Posted under Tags
BUR #5948 has been approved by @evazion.
create alias gensoukyou -> gensokyo
create alias yumedono_daishibyou -> divine_spirit_mausoleum
The tag didn't follow the most common romanization among fantranslations because it was made before the romanization revamp.
Previously suggested in topic #1681, with not much of a discussion.
EDIT: Added the Divine Spirit Mausoleum, to also follow consistency with the common translations.
Updated
MyrMindservant said:
When changes to the romanization guidelines were discussed, people were specifically saying that removing long vowels is not the intent. The aim was to have more ways to represent them, not losing them and most certainly not getting rid of them.
Changes like this have already been done in cases like Kujo Jotaro instead of Kuujou Joutarou and to me the reasoning is pretty much the same in this case, hardly anyone ever actually says Gensoukyou or Gensohkyoh or other spellings with long vowels, and the vast, nigh absolute majority of people say Gensokyo even if it's "technically incorrect".
Hell, on my end all the first results in Google when searching Gensoukyou are wikis that specifically spell it "Gensokyo" and only have "Gensoukyou" in the translation brackets. Keeping it as Gensoukyou just feels like being stubbornly archaic for the sake of being "technically correct".
Astolfo said:
Changes like this have already been done in cases like Kujo Jotaro instead of Kuujou Joutarou and to me the reasoning is pretty much the same in this case, hardly anyone ever actually says Gensoukyou or Gensohkyoh or other spellings with long vowels, and the vast, nigh absolute majority of people say Gensokyo even if it's "technically incorrect".
Hell, on my end all the first results in Google when searching Gensoukyou are wikis that specifically spell it "Gensokyo" and only have "Gensoukyou" in the translation brackets. Keeping it as Gensoukyou just feels like being stubbornly archaic for the sake of being "technically correct".
"Others are doing it so we should do it as well" is not a good argument. Other websites can be wrong or ignorant, they frequently are in fact. That's exactly why we always had our own set of rules/guidelines and followed it, instead of blindly copying others.
And I don't care about being technically correct. I just don't like to see things getting dumbed down, in this case by switching to an objectively inferior romanization. Not indicating long vowels makes the romanization much worse at representing how the words should be read, which does make it inferior.
This change also introduces inconsistency to our romanization within the same copyright: Touhou Gensokyo. This is another thing that we were specifically trying to avoid, according to past discussions.
Or are you going to advocate that we now should change "Touhou" to "Toho"?
MyrMindservant said:
This change also introduces inconsistency to our romanization within the same copyright: Touhou Gensokyo. This is another thing that we were specifically trying to avoid, according to past discussions.
Or are you going to advocate that we now should change "Touhou" to "Toho"?
We have quite a few Tokyo_* and Kyoto_* copytags where the rest uses full romanization indicating long vowels while Tokyo and Kyoto remain short though.
Overall, it would depend on how "naturalized" the word Gensokyo is. I suppose it is, for most of the Touhou English fanbase. I'd lean towards proceeding with the alias, though overall my vote is ambivalent because the notes section still has both spellings being frequently used (with or without long vowels indicated).
Updated
nonamethanks said:
If we're the only website using a spelling while everyone else uses another, that means we are in the wrong.
We are not. Every respectable anime/manga database, like AniDB, MAL, MangaUpdates, and others like VNDB (visual novel database) and LNDB (light novel database), do use romanization that keeps long vowels.
MyrMindservant said:
We are not. Every respectable anime/manga database, like AniDB, MAL, MangaUpdates, and others like VNDB (visual novel database) and LNDB (light novel database), do use romanization that keeps long vowels.
I'd like to point out that all of them use Tokyo and Kyoto without long vowels though.
As for Gensokyo/Gensoukyou in particular... think they mix up both, depending on the website. Though IIRC MangaUpdates prefers "Gensokyo" while VNDB prefers "Gensoukyou".
MyrMindservant said:
We are not. Every respectable anime/manga database, like AniDB, MAL, MangaUpdates, and others like VNDB (visual novel database) and LNDB (light novel database), do use romanization that keeps long vowels.
https://myanimelist.net/manga/5376/Touhou_Gumonshiki__Memorizable_Gensokyo
https://myanimelist.net/anime/9874/Touhou_Niji_Sousaku_Doujin_Anime__Musou_Kakyou
If it helps, the pools calling it Gensokyo are slightly more than the pools calling it Gensoukyou, but i don't think anyone has ever raised a fuss about them compared to the tag.
EDIT: As for how it's spelt in wikis, it's a 50/50
EDIT 2: my calculation may have been wrong, a *gensokyo* search brings less results (2 pages) than a *gensoukyou* search in wikis (4 pages), but i'm not sure how many of the latter search are the tag itself.
Updated
nonamethanks said:
https://myanimelist.net/manga/5376/Touhou_Gumonshiki__Memorizable_Gensokyo
https://myanimelist.net/anime/9874/Touhou_Niji_Sousaku_Doujin_Anime__Musou_Kakyou
https://myanimelist.net/manga/5376/Touhou_Gumonshiki__Memorizable_Gensokyo
This one is weird, it goes against their policy and most other romanized titles/character names on the website. Actually, it's not even a romanization, since original title is 東方求聞史紀 「記憶する幻想郷」 and its romanization would be "Touhou Gumonshiki Kioku-suru Gensoukyou". Probably a slip up.
https://myanimelist.net/anime/9874/Touhou_Niji_Sousaku_Doujin_Anime__Musou_Kakyou
Title does include all of the long vowels, so this one actually supports my argument. If you're pointing to the description, then you should know that descriptions are usually submitted by users, not written by the site staff, so they can include all kinds of stuff and are widely inconsistent.
https://vndb.org/v28642 - western fan-game, so it's not a romanization
https://vndb.org/v26896 - western fan-game, so it's not a romanization
And since you want to list examples, here are few from me:
https://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=11694 - "Touhou Gumon Shiki - Kiokusuru Gensoukyou"
https://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=162168 - "Touhou Project - Ningen-tachi no Gensoukyou"
https://anidb.net/anime/8624 - "Gensou Mangekyou: The Memories of Phantasm", original title is 幻想万華鏡 ~The Memories Of Phantasm~
Not "Gensoukyou", but there are no Touhou anime adaptations with Gensoukyou in their title. At least we can see Gensou with the long vowel intact.
Edit: Here are some examples from VNDB:
https://vndb.org/v26886 - Aya to Koi Suru Gensoukyou
https://vndb.org/v28284 - Gensoukyou Labyrinth - Welcome to Lunatic Festival!!
https://vndb.org/v10864 - Gensoukyou
https://vndb.org/v18659 - Gensoukyou Shiki Kouryuu Kansatsu
https://vndb.org/v23220 - Sengoku Gensoukyou
https://vndb.org/v5726 - Sentimental Gensoukyou
Updated
If you wanna play that game, then check out this. I'm using THBWiki because it's the most complete Touhou wiki out there.
There are a lot of big composers using Gensokyo in the romanization of their works. Gensoukyou, on the other hand, only gets around 100 results compared to Gensokyo's 300+.
You're the one who claimed that these sites use "gensoukyou" over "gensokyo", yet I can find an equal amount of number for both, despite the fact that "gensoukyou" is the technically correct term.
"Gensou" is not a valid argument for "Gensoukyou" over "Gensokyo" for the same reason that "Touhou" is not a valid argument for "Toukyou" over "Tokyo".
Since we're talking abotu games, "gensokyo" is also used for a lot of fan games like:
You can actually see just how irrelevant the "gensoukyou" spelling is by actually comparing the steam searches for fan games:
Several of these developers are japanese or chinese btw.
It's telling that the only place where you see "gensoukyou" is in third-party database sites, and not even in a consistent way, while producers of fan content actually prefer the more common term.
Also compare the number of youtube results for gensokyo vs the ones for gensoukyou.
nonamethanks said:
You're the one who claimed that these sites use "gensoukyou" over "gensokyo", yet I can find an equal amount of number for both, despite the fact that "gensoukyou" is the technically correct term.
Let's at least keep this discussion factual. You can't "find an equal amount of number for both", because it's not there. I've already explained why your examples were wrong. All decent anime/manga/VN/LN databases use romanization guidelines that keep the long vowels.
Username_Hidden said:
If you wanna play that game, ...
I'm not the one who wants to play this game, nonamethanks is. My previous post was solely to counter his examples, because they were incorrect. Personally, I consider this argument silly, it's way too close to the "Appeal to Majority" fallacy.
I think that we should have a clear and consistent set of guidelines and stick to it, regardless of what other website do.
MyrMindservant said:
Personally, I consider this argument silly, it's way too close to the "Appeal to Majority" fallacy.
This is a bizarre argument to make considering the point of having tags is to be easily searchable. If a change makes something easier for the majority, why exactly is that an argument against it? Obviously there has to be some sense to a change, but this isn't exactly a baseless change.
MyrMindservant said:
Let's at least keep this discussion factual. You can't "find an equal amount of number for both", because it's not there. I've already explained why your examples were wrong. All decent anime/manga/VN/LN databases use romanization guidelines that keep the long vowels.
It's mostly because it helps keep things consistent. Danbooru also used to do it; but this resulted in several tags using spellings most other users wouldn't use, resulting in counterintuitive searches.
The new adapted approach is supposed to use tag spellings more in-line with those of their respective fanbases... though this makes discussion of tag names much more complicated because we now need to 'quote' usage statistics and use examples on other websites. Most of the admins on the other database websites wouldn't want this trouble (and Danbooru didn't want either); best just stick to a consistent modified Hepburn instead of trying to suss out each fanbase's preferred romanizations. With exceptions made for spellings that everybody knows like Tokyo and Kyoto.
MyrMindservant said:
I'm not the one who wants to play this game, nonamethanks is. My previous post was solely to counter his examples, because they were incorrect. Personally, I consider this argument silly, it's way too close to the "Appeal to Majority" fallacy.
I think that we should have a clear and consistent set of guidelines and stick to it, regardless of what other website do.
I would agree in some sense that there is some... risk in just blindly following "majority trends", especially if it results in inconsistent romanization for terms and 'generic names' across copyrights that are otherwise identical in the original Japanese... but Gensokyo/Gensoukyou is unique (the name as a whole, not the individual kanji, like what NNT mentioned about Tokyo vs Touhou). If the fan wikis, fan-scanlation groups, Japanese doujin circle romanizations, Steam game descriptions, and the general Danbooru userbase all seem to prefer Gensokyo over Gensoukyou... then it is best to change the tag name over to Gensokyo.
The community sites are split on this, that's a fact. There's no consistent romanization that "all respectable sites use" like you're trying to claim. Claiming the ones you don't like are wrong is moving the goalposts.
The official English version of Touhou Garakuta Soushi Magazine uses Gensokyo, not Gensoukyou. I'd check Touhou Yomoyama News as well, but the only English page it has is the guidelines for fan creators. Touhou LostWord, though a doujin game, is officially licensed by Team Shanghai Alice, and just like the magazine uses Gensokyo. And I suspect that the official English translations for Forbidden Scrollery also use Gensokyo.
