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Romanization of Japanese Artists & Standardization

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Topic Starter
Lama Poluna
I want to say that in connection with the new rules of the metadata, we are using the wrong romanization of the artist.

>Artist names are to be romanised in the order they are printed in the unicode fields.

As practice shows, to performers it is important how their name is romanized. The guys who came up with this rule are wrong.
I have a few examples:

Shiena Nishizawa replied to me in the mail what to write correctly Shiena Nishizawa.

https://puu.sh/D1LDO.png

I would not have to write to her in the mail, because her entire site uses the romanization Shiena Nishizawa. But do the rules tell us otherwise?

https://shiena-nishizawa.com

Yuki Yumeno tweeted the same.

https://twitter.com/Yumeno_Yuki/status/1103663090032271360

https://www.yumenoyuki.com

I would not have to disturb a person if it were not for this rule. And yes, the official site again uses the romanization of which she said.

Kenji Arai said the same thing again.

https://twitter.com/arakeso/status/1010864776300224512

I want to convey to you that you can not use the Romanization that you like. There is an official romanization, it should be used. If the contractor gives 2 types of roamization on the official website or other sources, you have a choice. But when the performer uses only one type, then you need to listen him.

I propose to cancel this rule, and introduce a choice for romanization if there are several of them (please refer to the source).

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Also, I wanted to touch on 2 problem, this is using TV Size in the title of songs that are not TV Size. We are forced to write it because there is such a rule. I think it would be completely silly to ask what is the name of your song, if there is an official tracklist, which we must adhere to.

TV Size is not always it, it is already decided by the creators of the anime, and not we, the people from OSU !. Short ver, Movie ver, Clip Ver, and so on, they are all different. We can't just say "TV Size". And yes, you can write TV Size in different ways, and this is already decided by the creator. NOT us!

Any standardization is bad, it’s not up to us to decide what the performer, feat., Ft., Ft. Looks like. or vs. vs., Vs., VS or CV cv c.v, it's up to the creators of songs who have invested their time and work in it. These symbols also have a lot of important meaning. Please, we can not name me the songs for themselves. The creators decided for us.
wenect
Agree
-Mikan

wenect wrote:

Agree

Molodec
Gordon123
make osu!metadata great again :blessRNG:

because it is rather strange to see when using the wrong meta like this :

if in the official twitter is written 植松伸夫 (Nobuo Uematsu) : link

so i support this idea o./o
Joe Castle
While i dont believe cancelling the whole thing would help that much, i support this idea aswell

Make the mapper decide if either follow the how the true metadata was provided or either simplify it with current rules maybe + removing those silly rules like the "ft. > feat."?
Niva
very much in support of this yeah, especially after i got this map of mine popped back then not because of any issue regarding the map itself but simply because of this "metadata issue" regarding the usage of feat. despite the FA listing and most of any other official sources listing the map as "ft."

(i did changed the map's title after i found a source that lists it as 'feat.' and other considerations tho, but yeah... it just doesn't feel right to do that really especially since the artist had credited it w/ "ft." specifically and osu! by itself licensed the song as is)

---

anyway yeah, i'm really hoping this could be in effect soon in a way or another (。。*)
Topic Starter
Lama Poluna

Joe Castle wrote:

While i dont believe cancelling the whole thing would help that much, i support this idea aswell

Make the mapper decide if either follow the how the true metadata was provided or either simplify it with current rules maybe + removing those silly rules like the "ft. > feat."?


We can simply copy from official sources and even have no thought. As it was before... Why think how to use it if the creator has already decided for us.

Niva wrote:

very much in support of this yeah, especially after i got this map of mine popped back then not because of any issue regarding the map itself but simply because of this "metadata issue" regarding the usage of feat. despite the FA listing and most of any other official sources listing the map as "ft."

(i did changed the map's title after i found a source that lists it as 'feat.' and other considerations tho, but yeah... it just doesn't feel right to do that really especially since the artist had credited it w/ "ft." specifically and osu! by itself licensed the song as is)

---

anyway yeah, i'm really hoping this could be in effect soon in a way or another (。。*)


The same problem is experienced by songs from rhythm games, such as beatmania or pop'n music, where versions of feat. great amount. And this is the official name or performer, they always use it in one form.
caps
feat. and vs. i can understand, but i don't think CV: has any special meaning in how it is spelled. the way official sources spell it is extremely inconsistent compared to the aforementioned markers. i think at least this should stay standardized.

also things look better if they're consistent
Topic Starter
Lama Poluna

STCapricorn wrote:

feat. and vs. i can understand, but i don't think CV: has any special meaning in how it is spelled. the way official sources spell it is extremely inconsistent compared to the aforementioned markers. i think at least this should be standardized.

also things look better if they're consistent


I forgot to mark why the CV should not be standardized, because if someone wants to make map for a song from the 90th, he would have to call the artist incorrectly. The bottom line is that then the performers wrote Seiyu, for example Taeko Adachi (Seiyu / Junko Okada).

https://img.aucfree.com/r279430141.2.jpg

安達妙子(声優/岡田純子)

But nowadays, everyone uses CV, but in the 90th Seiyu is found.
felys
Wholeheartedly agree on the issue - the metadata should be the one provided by official medias and not one chosen by the community as some sort of way to "standardize" something that has no need to be standardized whatsoever.
dennischan
So this proposal aims to delete 4 rules then if I have read it correctly
Posting to clarify which four rules should be deleted

  1. Artist names are to be romanised in the order they are printed in the unicode fields
  2. Any form of vs., Vs., VS, etc. must be written as vs. when it is used as a marker signifying a collaboration between two or more artists.
  3. Any form of feat., ft., Ft., etc. must be written as feat. when it is used as a marker signifying a featured artist in the song.
  4. If the song is TV size, use a (TV Size) marker at the end of the current title string. If there is an existing TV size marker in the title, the (TV Size) marker would replace it.


I’m neutral about whether to delete those four rules, since standardization has the benefit of standardizing the title and source fields of the song. However, I recognize that mappers should not degrade artist’s hard work by using the incorrect metadata intentionally.
EijiKuinbii
Agree, hope QATs will pay attention to this problem
caps

Lama Poluna wrote:

But nowadays, everyone uses CV, but in the 90s Seiyu is found.

that's the thing. nearly all official sources use CV:. even your example uses CV in later, more recent releases.

in the end, it all means the same thing. so i don't think anyone minds changing Seiyuu to CV:. except for you, that is

iirc, the reason TV Size gets shoved into the title field is because there is no way to differentiate between the tv size and the full version on the new site aside from opening the map's page.
Serizawa Haruki
I believe standardization is good because it doesn't matter whether a song is labeled as -TV Size- or (TV Size) for example, many artist either don't care about the syntax or they label it inconsistently themselves across different platforms. And even if they do care about it, doing such minor adjustments like changing ft. to feat. isn't really disrespectful in any way I think, it just makes things look cleaner and organized. It also makes metadata easier to handle for many people.
Regarding the artist name order, I feel like it's weird that artists reverse their name order when romanizing it since it contradicts with the order that is used in everyday life and the way it's printed in japanese characters. Following the unicode artist field order is reasonable because it's a direct romanization without changing the order. It's also not always easy to find official romanizations and there are cases where it's not clear what order is preferred. Again, the current rule is just avoiding confusion and exceptions
Topic Starter
Lama Poluna

Serizawa Haruki wrote:

I believe standardization is good because it doesn't matter whether a song is labeled as -TV Size- or (TV Size) for example, many artist either don't care about the syntax or they label it inconsistently themselves across different platforms. And even if they do care about it, doing such minor adjustments like changing ft. to feat. isn't really disrespectful in any way I think, it just makes things look cleaner and organized. It also makes metadata easier to handle for many people.
Regarding the artist name order, I feel like it's weird that artists reverse their name order when romanizing it since it contradicts with the order that is used in everyday life and the way it's printed in japanese characters. Following the unicode artist field order is reasonable because it's a direct romanization without changing the order. It's also not always easy to find official romanizations and there are cases where it's not clear what order is preferred. Again, the current rule is just avoiding confusion and exceptions


As practice shows, people are interested in romanization of their name, your metadata upbringing leads to confusion among people, because if a performer has official romanization, it is used by everyone, but not osu, it looks not just strange, it is WRONG.

At the expense of TV Size, when you realize that the song has its official name, which is written in the tracklist of the disc or on the site. I still can not understand why people do not understand what is the name of the song, and it can not be changed.

You say that you simplify the metadata, as if it is something hard. All your actions lead to more confusion and misinformation of people, which supposedly have some of the songs of the TV Size version or incorrect romanization.

But not many times people who were responsible for the metadata in OSU said that people in general do not care about the romanization of their names, but what was the result? For them it is important! . How then can you say that people do not care about the name of the songs? It doesn’t even need a question, it will look weird “And how to call your song correctly?“, Because the name is already written in the tracklist.
Aiseca
Agree in this. The artist themselves uses official Romanised names? Why not use them?
Don't wait to a point where the artists complain pile up.
Fycho
At past we followed everything that are official which caused some problems, sometimes official metadata has multiple orders of romanisation and some are ambiguous, and so that somebody used this order to rank, others used that order to rank.

Artist names are to be romanised in the order they are printed in the unicode fields. ensures the standardization of romanisation in osu! beatmaps. Also romanisation is helpful to those who can't read Unicode metadata. I believe nobody wants to see the different romanised artist names in ranked section, that's why we force every beatmap from that time to use the order rules.
Topic Starter
Lama Poluna

Fycho wrote:

At past we followed everything that are official which caused some problems, sometimes official metadata has multiple orders of romanisation and some are ambiguous, and so that somebody used this order to rank, others used that order to rank.

Artist names are to be romanised in the order they are printed in the unicode fields. ensures the standardization of romanisation in osu! beatmaps. Also romanisation is helpful to those who can't read Unicode metadata. I believe nobody wants to see the different romanised artist names in ranked section, that's why we force every beatmap from that time to use the order rules.



It seems like no one complained about the various romanization of artist names over the years. Most performers have one romanization. We can choose the official romanization based on the number of their species. If 30 sources use Yuki Yumeno and 1 uses Yumeno Yuki, then it is probably more correct to choose the first type.

In my opinion this is the easiest and most optimal way to solve this problem.

Over time, it will not even need to be checked.
S o h
>no one complained
and you could say differently for your claim?

>favor the more common version
this requires much more research than most are willing to go through:
1. collecting enough material to decide which is more common
2. ensure there is no bias in the collected information
and 2 is basically impossible so i hope this is thrown out the window

the truth is most artists prefer that their names go in the order that follows the format of what is common in the website/service/whatever. even if you personally ask the artists, if they do not fully understand how osu! metadata works they are unable to give a sufficient answer as they are forced to make assumptions and it is very unlikely they understand entirely.

personally, if i was an artist, i would prefer that my name follows the format people are used to, accustomed to, or avoids confusion (which is exactly what standardization is supposed to do).

i hope my input, as a japanese person, holds some weight here.
Topic Starter
Lama Poluna

S o h wrote:

>no one complained
and you could say differently for your claim?

>favor the more common version
this requires much more research than most are willing to go through:
1. collecting enough material to decide which is more common
2. ensure there is no bias in the collected information
and 2 is basically impossible so i hope this is thrown out the window

the truth is most artists prefer that their names go in the order that follows the format of what is common in the website/service/whatever. even if you personally ask the artists, if they do not fully understand how osu! metadata works they are unable to give a sufficient answer as they are forced to make assumptions and it is very unlikely they understand entirely.

personally, if i was an artist, i would prefer that my name follows the format people are used to, accustomed to, or avoids confusion (which is exactly what standardization is supposed to do).

i hope my input, as a japanese person, holds some weight here.



Tell me, then, how does the metadata work in OSU? I think that they fully understand, I just asked about the use of their name, they all answered the same. On account of information retrieval, it will take not 5 minutes to search for metadata, but 10, but it will be correct. On account of the fact that you are Japanese. If you are Japanese, this does not mean that you are responsible for the opinion of all Japanese artists.

So far, standardization leads to big problems, some of which have been voiced above. The artists themselves say otherwise, the mappers are unhappy with the romanization, because she will reread the official one.
Nao Tomori
in cases where official romanization is provided (from artist's website for example - http://toyamanao.com/profile.html) that should be preferred. in cases where it is not given, it should be directly romanized using the current method. that way it is both simple and accurate.

regarding the tv size bs - standardizing it is the best option because despite what nitpicking you do, ~tv edit~ (tv size) -tv ver.- and whatever else there is are all functionally identical; tv size cuts are just cuts from a full song, not anything more or less, not a new song or separate work. so keeping everything as (tv size) is fine, because in many cases there is no modifier and then people wonder why there is no distinction from the full version when the tv size is 1/3 the length.
Topic Starter
Lama Poluna

Nao Tomori wrote:

in cases where official romanization is provided (from artist's website for example - http://toyamanao.com/profile.html) that should be preferred. in cases where it is not given, it should be directly romanized using the current method. that way it is both simple and accurate.

regarding the tv size bs - standardizing it is the best option because despite what nitpicking you do, ~tv edit~ (tv size) -tv ver.- and whatever else there is are all functionally identical; tv size cuts are just cuts from a full song, not anything more or less, not a new song or separate work. so keeping everything as (tv size) is fine, because in many cases there is no modifier and then people wonder why there is no distinction from the full version when the tv size is 1/3 the length.



Of course, when romanization is not given, we still have a choice, but I don’t recall such cases when it is not given at all. Even if the performer is completely new, more often he begins to romanize himself "First Name + Last Name".

As for TV Size, there is an official tracklist, the name of the song, includes tv size. We must adhere to the official name, whatever your opinion was. Metadata must be correct. It must match the official source.
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