Changing all Pokemon tags to English localisations

Pokemon tags have always existed as an inconstancy in Danbooru tagging. Pokemon creature names, objects, and locations are largely in English while human names are in Japanese. Similarly, some copyright names are in English while some are in Japanese. With popular opinion shifting toward being less stringent about maintaining the native Japanese nouns in all cases, instead moving to a more case-by-case policy, I suggest we eliminate this inconsistency and transfer to the Pokemon English localisations across the board in our tagging. Fire Emblem has already taken this approach for some names, as does the Fate series in some instances.

Pokemon is a highly globalised franchise. Many English character names in particular are more recognised globally than their native counterparts by a large margin. Even non-English translations have at times used the English localisation as a baseline (hence why Kasumi is "Misty" in German, Italian, Spanish, and Russian). This directly harms Danbooru's search engine performance on Google and the like, and, given that Pokemon is one of the most heavily uploaded copyrights to the site, likely hurts the site's traffic significantly for what is, in my view, little discernible benefit.

Speaking personally, I am a Poké Maniac. I've watched every anime episode, played most of the games etc..., and yet even I must still head to google on a regular basis while using Danbooru because I can't remember the Japanese name of some less than prominent character. If this is my experience, then I don't think the average user is benefiting from current usage on what is an English-language site.

I'd like to use this thread to gauge support before work begins on what will naturally be a very large BUR.

Related: topic #16491

I pretty much agree with all of your points. It's always seemed weird to me that we use english names for the creatures but japanese for the characters. I still need to google the characters' names every time I upload from that copyright.

+1 for this suggestion.

I have always been in favor for using the EN names with similar reasoning but it always got shut down, ever after the Fire Emblem BUR went through.

There's no valid reasoning against using the EN names.

For once I am for this, I can't remember a single Pokemon name in Japanese, only for characters.

I'm normally in favor of Japanese names, but it always has made little sense to use English names for some entities from a copyright but not others from the same copyright. I would support this.

+1 from me too

+1 from me. It's always a pain when I find a post featuring a "character of the day" from a filler anime episode and I have to track down their Japanese name in an obscure Pokémon wikia page.

I support this. I feel that Pokemon is one of the copyright that's better using English names than Japanese ones. I mean, Pixiv uses English names in the translated tags to make searching for a Pokemon or character easier for those unfamiliar with the original names. So why not Danbooru too?

+1
Honestly, putting the Pokemon trainer's names in english would make things easier.

-1

I am 'on the fence' because I think it had to do with the game characters vs the anime/manga characters. It made sense to have the creature names in English due to how popular the localization is and that A LOT of Japanese Pokemon names are so literal to everyday objects that it was simply easier to sort them using the English localization.

+1 and for some other tags like this. it makes it very difficult to tag for many copyrights unless you're very familiar with them. leads to much time spent on researching characters

-1
There are some instances of duplicate names within the localized branches of the franchise, and on top of that there's the issues "Green" and "Blue", as well between "Gold" and "Ethan". The creatures themselves stay consistent, but the human characters may be simpler to defer to their original names and rely on wikis to aid users (which, let's be honest, if they're not of mind to use those, they may not be of mind to be in this site).

NeverGonnaGive said:

[...]

Although i personally prefer to refer to her as Blue, Bulbapedia refers to the female MC in Pokemon Adventures' first arc as Green, and lists "blue" as alternate name.

An alias could be made, something like blue_(pokemon_adventures) -> green_(pokemon).

Gonna agree on this one here, you're absolutely right about the recognizability of the English names

+1

Sounds good to me.

However, as a minor problem, this would probably reverse Blue and Green, which could cause a bit of confusion.

ookido_green -> blue_oak (boy)
blue_(pokemon) -> green_(pokemon) (girl)

Given the support for this idea, I'm finishing up the BUR later today. It'll have to be, at minimum, done in three parts to avoid situations like the one mentioned above (Blue/Green) causing conflicts. (1) Unalias, (2) Move most, and (3) Move previous conflicts. Despite that, the second part will still be around 400 lines long, so if it's felt these should be broken down further to help with error checking then I'm taking suggestions.

Danielx21 said:

However, as a minor problem, this would probably reverse Blue and Green, which could cause a bit of confusion.

ookido_green -> blue_oak (boy)
blue_(pokemon) -> green_(pokemon) (girl)

I'm recommending we move blue_(pokemon) to leaf_(pokemon) for the time being. Personally, I think that identifier is better since it's more unique, and we can easily move it back to green_(pokemon) at a later date if people disagree. Additionally, we should probably not leave aliases to avoid confusion between the characters.

Obstetrics said:

I'm recommending we move blue_(pokemon) to leaf_(pokemon) for the time being. Personally, I think that identifier is better since it's more unique, and we can easily move it back to green_(pokemon) at a later date if people disagree. Additionally, we should probably not leave aliases to avoid confusion between the characters.

I think Green is better, because Leaf refers specifically to her FRLG appearance, while Green appears in both as an original design (black dress) and as the in-game female protagonist design.

BUR #3126 has been approved by @evazion.

Part 1 of Pokemon BUR; Unaliasing/Unimplicating

EDIT: The bulk update request #3126 (forum #170312) has been approved by @evazion.

Part 2 / Part 3

Feel free to point out errors/additions, or post the above in order if/when the first gets approved.