Posted under General
tl;dr "bad localizations bring bad names" (AKA elitism)
This was a rule made 14 years ago, and people are too attached to it to change it.
The general consensus is that JP > EN names. I tend to disagree, mainly because of your point.
The thing is, years ago internet was slow. You would have to wait a couple years for an international release. And if there was an international release, they would change names. This is why some japanese names tend to stick more than english names.
This is mainly an anime problem though. I completely understand using original names for anime. But for games, usually the english version of the name is more common nowadays.
Mysterious_Uploader said:
The general consensus is that JP > EN names. I tend to disagree, mainly because of your point.
The thing is, years ago internet was slow. You would have to wait a couple years for an international release. And if there was an international release, they would change names. This is why some japanese names tend to stick more than english names.
This overlooks the fact that there are often MULTIPLE localisations of said properties. Why should we use the English localisation over French, RUssian or German? Who makes that decision? To avoid this kind of discourse the policy on Danbooru has been to have the names generally from the language of the properties' origin.
Pokemon_(crreature) is obviously the big glaring exception to the rule - though at this point I'm pretty sure it would be arduous and unnecessary to change it back.
Using English names whenever possible brings in a problem where names are sometimes localized inconsistently, and long-running franchises with many characters might not have localized names for everyone so you'd end up with a mix of localized and translated names.
Generally, the current system where character tags use their original names usually works the best. Plus, most popular characters who've had their names changed in translation have aliases for the English names, so you can search something like dawn_(pokemon) or marie_(splatoon) you still get results.
Elfaleon said:
Why should we use the English localisation over French, RUssian or German?
Are you serious?
Who makes that decision?
Albert made that decision when he created the website in English. Surely he could have made a German version if he wanted, but it wouldn't be as popular.
indexador2 said:
Are you serious?
Albert made that decision when he created the website in English. Surely he could have made a German version if he wanted, but it wouldn't be as popular.
^
English is the lingua franca of the world. (Almost) everyone uses the english names online, except people who don't speak in english communities. Danbooru is an english community.
Using japanese names will only bring more missed searches. This applies to most japanese games that have had an international release along with the japanese one.
I'm honestly surprised the semi-recent changes to Fire Emblem's naming scheme didn't bring this discussion about far more than it did. Though I'm kinda sad the Fire Emblem stuff happened before Three Houses, I would've loved to see that guy vehemently against English names defend using stuff like "Berunadetta" instead of "Bernadetta". Pokémon is another unusual example because of the Japanese human names vs. English 'mon names. The same goes for Fate characters. We search for Mash, not Mashu or Matthew.
There is something to be said for characters who have multiple localizations due to age, but I feel that that is why we have aliases as an option. I feel like the policy, going forward into an age of worldwide releases and generally consistent naming conventions, should definitely be revised to fit the change in era.
Mysterious_Uploader said:
Using japanese names will only bring more missed searches. This applies to most japanese games that have had an international release along with the japanese one.
In general, if the English names are at least equally popular as the Japanese names, they are aliased and thus won’t bring more missed searches. That’s basically what n0pe already said above.
If you think a popular English name is missing, feel free to request an alias.
Most series are known by the Japanese names, not English translations that usually come years later. I've seen no evidence of a shift from Japanese titles to English ones over the years either. As series names are translated far more often than character names are, a decision to change the policy would affect htme far more. We'd also be throwing around masses of aliases all the time to get the stuff aliased over for the latest series to get English releases, and then changing them again when the title given in the licence announcement turns out to not be used for the actual release (this happens *all the time*).
You'd also have to throw popularity rules out the window when making aliases - and ditch the removal of aliases that haven't seen recent use in images. After all, the more obscure the title is, the more likely someone who searches for it is to be using the Japanese title, rather than an English localisation that may well be long forfgotten
And you'd still get arguments - but over things like which localisations to use, and whether or not translations invented by fans should count.
And it's not just old stuff that have multiple localisations of the names - for instance the anime of OreGairu got the name "My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU", vs the light novel and manga getting "My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, As I Expected".
Shifting everything over to English is a foolish policy.
Mysterious_Uploader said:
Using japanese names will only bring more missed searches.
This doesn't seem to actually be a problem we can't deal with.
Mysterious_Uploader said:
Almost) everyone uses the english names online, except people who don't speak in english communities. Danbooru is an english community.
Even though this is an English site, it primarily focuses on Japanese things, so it makes sense that some things aren't in English when they could be.
Believe it or not, it's more intuitive to use the original name over the English in a lot of cases, like when something gets multiple English titles officialy (Boku Wa Tomodachi Ga Sukunai) or informally (ToAru series), or when the English simply isn't as well known or wide spread (Higurashi) or people just plain prefer the Japanese title or don't want to use the English title (OreImo).
As far as I can tell, English names aren't universally preferred and your claim is pretty much based in a handful of Nintendo games (which are all special cases).
skylightcrystal said:
Shifting everything over to English is a foolish policy.
Using ALL english localization is indeed a dumb thing, but i never said i was going to push that.
I just think the rules should be more lax for exceptions, and make it a case-by-case basis, using the names of the original language as the standard.
For example, I don't think many non-jp people know the japanese names of the many xenoblade_2 characters, other than pyra/homura and mythra/hikari for obvious reasons.
Mysterious_Uploader said:
Using ALL english localization is indeed a dumb thing, but i never said i was going to push that.
I just think the rules should be more lax for exceptions, and make it a case-by-case basis, using the names of the original language as the standard.
For example, I don't think many non-jp people know the japanese names of the many xenoblade_2 characters, other than pyra/homura and mythra/hikari for obvious reasons.
You didn't, but the other posters arguing in favour of localisation seemed to be suggesting it.
skylightcrystal said:
You didn't, but the other posters arguing in favour of localisation seemed to be suggesting it.
I'm certainly not expecting a total switch over to English only. There are plenty of examples as to why that's a bad idea. But there are also plenty of examples in the opposite direction.
There are also tons of examples that don't really make much sense either way, like the aforementioned Pokémon.
I feel that it should absolutely be a case-by-case basis. Obviously you can easily pick and choose reasons we do it, especially based on the rediculous light novel names, but there're so many exceptions that it makes no sense to even call it a rule anymore. Especially when dealing with character names rather than series names.
I may be familiar with anime and manga but that doesn't really mean I only know Japanese names for characters from those media.
So what you guys are saying is: Albert is a huge weeb, and since this rule was made ages ago its tough to go back on. Shame tbh.
Shifting everything over to English is a foolish policy.
Like the other dude said, case by case basis.
Like most people don't know who Musashi is, there's tons of characters called Musashi, but the entire world knows Jessie from Pokemon
