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[Rule] Romanisation of Chinese, Japanese and Korean titles

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Topic Starter
SapphireGhost
Chinese, Japanese and Korean titles must be romanised and not translated unless a translated title is officially provided. Foreign words in titles should be romanised to the original language instead.
Chinese Example: GhostFinal - 感谢
O Gan Xie
X Thank

Japanese Example: TOTAL OBJECTION - 茅蜩モラトリアム
O Higurashi Moratorium
X Higurashi Moratoriamu
X Cicada Moratorium
X Cicada Moratoriamu

Korean Example: 싸이 - 젠틀맨
O GENTLEMAN
X jenteulmaen

O = correct
X = incorrect


The exact method of romanising Japanese titles still needs to be made consistent and is in discussion (see this article). osu!'s current standard of romanisation most closely resembles Hepburn.
scanter
hmm Japanese seems to katakana = English , Chinese = Pronunciation language. I like this rule \:D/
Korean example like this? 싸이 - 젠틀맨 = PSY - Gentleman. lol
Topic Starter
SapphireGhost

scanter wrote:

hmm Japanese seems to katakana = English , Chinese = Pronunciation language. I like this rule \:D/
Korean example like this? 싸이 - 젠틀맨 = PSY - Gentleman. lol
Thank you. There wasn't a good example I could find already on the site.
TouchFluffyTail
The Japanese example should always be romanised as 'Higurashi Moratorium ' モラトリアム is indeed 'moratoriamu' but the word is moratorium, and romanised it should be written as such. Foreign words are specifically written in katakana to denote they are foreign, romanising them 1:1 to the katakana would be ridiculous. I also believe Nihon-shiki style romanization is best (1:1 ex. と = to NOT toh) Japanese is a language that has next to no special pronunciation rules, so if you know how to pronounce in japanese then you know how to pronounce EVERYTHING in japanese.
Ephemeral
In full support of standardizing osu!'s romanisation to Hepburn where applicable and appropriate. Draft up a worded rule for this and I'll give it a further five days for community input before finalization is considered.
Luna
Things that would need clarification imo (regarding Japanese):
Particles - は, へ and を
は (ha), when used as a particle is pronounced wa. I've seen both romanizations in osu! map names.
へ (he), same thing. Pronounced e as a particle.
を (wo) becomes o.
This may sound inconsistent, but I believe wa, he and wo should always be used.

Then there are two more issues that I'd like to give an example for.
妖精帝國 - 空想メソロギヰ
In the ranked maps, this has been romanized as "Yousei Teikoku - Kuusou Mesorogiwi"
Issue #1: The romanization of メソロギヰ
This is a stylized spelling of ミソロジー / misorojii / Mythology; the outdated character ヰ (wi) is basically pronounced as i. Do you go for the literal romanization Mesorogiwi or the English equivalent Mythology?
Issue #2: Official vs literal romanization of artist names like 妖精帝國
Here, an official translated version of the name actually exists: Das Feenreich.
However, all of osu! is completely used to the literal romanization of Yousei Teikoku. Forcing the "official" name would only add to the confusion in cases like this.
TouchFluffyTail

Luna wrote:

Things that would need clarification imo (regarding Japanese):
Particles - は, へ and を
は (ha), when used as a particle is pronounced wa. I've seen both romanizations in osu! map names.
へ (he), same thing. Pronounced e as a particle.
を (wo) becomes o.
This may sound inconsistent, but I believe wa, he and wo should always be used.

Then there are two more issues that I'd like to give an example for.
妖精帝國 - 空想メソロギヰ
In the ranked maps, this has been romanized as "Yousei Teikoku - Kuusou Mesorogiwi"
Issue #1: The romanization of メソロギヰ
This is a stylized spelling of ミソロジー / misorojii / Mythology; the outdated character ヰ (wi) is basically pronounced as i. Do you go for the literal romanization Mesorogiwi or the English equivalent Mythology?
Issue #2: Official vs literal romanization of artist names like 妖精帝國
Here, an official translated version of the name actually exists: Das Feenreich.
However, all of osu! is completely used to the literal romanization of Yousei Teikoku. Forcing the "official" name would only add to the confusion in cases like this.
The case of wi [ゐ/ヰ] we [ゑ/ヱ] and wo [ヲ] is a difficult one, as they are no longer 'proper usage' in japanese. They were fazed out because they no longer served a distinct difference to other kana. ゐ/ヰ slowly started being just pronounced い [i] and served no spoken difference, same goes for the others. へ [he] and を [wo] being pronounced as え [e] and お [o] when used in particle form is a modern day hold over from the same sort of thing. Which is what makes the romanization case not entirely cut and dry.

I think any case of the obsolete kanas wi [ゐ/ヰ] we [ゑ/ヱ] wo [ヲ] should be made an exception to a 1:1 rule and to be romanized as their pronounced forms, as they are NEVER spoken in their original sound, and romanizing them 1:1 to their original classical sound messes up the actual speaking of the word it is used in, as they aren't spoken that way. (which is why they are obsolete characters)

Summary;
ゐ/ヰ [wi] = i
ゑ/ヱ [we] = e
ヲ [wo] = o

As for the current particles that have a similar case, は [ha] へ [he] を [wo] I think it should be the same. Ha [は] when spoken as a particle sounds like wa [わ] but is not WRITTEN as such. Something like 「あなたは」 is written 'anata HA' but said as 'anata WA'. I believe in romanization it's important to get across what is actually said, as in my case for the romanization of the obsolete kanas above. So ha [は] in it's particle form should be romanized into what is actually said with 'wa' and the particles へ [he] and を [wo] should be similarly contracted into e and o.

は [ha, particle form] = wa
へ [he, particle form] = e
を [wo, particle form] = o

This basically accounts for ALL the exceptions in Japanese that aren't pronounced or used in a straightforward way.
Luna
ha -> wa is the only true sound change, the other particles are just partially silenced. This is especially noticable with を (wo), which is sometimes pronounced a bit different from お (o). Taking into consideration that morae ending in u often result in silenced letters as well, I'd keep the romanization of the fully pronounced kana; otherwise we might as well start romanizing です as des (Please don't do that).
And, while not completely relevant to this discussion, there are actually modern words that use ヲ in stylized spellings - ヲタ (wota, short form of otaku) comes to mind.

So basically, romanize the は particle as wa due to actual sound changes, keep everything else as literal romanization. YMMV.
Ephemeral
does using the Hepburn standard of romanisation address the issues mentioned here or not?
TouchFluffyTail

Ephemeral wrote:

does using the Hepburn standard of romanisation address the issues mentioned here or not?
It does. Although don't use modified Hepburn. I don't think we want to start having to write things like よう as yô or yō. :o

I think this chart should be used as quick reference: http://www.library.illinois.edu/asx/jap ... table.html

Luna wrote:

while not completely relevant to this discussion, there are actually modern words that use ヲ in stylized spellings - ヲタ (wota, short form of otaku) comes to mind.
Have you ever heard ヲタ read aloud? I haven't, but I also have never seen or heard a native Japanese speaker read ヲ or ゐ in their classical sense (hence why they are obsolete). Even when people like to use them in names of characters/works to make it seem fancy. Quick example would be Sora no [W]oto [ソ・ラ・ノ・ヲ・ト] (lit; sound of the sky) where in classical Japanese oto would have been spoken and written as woto (as with MANY words that use お). Usage of ヲ here is to make it seem old and interesting. It's also basically never romanized to Woto, since it's not read that way by modern standards.
Luna
Hepburn stuff:
Depending of the circumstances, long vovels are often signified by a macron. This leads to ambiguity since ō can be either oo or ou, whithout further indication. I also believe that macrons are not usable in non-Unicode titles (since the German umlauts aren't accepted either), so we'll have to settle for a modified Hepburn version regardless.
You'll also have the discuss if you want to follow the n-separation properly. Odds are, you've seen the word renai in some titles before; that is technically not a real word, the correct spelling would actually be ren'ai. Now, the question is if details like this even matter to non-speakers, since it only has very very minor influence on the actual pronounciation.
In terms of particles, only one has a truly decided romanization: は always becomes wa. For the other ones, traditional Hepburn and the revised version disagree on the spelling. The traditional way uses the full romanization (he, wo), while the more modern one uses just the voiced part. However, every single textbook I've ever seen use romanizations used the traditional method, so take that for what it's worth. I'd also like to repeat that を (wo) can make a slightly distinct sound from お (o) depending on the speaker. This is magnified in songs, where more often than not, wo is pronounced fully. There is absoultely no rule on ゐ/ヰ (wi or i), ゑ/ヱ (we or e) and non-particle を/ヲ (wo or o); even in modern Hepburn, you are free to use whichever you like. Personally, I favor the full form.
One more issue I have with Hepburn is that ぢ/ヂ and づ/ヅ are indistinguishable from じ/ジ and ず/ズ respectively. The romanizations for じ/ジ (ji) and ず/ズ (zu) are straightforward, but the other ones aren't. ぢ/ヂ are the "dakuten" form of ち/チ (chi), which are t-line kana. t + dakuten results in a d sound, so dji would be a more proper romanization than ji. Same story for づ/ヅ, which also originate from the t-line and should thus be romanized as dzu (as opposed to zu). Some regional dialects make a distinction between these two sounds, so I strongly advise you to go with the longer, non-Hepburn variant.

The rule obviously does not adress my question concerning the handling of stylized katakana spellings and official translations of artist names, so that's another problem still.

Have you ever heard ヲタ read aloud?
I actually have, as you might guess it's pronounced mostly like ota :P
TouchFluffyTail

Luna wrote:

The rule obviously does not adress my question concerning the handling of stylized katakana spellings and official translations of artist names, so that's another problem still.
I think in the case of stylized foreign word spelling, using the aforementioned [メソロギヰ] as an example, we should just use the word that is actually being used, in this case 'Mythology' any other way just makes it silly.

And as for Yousei Teikoku saying their silly name is 'Das Feenreich' (which it is, in german) if they wanted to be known by that name, they should use that name. We should just use what is on the song, in the case of 妖精帝國 that is Yousei Teikoku. Unless of course, the artist kanji is specifically using furigana to denote their silly nonsensical reading in the first place.
Luna
They actually use "Das Feenreich" in Japan as well, alongside the Japanese name (take a look at their official site).
While I agree that we should just stick with the tried-and-tested "Yousei Teikoku", we need to clarify the proposed rule of using official translations.
TouchFluffyTail
Yousei Teikoku whyyy :cry:

I can't think of any other examples of 'official' group translations, which leaves us just with eccentric Yousei Teikoku to base this ruling on. Which really just makes it an edge case. I think official group translations should be disregarded except in the cases where the group is literally called only by that name. Basically just use whatever is listed on the song.

If anyone can pull more examples to better compile this rule that'd be great.
Luna
Not exactly the same case, but related:
電気式華憐音楽集団 <- proper name
I really don't want to see Denkishikikarenongakushuudan as the romanized artist, and rather use the shortened Denkare which has been used by mappers so far.

Same singer as Yousei Teikoku btw, go figure :roll:
TouchFluffyTail
Might have to just make it a case-by-case basis due to it not being anywhere near common, and not being totally black and white. With the addendum that if someone has mapped that artist before, you should use their example so the maps by said artist group correctly.
Topic Starter
SapphireGhost
The problem I see with Hepburn romanisation would be having to use "ō" in the non-unicode field. tangorin's style of romanisation avoids this and I believe it is actually closer to osu!'s style of romanisation than Hepburn, but I don't know what it's called.

In a more specific example of HujuniseikouyuuP, I believe there is reason to start romanising it as FujuniseikouyuuP instead. However, this would imply ふじゅに (fujuni) as opposed to ふじゅんい (fujun'i), so there is still the question of we should use apostrophes in these situations, like with ren'ai. Then there's capitalisation. Is it wrong to use FujunIseiKouyuuP to denote the separate parts of the name? And capitalisation issues carry over to many other cases.
TouchFluffyTail

SapphireGhost wrote:

The problem I see with Hepburn romanisation would be having to use "ō" in the non-unicode field. tangorin's style of romanisation avoids this and I believe it is actually closer to osu!'s style of romanisation than Hepburn, but I don't know what it's called.

In a more specific example of HujuniseikouyuuP, I believe there is reason to start romanising it as FujuniseikouyuuP instead. However, this would imply ふじゅに (fujuni) as opposed to ふじゅんい (fujun'i), so there is still the question of we should use apostrophes in these situations, like with ren'ai. Then there's capitalisation. Is it wrong to use FujunIseiKouyuuP to denote the separate parts of the name? And capitalization issues carry over to many other cases.
Using ō causes all kinds of problems, like confusing oo and ou, nevermind the fact that osu's systems don't like it. Long and extended vowels should always be written out.

For FujuniseikouyuuP, I believe it got romanized into Hu just because typing 'hu' into the IME puts out ふ [fu] as there is no 'hu'. 不純異性交遊 is read FU.

As for apostrophes. This comes down to personal preference I guess? I mean I see nothing wrong with using them, and they serve an actual purpose, but they aren't entirely vital to reading or transliterating. I guess in the Example Fujun'iseikouyuuP I would vote in favor of using them, as it helps break up very long names. On intercapping long names; I've never actually seen anyone do that. I wouldn't be opposed to it, but like I said I've never seen anyone use intercaps in romanization.
Ephemeral
Chinese, Japanese and Korean titles must be romanised and not translated unless a translated title is officially provided. Foreign words in titles should be romanised to the original language instead.
changed to:

Metadata originally from a non-Latin alphabet language must be romanized using an accepted system deemed as standard for that language (such as Hepburn for Japanese). In cases where the exact system to use for romanization is uncertain, existing ranked maps with similar metadata in the same language may be used as an example.
Thoughts?
Loctav
A bit complicated expressed. I needed to read this like 5 times to get what it says. And I wonder if the 2nd part is really required?
Also it doesnt include the katakana -> non-japananese cases like "Higurashi Moratorium".
Topic Starter
SapphireGhost
Metadata originally from a non-Latin alphabet language must be romanized using an accepted system deemed as standard for that language (such as Hepburn for Japanese). In cases where the exact system to use for romanization is uncertain, existing ranked maps with similar metadata in the same language may be used as an example.
This also leaves out the "not translated unless a translated title is officially provided". And again, I would prefer not to use Hepburn is because it would require the use of "ō".

In Hepburn: 金曜日(きんようび): ki + n + yo + u + bi = kinyōbi or kin'yōbi – Friday

I would rather see this as kin'youbi or kinyoubi.
Loctav

SapphireGhost wrote:

I would rather see this as kin'youbi or kinyoubi.
Latter one is more common and way more practicable. The aposrophes only indicate the right spelling, not "really" the right proounciation. The difference is minor (if even existing). And since romaji shall help to make stuff "read- and pronounceable" instead of "catching the entire right spelling", I would not use any apostrophes.
Moreover, trying to catch right spelling (to that extend) in romaji is weird, since writing japanese stuff with latin letters is wrong anyways. So no need for this.
pieguyn
anything like ō or some shit with a bar over it shouldn't be necessary at all imo
it's so pointless + it removes information + not intuitive + more effort etc.
Ephemeral

SapphireGhost wrote:

Metadata originally from a non-Latin alphabet language must be romanized using an accepted system deemed as standard for that language (such as Hepburn for Japanese). In cases where the exact system to use for romanization is uncertain, existing ranked maps with similar metadata in the same language may be used as an example.
This also leaves out the "not translated unless a translated title is officially provided". And again, I would prefer not to use Hepburn is because it would require the use of "ō".

In Hepburn: 金曜日(きんようび): ki + n + yo + u + bi = kinyōbi or kin'yōbi – Friday

I would rather see this as kin'youbi or kinyoubi.
the latter example (kinyoubi) is how we've always done it and is expressed in previous ranked maps with similar metadata, so it is encompassed by the rule.

changing to:

Metadata originally from a non-Latin alphabet language must be romanized using an accepted system deemed as standard for that language (such as Hepburn Traditional for Japanese), unless an official translated title is provided by the artist. In cases where the exact system to use for romanization is uncertain, existing ranked maps with similar metadata in the same language may be used as an example.
Loctav

Loctav wrote:

Also it doesnt include the katakana -> non-japanese cases like "Higurashi Moratorium".
It still doesn't tell that katakana-transcribed words that only replace an english (or other language's) word, should be written in its original language (so not writing the hepburn/whatever way to transcribe the katakana, but writing the English word with right spelling)

Or is that included with that "official translation" thing? If yes, it's misleading
Topic Starter
SapphireGhost

Ephemeral wrote:

the latter example (kinyoubi) is how we've always done it and is expressed in previous ranked maps with similar metadata, so it is encompassed by the rule.
It would be better for the rule to exist without having to rely on previous ranked maps, because not all previously ranked maps have correct metadata, so "how we've always done it" isn't always good reasoning.

Does the romanisation method on http://tangorin.com/ have a name? It seems to fit with what we're looking for, other than its use of apostrophes.
xxbidiao
Hey I found no one talking about Chinese issue.

In Chinese we have a special pinyin letter that is like (yu)

Taking a Chinese word as example, 绿色 (l se)

Actually in our IME we have such letter as V, so this should be OK:

lv se

But V is never used in real pinyin, would that be suitable that we use V in the Chinese "romanized" name?
Kayano

xxbidiao wrote:

Hey I found no one talking about Chinese issue.

In Chinese we have a special pinyin letter that is like (yu)

Taking a Chinese word as example, 绿色 (l se)

Actually in our IME we have such letter as V, so this should be OK:

lv se

But V is never used in real pinyin, would that be suitable that we use V in the Chinese "romanized" name?
"lü se" <- it is OK to type

"lǜ sè" <- 233
mintong89
ü isn't a romanisation word.

i think " lv se " is the most fit at this problem. if you use " lu se " may be confused between u and ü
evanma

OniJAM wrote:

xxbidiao wrote:

Hey I found no one talking about Chinese issue.

In Chinese we have a special pinyin letter that is like (yu)

Taking a Chinese word as example, 绿色 (l se)

Actually in our IME we have such letter as V, so this should be OK:

lv se

But V is never used in real pinyin, would that be suitable that we use V in the Chinese "romanized" name?
"lü se" <- it is OK to type

"lǜ sè" <- 233

mintong89 wrote:

ü isn't a romanisation word.

i think " lv se " is the most fit at this problem. if you use " lu se " may be confused between u and ü
Meh. I think lv and lü are both fine. I think of them interchangably. XD
mintong89
you can't write ü at romanisation title right?
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