Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Culise]

That's the original name. Not everyone watches dubs. Also, you can't assume everyone is American / English speaking. Why use the American title when discussing a show made in Japan on a world forum? I guess French people could demand it's called Railgun Scientifique and the Germans could call it Wissenschaftliche Railgun.

Toaru = "A certain" as in "a specific"
Kagaku = "science"
No = "of" (but in the opposite direction it's like adding 's to a word)
Railgun = a fekking railgun.

Eh, the logic against using other translated names usually goes that we're speaking, or at least writing English right now, so it's internally consistent.  If we were using French or German to communicate with each other right now, I could see the logic in using the translated names in those languages.  As for the translation versus the original, that is the authorized name of the official release in the English language, so like it or not, it is the official English name.  As Taz notes, no one I've ever heard uses "JoJo no Kimyou-na Bouken".  Besides, it's not even like "Toaru Kagaku no Railgun" is even the actual name; if you want to be pedantic, it's とある科学の超電磁砲.  Romaji scripts in general, as far as I know, are not officially approved in spite of their widespread unofficial usage.  (EDIT: Whoops. Hepburn isn't, but Kunrei-shiki is)

Of course, this is coming from someone who uses "Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne" and "Full Moon wo Sagashite" instead of "Phantom Thief Jeanne" and "Searching for (the) Full Moon", so it's fairly obviously a chain of logic that I'm not strongly attached to.

[Reelya]

When you're translating regular speech that's correct, but for titles of a specific play or piece of work, it's very common to leave the title in the original lanauge. Because titles are the actual name of the thing, not a piece of prose intended to be translated.

For example, should I translate Les Miserable as The Miserable? Or Papillon as Butterfly? Would that be clearer?

I'm just wondering how we'd talk about something like Hajime no Ippo with a translated title? I could talk about "Fighting Spirit" which is the official translated title and nobody would know wtf I am talking about.

[IronyOwl]

Ideally, everyone would use the same name for everything. Also ideally, every name would be easy to use, make sense, and be distinctive. In practice, all that's going to conflict a lot, especially when you get things like some people getting into stuff before there's an official translation for it, some people being more or less comfortable and familiar with using foreign words, wildly differing sub/dub preferences, and so on.

The current patchwork we have is kind of dumb, but I don't think All Native or All Original are better options.

[Frumple]

Clearly we must start at the beginning, and number them all chronologically. Afterwards, all will be referred to by number, and the great praises for #5062 and others of its well formulated ilk may be sung freely.

[Radio Controlled]

The most straightforward solution, far as I see, would be to burn all the weeaboo trash to the ground and its groupies along with it.

Or maybe just say whatever people will understand, I dunno.

[i2amroy]

Um, are you talking about Scientific Railgun? If so, why use the Japanese name?

Because I watched it subbed as it was still coming out, so it didn't have an official english title at the time that I was watching (and thus all discussion on it used the original Japanese title).

[Bauglir]

Clearly we must start at the beginning, and number them all chronologically. Afterwards, all will be referred to by number, and the great praises for #5062 and others of its well formulated ilk may be sung freely.

This has the further advantage of allowing us to find numerologically significant patterns! Imagine an algorithm that predicts the success of the series based on its serial number, and imagine how the market would jostle as each studio attempts to get hold of that precious multiple-of-three-consecutive-primes slot!

[Reelya]

It would be a self-fulfilling prediction. No matter what, some pattern in the numbers will show up. Then, numbers that seem auspicious will end up attracting more investment, hence be better funded and have better visuals, while "unlucky" serial numbers will be sold for cheap to make filler series, leading to a reinforcement of the pattern.

[UXLZ]

Re: Titles.

It's a case-by-case thing with basically three main categories.
Some, everybody knows by the English name. (Jojo's Bizarre Adventure)
Others, either one will generally work. (Black Butler/Kuroshitsuji, Attack on Titan/Shingeki no Kyojin)
Finally, the English name is basically never used. (Hajime no Ippo)

Also, Reelya, I'd argue that using Romaji for the title is just as "wrong" as using the English version. Go all the way or not at all.

[Reelya]

I don't really have a problem with people using whichever title works. What I specifically had a problem with was one person saying that someone else shouldn't use whichever title suiys them. I was exaggerating to show how the "translate every title into my language of choice" thing doesn't really work.

I don't think romaji is a bad choice. After all is language about being right? Or is it about being able to communicate? A "perfect" message that nobody can decipher is not a good message. I'd argue whichever way conveys the most meaning to your audience is the best means - in context. Romaji allows people who cannot read Japanese to have a reasonable idea how the name is pronounced. Writing kana / kanji in this situation would actually fail because it's failed to communicate as much information.

In this case writing Toaru Kagaku no Railgun gives much more information to an English reader than the kanji would.

[UXLZ]

Seemed more like a question to me than a demand, if you're talking about Andres.

On another note, how has SnK gotten along after its massive popularity spike two years ago?

[Andres]

Look, I had no idea what Tjasodfijas dKUloahsfd no Railgun was until it was translated. A lot more people know it as A Certain Scientific Railgun so that's what I think it should be called in a forum where 99% of the language used is English.

Some shows like Hajime no Ippo ought to be written in Japanese because people can recognise it much more easily that way.

By the same logic, a show like Railgun should be written in English as it allows much more people to recognise what it is.

AoT's Japanese name is fine when you're talking about it with other fans since they tend to know it, but for newcomers it's best to use the English name.

[Frumple]

... outside the internet, anyway. On internet, just use whatever the hell you feel like and link the name to the wiki page or somethin', if you're actually trying to help people know what the zog you're talking about. Otherwise, just use whatever. Google unites us all in information access.

[Andres]

That's bad reasoning.

Let's say we've got a newbie. He's watched the first episode of Attack on Titan and wants to go on the anime section of his forum to talk about it. It's a new show and others will probably be talking about it so he skims the last few pages he missed to join any ongoing discussion. He sees a bunch of people talking about Talksdf Mosaihdf no Railgun, Shingeki no Kyojin, Bakandu Makagerame, etc. but none about Attack on Titan.
Do you see the problem here? Shingeki no Kyojin is the Jap name of AoT but the newbie wouldn't have known that. He doesn't even know to look it up on Google because to him it's just another random anime that he doesn't care about.

Hence, using the Japanese name for a show is not acceptable under the excuse that it's being invoked on the Internet. There might be other reasons why it is acceptable but that's not one of them.

[UXLZ]

Let's say we've got a newbie. He's watched the first episode of Shingeki no Kyojin and wants to go on the anime section of his forum to talk about it. It's a new show and others will probably be talking about it so he skims the last few pages he missed to join any ongoing discussion. He sees a bunch of people talking about A Certain Scientific Railgun, Attack on Titan, Black Butler, etc. but none about Shingeki no Kyojin.
Do you see the problem here? Attack on Titan is the English name of SnK but the newbie wouldn't have known that. He doesn't even know to look it up on Google because to him it's just another random anime that he doesn't care about.

Hence, using the English name for a show is not acceptable under the reason that it's being invoked on the Internet. There might be other reasons why it is acceptable but that's not one of them.

Sorry for doing it this way, but do you get the point?

Same with Jitsu Wa Watashi Wa (I think the English name is It's a Secret). Ultimately, it's a case by case basis, go with whatever name you're most comfortable with.