Posted under General
As per forum #28725, known Chinese names should be romanised using Hanyu Pinyin, with the name format of x_yz for the usual three-character names, where X is the one-character family name (that is, the same name order as in Japanese names).
This is the thread to submit alias requests for existing character names spelt using other romanisation schemes.
Updated by jxh2154
First, the originally mentioned Clamp characters:
I assume the discussion in the other thread should continue here? Here's what I had originally posted there:
----
As for the rest, Chinese is beyond me, unfortunately. With Japanese, the differences in romanization and ordering conventions are relatively slight, and a name is immediately recognizable in more than one style, generally. It doesn't take a genius to tell that miku_hatune and hatsune_miku are the same, or Tunasima Sirou and Tsunashima Shirou, or Noizi Ito and Itou Noiji.
With Chinese... well the example here is a good illustration of the problem. To change the very well known CCS character from li_syaoran to li_xiaolang is to render the name unrecognizable to nearly all danbooru users.
We're strict with Japanese because the vast majority of non-western, non-fantasy names on danbooru are Japanese. And because our focus is on art from a specifically Japanese set of artistic media (anime, manga, Japanese video games, visual novels, light novels). And because plenty of us have at least basic knowledge of proper Japanese naming conventions, romanization, and the basics of the writing system.
I'm hesitant to apply that level of rigor to something like Chinese, which the mods aren't as well equipped to handle and which is far less familiar to the anime/manga/otaku community that makes up this site.
On the other hand, perhaps it wouldn't affect a lot of tags. I don't know. Maybe anime (and its translators) nowadays is more attentive to getting Chinese and other names right from the get go. li_xingke from Code Geass would be a good test - is that proper Chinese? What about tianzi? Back to CCS, would li_meiling need to change?
Just curious how widespread this will need to be.
jxh2154 said:
Back to CCS, would li_meiling need to change?
Nope, in her case, the official romanization is correct.
jxh2154 said:
I assume the discussion in the other thread should continue here? Here's what I had originally posted there:----
As for the rest, Chinese is beyond me, unfortunately. With Japanese, the differences in romanization and ordering conventions are relatively slight, and a name is immediately recognizable in more than one style, generally. It doesn't take a genius to tell that miku_hatune and hatsune_miku are the same, or Tunasima Sirou and Tsunashima Shirou, or Noizi Ito and Itou Noiji.
I dunno. Some can get pretty horribly mangled, we're just more used to it. And yes, we have more users actually knowledgeable about Chinese now, with some translators even. And from a cursory look, it doesn't seem like there will be this many Chinese characters for it to be a huge problem. Sure, syaoran → xiaolang is a pretty drastic change, but I maintain you can get used. People wondering about who "Chiruno" was in post #519678 are the best example that it's all pretty relative.
"Syaoran" is the romanisation of a japanisation. Of course it's mangled. Apparently there's an anglicisation of the romanisation of the japanisation, "Showrun" or something, which is even worse. tl;dr -- it's a nontypical example.
EDIT: Having looked up the actual words for tianzi and li_xingke, they're correct too.
I think it's just as important to have a consistent way of romanizing Chinese names as it is for Japanese names. And like Watsuki said, there seems to be many users here today with knowledge of the language.
I'm a little concerned by something shii brought up in the other thread, though I don't quite understand it or its implications:
shii said:
2) Besides, Shaoran is from Hong Kong so the proper reading is Siulong.
Is this claiming that names need to be romanized differently depending on which part of the country they stem from?
95% of Hong Kong population are native Cantonese speakers, which is a dialect substantially different from the Mandarin Chinese (which is the main dialect). It has a different pronunciation and a different phoneme repertoire. There is, however, an officially blessed Pinyin-like system for it, it seems, the Guangdong romanisation.
So basically, we need someone familiar with Cantonese to tell us what the proper pronunciation of 小狼 is.
I'm not a Cantonese speaker so I have to search the characters through the Unihan-Database and CEDICT. According to what I've gathered, the Cantonese pronunciation for 小狼 is "Siu Long," which is way different from "Syaoran."
Fencedude said:
We should defer at least somewhat to the actual pronunciations used in the shows.
If that's how it goes, then li_xiaolang is how it should be.
It's just as possible that Clamp didn't do the research on dialectic differences in the Chinese language(s).
Not do research on foreign sounding names in anime? That's just impossible based on the multitude of utterly authentic European names found in anime: Rally Vincent, Revy, Kallen Stadtfeld...
Shinjidude said:
Not do research on foreign sounding names in anime? That's just impossible based on the multitude of utterly authentic European names found in anime: Rally Vincent, Revy, Kallen Stadtfeld...
Honestly? It's still good as long as they don't pull a Blood+ on us. That was fucking annoying.
Sarcasm obviously.
Was Blood+ really all that bad though? All the characters but Diva had relatively plausible names, and I thought the idea was supposed to be that Diva wasn't initially given a name during the dehumanizing isolation experiment, and subsequently named herself after she broke out. Picking a weird name for an insane character to use for herself doesn't sound all that unrealistic.
Shinjidude said:
Sarcasm obviously.Was Blood+ really all that bad though? All the characters but Diva had relatively plausible names
That's not what I meant. I mean how they go through half the world and magically everyone speaks Japanese. Including starving Thai peasants and Russian hunters stuck in the middle of tundra. My favourite part was how whatshisface could speak with the Russian girl alright, but was utterly defeated by a sign in Cyrillic. Very logic that.
True, I hadn't though of that. For some reason it didn't bother me when I watched it. It's actually pretty egregious too, once you think of it and try to find similar series on TV tropes. Usually series try to explain it away somehow with a babelfish or weird accent or obviously bilingual characters, but they didn't here.
Maybe it's backlash from the movie, where the American characters spoke straight English for the Japanese viewers.
Whatever, I still liked the series. Probably should stop talking about it though since it's derailed the thread.
We should continue the system already used here:
1. Use the romanization recommended by the artist (e.g. Syaoran, Hong Meiling, Ssigh Argyle, Xerxes Break).
2. Failing that, use the way the name is rendered in furigana.
3. Failing that, use the way the name is pronounced out loud for remaining names used in anime.
4. Failing that, use sensible Japanese orthography for remaining names written in kanji (aka hanzi).
5. Failing all of these, use whatever crazy orthography the name is supposed to be based on, Chinese, Vietnamese, whatever.
Updated
#1 goes against our policy for regular Japanese names, why should Chinese be an exception? I suppose our policy is to go with the author's prerogative in the case of made up names that could possibly be a corrupted version of a real name e.g. "Kallen". Syaoran / Xiaolang is a real Chinese name though, right?
Updated
Shinjidude said:
Syaoran / Xiaolang is a real Chinese name though, right?
Insofar as one can have set names in Chinese, yep. Of course it's bloody flamboyant, but what do you expect.
shii said:
5. Failing all of these, use whatever crazy orthography the name is supposed to be based on, Chinese, Vietnamese, whatever.
Note the distinct Japanocentric bias present in this statement. Of course if it's not Japanese, it's "crazy". -sigh-
shii said:
There is no difference between "hanzi" and "kanji".
Actually, there are characters which appear the same but have different meanings, and similar characters with the same meanings which are nevertheless different.
