guidelines are largely ignored. The point is that breaking consistency shouldn't be allowed without an actual reason, thus making this a rule and not an allowance in technical terms. Also different versions of romanizations usually have very minor differences while a translation is completely different from the romanized title, you can't compare them.

I'm not against having translations when it makes sense, I just don't think romanized title is the place for it. it's especially wacky that we only ever have English translations (since we can only fit one translation...)

maybe this is more of a dev issue? romanisations and translations are helpful, and a way to present them all would be ideal

imo some songs are better known by their japanese name (ao no rhapsody vs rhapsody of blue sky) and some songs are better known by their english name (a cruel angels thesis vs whatever the japanese title was)

the title should only be translated if official metadata sources say it is. if not, then id say use the romanised version

Although I do agree that the sources should be in the original language, I do not think that enforcing a romanization for the title (and probably the artist to a certain extent) should be enforced. As you said, people can easily just copy and paste the source name and find out if there's information in their language about the source.

If an official translation is given by the artist, it's probably intentional for not only a wider audience, but to make it more memorable, kind of like a nickname. A large number of players come from these countries that officially use Eastern Asian language, but the rest do not, like you, and therefore don't speak the language or are aware of the romanization rules.

There's a KPOP band TXT, and several of their tracks are like this. Their début track is called "Crown" in English, but in the original Korean, it's 어느날 머리에서 뿔이 자랐다. Though a large number of Korean do play this game, the majority of players in osu don't know Korean. Many KPOP fans don't know Korean, but they enjoy the music. It's easier to put in the "romanized" title "Crown" rather than "eoneunal meorieseo bbol'i jaratta." What player that speaks a language using the Latin alphabet is going to take the time to fully romanize the rather long name? If you only enforce the Korean name, you're essentially blocking out a certain group of players wishing to play the game but can't find the song for romanization reasons.


I agree that there's inconsistency of "translated" sources. If that's a major complaint, then only that part needs to be amended.

As for the "romanized" names, though I don't agree that romanization should be used over official translation, I think that the name "romanized" should be changed. I'll reference my example with TXT's title name, and the fact that osu has several songs by sakuzyo. Even though we known him solely as sakuzyo outside of Japanese, he goes by the name 削除 in Japanese, read as SAKUJO in Japanese. Clearly that's not a 1-on-1 translation, but we still allow names to be like this.

clayton wrote:

I'm not against having translations when it makes sense, I just don't think romanized title is the place for it. it's especially wacky that we only ever have English translations (since we can only fit one translation...)

maybe this is more of a dev issue? romanisations and translations are helpful, and a way to present them all would be ideal

I agree that the romanized field is not the right place for it but adding another field for translations is unnecessary. Songs are usually displayed with the format "artist - title" so there wouldn't even be a proper place to put it. I think tags are perfectly fine for things like this because it lets users search a song by whatever title they know it under.

Aeonian Sonder wrote:

If an official translation is given by the artist, it's probably intentional for not only a wider audience, but to make it more memorable, kind of like a nickname. A large number of players come from these countries that officially use Eastern Asian language, but the rest do not, like you, and therefore don't speak the language or are aware of the romanization rules.

There's a KPOP band TXT, and several of their tracks are like this. Their début track is called "Crown" in English, but in the original Korean, it's 어느날 머리에서 뿔이 자랐다. Though a large number of Korean do play this game, the majority of players in osu don't know Korean. Many KPOP fans don't know Korean, but they enjoy the music. It's easier to put in the "romanized" title "Crown" rather than "eoneunal meorieseo bbol'i jaratta." What player that speaks a language using the Latin alphabet is going to take the time to fully romanize the rather long name? If you only enforce the Korean name, you're essentially blocking out a certain group of players wishing to play the game but can't find the song for romanization reasons.

The purpose of metadata isn't to use the easiest option or what is most memorable, but rather to use the most accurate option that resembles the original work. Otherwise we would use "Haitai" instead of "Yuima-ru* World" because most people know it under that name. Of course remembering a song title in a foreign language can be more difficult, but that's not a reason for not using a romanized title. Only a small number of songs have official translations to begin with so it's not like it solves the issue of having song titles that are hard to memorize.
Regarding your example, I don't think this is an actual translation but rather an alternative title that happens to be in another language. It's not a translation because it has a different meaning and is therefore unrelated to the original title. The ranking criteria currently doesn't say anything about such cases but I think using only "Crown" should be allowed, however you would use it in both the Unicode field and the romanized field because it's neither a romanization nor a translation of the Korean title.
Also this has nothing to do with blocking out certain groups of people because alternative titles should always be added to the tags (there's a guideline for it) to make songs searchable for everyone.

As for the "romanized" names, though I don't agree that romanization should be used over official translation, I think that the name "romanized" should be changed. I'll reference my example with TXT's title name, and the fact that osu has several songs by sakuzyo. Even though we known him solely as sakuzyo outside of Japanese, he goes by the name 削除 in Japanese, read as SAKUJO in Japanese. Clearly that's not a 1-on-1 translation, but we still allow names to be like this.

This isn't about artist names, those are a different story because they are proper names and therefore can't be translated. Artists can only provide official romanizations for their name. Speaking of which, the allowance about artist names is worded incorrectly and should probably be changed from "official translation" to "official romanisation" (also looks like an "s" is missing in "romanisations" in the second sentence):

Ranking criteria wrote:

If an artist has provided an official translation romanisation for their name, this may be used in the romanised artist field. Official romanisation romanisations may be used for the spelling of an artist's name, but the name order must follow the related rule.

Serizawa Haruki wrote:

The purpose of metadata isn't to use the easiest option or what is most memorable, but rather to use the most accurate option that resembles the original work. Otherwise we would use "Haitai" instead of "Yuima-ru* World" because most people know it under that name. Of course remembering a song title in a foreign language can be more difficult, but that's not a reason for not using a romanized title. Only a small number of songs have official translations to begin with so it's not like it solves the issue of having song titles that are hard to memorize.
Regarding your example, I don't think this is an actual translation but rather an alternative title that happens to be in another language. It's not a translation because it has a different meaning and is therefore unrelated to the original title. The ranking criteria currently doesn't say anything about such cases but I think using only "Crown" should be allowed, however you would use it in both the Unicode field and the romanized field because it's neither a romanization nor a translation of the Korean title.
Also this has nothing to do with blocking out certain groups of people because alternative titles should always be added to the tags (there's a guideline for it) to make songs searchable for everyone.

[...] This isn't about artist names, those are a different story because they are proper names and therefore can't be translated. Artists can only provide official romanizations for their name.

I don't think the haitai/yuimaa-ru* world example is valid because one name is the official; the other is what most (probably mainly anglophone) fans know it as. I would hope people keep in mind of that distinction if they're going to call the song "haitai" in a casual context, kind of like a nickname for those familiar with it. And you could argue that the same logic applies to Crown/어느날 머리에서 뿔이 자랐다, but both names are officially given by the company, meaning both titles represent the original work

Under your logic, you think it's fine that people are listed with their unicode names that may not match their official non-unicode name, but they ought to be listed with their non-unicode song titles in the game so that their unicode name matches the romanized name, but I don't see that as logical, rather it's inconsistent. I'm using KPOP again because this is where I see this problem most prominent, but you will never see BTS listed with their song(s) like [방탄소년단 - Blood Sweat & Tears] in official sources.

If your concern is authenticity, then you must list them the way the company wants them to be listed, reflected in Korean weekly music shows and when they go abroad, meaning you'll only see them listed as [방탄소년단 - 피 땀 눈물] in Korea and [BTS - Blood Sweat & Tears] elsewhere. If you really want it your way for the romanization to be included, then the officially listed title should be in the title, while a romanization should be listed in the tags. And even this is tedious because that means people have to check the romanization of a song before it can get ranked. This problem is more burdensome for Korean because there are multiple variations of romanization due to Korean having more sounds and letter than the basic 26 letters of the Latin alphabet can support, with some sounds merging or changing due to the nature of the language.

And I'm sorry because I don't know Italian and I don't know what's considered a proper noun, but in terms of English, if I remember correctly, names are proper nouns, yes, but so are titles of works of art, meaning books, films, movies, television series, and songs are proper tiles. So, we can put in BTS under 방탄소년단 because that's how they provided their name to be listed abroad, but not Blood Sweat & Tears, even though they listed the name alongside [BTS] as such?

i disagree with changing "artist translation" to "artist romanisation" because translations of artist names do, in fact, exist. for example:

虹ヶ咲学園スクールアイドル同好会

literally translates to:

Nijigasaki High School Idol Club

this is also what is officially used across the majority of official media when referring to them (in merchandise, live logos, etc.)

if this is changed as proposed, we would be forced to use this:

Nijigasaki Gakuen School Idol Doukoukai

which has never been used in any official media whatsoever iirc, let alone being kinda dumb to look at (unless you're an anime watcher who prefers romanisations, but that's besides the point).

doing that would make the artist name much less recognizable to the majority of players and ultimately be less accurate to the official sources because we would be forced to make do with something unofficial.

After rethinking this I came to the following conclusions:

1. Using official translations can be reasonable in some cases, but only if the following conditions are met:
- There is no official romanization available
- The song is more known under the translated title than the romanized one

The same would apply to artist names in cases such as the one described by caps.

But there are still two problems about this:
- How do you define which artist name/title is more recognizable/popular? This could be unclear for certain songs.
- What about songs where the non-Unicode artist/title is not an actual translation but rather an alternative name? The examples mentioned by Aeonian Sonder show that sometimes they don't match the metadata in the original language.

2. Translated sources should continue to be disallowed
This is mainly because there can be translations into various languages as I said before. Many people are probably not aware of this though.

3. Romanized sources should also be disallowed
Currently this is allowed but it really shouldn't be because there is only one source field and the name in the original language should take precedence over the romanized one for authenticity. It's also odd that people who choose to view the metadata in its original language would only see the romanized one. Ideally a romanized source field would be added but this is unlikely to happen.

I think the problem is that the rules (at or least the lines of metadata in editting) strictly mention only romanizations, even though people uses such official translations, but really there's no better way of wording it so that it includes romanizations and translations, unless the metadata settings are changed to the long wording of "romanized title/official translation."

Again, maybe we should contact someone with whom we can amend this part of the ranking criteria.

per the other good arguments here I guess I don't support

(tangent again)
but I do think this whole thing is only a debate because of really restrictive options for labeling songs on osu, if there were a real method to enter songs' real title, translations, romanisation, alternative titles(?), etc along with options for displaying them we'd be using it already. too complicated to think about rn so for the foreseeable future I'll let my dreams of osu doubling as a music database stay as dreams ;(

clayton wrote:

but I do think this whole thing is only a debate because of really restrictive options for labeling songs on osu, if there were a real method to enter songs' real title, translations, romanisation, alternative titles(?), etc along with options for displaying them we'd be using it already. too complicated to think about rn so for the foreseeable future I'll let my dreams of osu doubling as a music database stay as dreams ;(

You're not wrong, but given that there is still no romanized source field after like 13 years I don't think expecting a change in the metadata template is realistic, it might not even be possible due to compatibility issues with previous maps. The only option is to work with the current format and try to make it as logical and consistent as possible.

Serizawa Haruki wrote:

2. Translated sources should continue to be disallowed
This is mainly because there can be translations into various languages as I said before. Many people are probably not aware of this though.

3. Romanized sources should also be disallowed
Currently this is allowed but it really shouldn't be because there is only one source field and the name in the original language should take precedence over the romanized one for authenticity. It's also odd that people who choose to view the metadata in its original language would only see the romanized one. Ideally a romanized source field would be added but this is unlikely to happen.

I think the same reasoning as for titles applies here, especially for video games as the English speaking market is much bigger as say the Japanese speaking one. So let's take my Paper Mario maps as an example where "Paper Mario" would be much easier to recognise than "マリオストーリー" which is a completely different style. Also I don't think this really needs to be such a hardly defined rule and could be handled case by case considering that "more commonly known as" depends highly on the specific media.