fixing a bunch of chinese copyright romanizations

BUR #15782 has been approved by @nonamethanks.

The chinese romanization is a bit of a mess compared to japanese titles. A lot of them have every character romanized separately.
And some of them are named by EN names. I'm certainly not arguing on stuff like Arknights -> Mingri_fangzhou or Girls'_Frontline -> Shaonu_Qianxian, they're well-established enough. But for smaller copyrights that didn't even hit global, it's probably better to follow the original name policy.
But as I said, since they're not standardized it's not always clear on how to romanize them, please correct me if there're any errors.
Character qualifiers will be moved accordingly after this is solved.

Btw qi xiu (jian xia qing yuan) and e mei (jian xia qing yuan) are actually not characters, but sects that players can choose to join in the game. Should they remain char tags or be gen tags instead? Tho I do remember there's a loose policy that if a "species" tag has enough posts that aren't named NPCs, it deserve to be a char tag of it's own.

magcolo said:

I do remember there's a loose policy that if a "species" tag has enough posts that aren't named NPCs, it deserve to be a char tag of it's own.

That only applies if there isn't an alternative chartag that can be used in their place, i.e. Avatar (FF14)'s existence resulting in that game's 'species' tags being returned to gen status. In general though, 'group' tags like those should be gen.

On the wider BUR, from my understanding, the reason why tags of Chinese origin are a bit of a mess is because more often than not, the English name of something (i.e. Girls' Frontline, Arknights, Azur Lane, Masterwork Apocalypse, Journey to the West, the Wandering Earth in contrast to Di Qiu Wang Shi, etc) will be way more well-known than the Chinese equivalent, in stark contrast to how the Western weeb community, depending on the situation, will be equally or far more familiar with the Japanese title, especially if it is internationally known. So if there is a common, standard and especially official English title for Chinese properties, those will be used instead (and I think the same principle somewhat applies for Korean properties as well, ex. Tower of God). The lack of Chinese romanization standards on site as has been done with Japanese very likely does not help in this regard.

So something like The Legend of Luo Xiaohei, for instance, which not only has a proper English title associated with it but has also gotten significant Western attention as a result of its collaboration with Arknights, should probably keep its current tag instead.

Damian0358 said:

That only applies if there isn't an alternative chartag that can be used in their place, i.e. Avatar (FF14)'s existence resulting in that game's 'species' tags being returned to gen status. In general though, 'group' tags like those should be gen.

Those sects posts as they seem (there're a lot untagged ones), aren't any specific depiction of their avatar, but really just any random person wearing the themed clothes. But the game has four basic avater models (mature male, mature female, young male, young female) that are shared across all sects and has their own nicknames, maybe we could tag those?
For instance post #4318917 is a 秀萝, aka a loli (萝莉) of the sect Qixiu (七秀) and post #4902795 is a 花萝 aka loli of Wanhua (万花).

Damian0358 said:

On the wider BUR, from my understanding, the reason why tags of Chinese origin are a bit of a mess is because more often than not, the English name of something (i.e. Girls' Frontline, Arknights, Azur Lane, Masterwork Apocalypse, Journey to the West, the Wandering Earth in contrast to Di Qiu Wang Shi, etc) will be way more well-known than the Chinese equivalent, in stark contrast to how the Western weeb community, depending on the situation, will be equally or far more familiar with the Japanese title, especially if it is internationally known. So if there is a common, standard and especially official English title for Chinese properties, those will be used instead (and I think the same principle somewhat applies for Korean properties as well, ex. Tower of God). The lack of Chinese romanization standards on site as has been done with Japanese very likely does not help in this regard.

So something like The Legend of Luo Xiaohei, for instance, which not only has a proper English title associated with it but has also gotten significant Western attention as a result of its collaboration with Arknights, should probably keep its current tag instead.

That was kind of the impression I got from it too, but technically speaking, almost every CN copyright has an somewhat "official" EN name, hidden in promotional arts or as a sub-title and such, even before any expansion towards global, for the sake of marketing or sth. Which makes it very difficult to determine when to use which. And for certain less-known copyrights or ones with terrible localization I would definitely not vote for EN name so full on EN doesn't work either.

Damian0358 said:

in stark contrast to how the Western weeb community, depending on the situation, will be equally or far more familiar with the Japanese title, especially if it is internationally known.

I also have questions on this part. Could just be my false impression but, all those anime rating sites aside, I don't feel like the average weeb really knows or cares that much about original names. I'm not talking about hardcore communities, tho I guess we are part of the more "hardcore" community (lol) so maybe our average user is more familiar? But that's not the mainstream I'm seeing out there. If we were to go by popularity, pretty sure there're a bucket of JP copyrights that need to be changed to EN.

magcolo said:

That was kind of the impression I got from it too, but technically speaking, almost every CN copyright has an somewhat "official" EN name, hidden in promotional arts or as a sub-title and such, even before any expansion towards global, for the sake of marketing or sth. Which makes it very difficult to determine when to use which. And for certain less-known copyrights or ones with terrible localization I would definitely not vote for EN name so full on EN doesn't work either.

Well, we aren't technically speaking in terms of technicalities, but rather their international names. And it's not like every CN tag is like this - the prime example I can think of is Benghuai Xueyuan, since it technically encompasses two games, both of which had wildly different official English names, neither of which indicating relation to what we would know as Honkai. So it's definitely a case-by-case thing.

I also have questions on this part. Could just be my false impression but, all those anime rating sites aside, I don't feel like the average weeb really knows or cares that much about original names. I'm not talking about hardcore communities, tho I guess we are part of the more "hardcore" community (lol) so many our average user is more familiar? But that's not the mainstream I'm seeing out there. If we were to go by popularity, pretty sure there're a bucket of JP copyrights that need to be changed to EN.

That's a fair point to raise, and technically, we have seen a slow but steady wave of JP to EN BURs over the past few years, from Pokemon, to Ace Attorney, to Animal Crossing, Mega Man, Fire Emblem to an extent, as we currently speak BRAVELY DEFAULT, etc - mainly in relation to character names, which leads to either half-measures or full measures converting to EN. But I suspect that it was the mainstream... back when Danbooru was created. And out of tradition it was maintained that way, especially since it does have some benefits in preserving details in names that might be lost when switching over to localized equivalents.

Either way, the main point of my post was just to elaborate on the CN side of things, or at least as much as I'm aware of it.

magcolo said:

Those sects posts as they seem (there're a lot untagged ones), aren't any specific depiction of their avatar, but really just any random person wearing the themed clothes. But the game has four basic avater models (mature male, mature female, young male, young female) that are shared across all sects and has their own nicknames, maybe we could tag those?
For instance post #4318917 is a 秀萝, aka a loli (萝莉) of the sect Qixiu (七秀) and post #4902795 is a 花萝 aka loli of Wanhua (万花).

Yeah, that sounds like a viable alternate option, especially if they have nicknames.

magcolo said:

I also have questions on this part. Could just be my false impression but, all those anime rating sites aside, I don't feel like the average weeb really knows or cares that much about original names. I'm not talking about hardcore communities, tho I guess we are part of the more "hardcore" community (lol) so many our average user is more familiar? But that's not the mainstream I'm seeing out there. If we were to go by popularity, pretty sure there're a bucket of JP copyrights that need to be changed to EN.

I have to agree. The "hardcore weeb" isn't really the standard for anime fans anymore. Fifteen+ years ago when Danbooru was first created, anime hadn't fully hit western mainstream yet, so it could take months or years (if ever) to get a western release. Dub quality was also still hit or miss, so you were either pirating fansubs cause there was no dub, or because the dub was shit. You basically had to be a hardcore elitist weeb to even experience anime. Not so much, these days. Anything with even marginal popularity is basically guaranteed to end up in the hands of one of the western anime psuedo-monopolies and dumped on one of the 30 garbage streaming services for casuals to enjoy without ever needing to have even heard of the cooyright before, much less memorized its unlocalized title.

The only reason it feels like Danbooru is still one of those hardcore communities is because so many of the consistently active forum participants are old guards fighting against change. In reality the userbase is an ever-growing mass of casuals who couldn't give a flying fuck that My Hero Academia is called Boku no Hero Academia in Japanese.

Damian0358 said:

Well, we aren't technically speaking in terms of technicalities, but rather their international names.

I’m not sure I got what you’re trying to say?

Damian0358 said:

That's a fair point to raise, and technically, we have seen a slow but steady wave of JP to EN BURs over the past few years, from Pokemon, to Ace Attorney, to Animal Crossing, Mega Man, Fire Emblem to an extent, as we currently speak BRAVELY DEFAULT, etc - mainly in relation to character names, which leads to either half-measures or full measures converting to EN. But I suspect that it was the mainstream... back when Danbooru was created. And out of tradition it was maintained that way, especially since it does have some benefits in preserving details in names that might be lost when switching over to localized equivalents.

All of the examples you listed are games, and specifically games that have way milder "otaku" vibe to them. As to anime and manga, they mostly remain original titles no matter the popularity. Like what blindVigil said.
The difference between JP and CN is that CN’s otaku related market is way less developed (excluding the gacha game part), so its audiences don’t even have the "authentic" habit because they simply aren’t even in that otaku community. So for the sake of marketing they will give themselves an English name. Which makes it very weird and inconsistent when put next to JP.
Another aspect is that JP has a good history with borrowed words, stuff like FGO or Princess Connect are already English you won’t even worry about localization, but CN rarely does that.
And yeah some of these points are also valid for KN.

magcolo said:

I’m not sure I got what you’re trying to say?

The difference between JP and CN is that CN’s otaku related market is way less developed (excluding the gacha game part), so its audiences don’t even have the "authentic" habit because they simply aren’t even in that otaku community. So for the sake of marketing they will give themselves an English name. Which makes it very weird and inconsistent when put next to JP.

I can't think of any proper examples off the top of my head, but I've seen several examples where the original title might feature an English subtitle or what have you, but once it actually releases abroad, the international title has nothing to do with that subtitle they added. And that isn't mentioning games whose titles change over the course of production, from their first showing to actual release, and in turn they change the English subtitle they include (which may not be reflective of the international title once it does release abroad).

So those with 'technical' English titles don't count in my eyes, but rather their international names. Though I agree with you when it comes to stuff with terrible localization, those would be safer to keep in CN.

Writing this though reminded me of another mess that we have when it comes to tags of Chinese origin: properties who are tagged under their Japanese name instead of their Chinese ones, ex. Black Surge Night and Velvet Code, presumably done so because even the Japanese name of something would be more recognizable abroad than the Chinese original.

All of the examples you listed are games, and specifically games that have way milder "otaku" vibe to them. As to anime and manga, they mostly remain original titles no matter the popularity. Like what blindVigil said.

I don't know, I do agree they are way milder when it comes to 'otakuness', but my point is that this trend could be a sign of things to come. It may be games first, but who knows when it might reach anime or manga next. If the old guard finally stopped pushing back on name changes for games, what's stopping other things from changing to EN in the future?

Damian0358 said:

I can't think of any proper examples off the top of my head, but I've seen several examples where the original title might feature an English subtitle or what have you, but once it actually releases abroad, the international title has nothing to do with that subtitle they added. And that isn't mentioning games whose titles change over the course of production, from their first showing to actual release, and in turn they change the English subtitle they include (which may not be reflective of the international title once it does release abroad).

So those with 'technical' English titles don't count in my eyes, but rather their international names. Though I agree with you when it comes to stuff with terrible localization, those would be safer to keep in CN.

Good examples I can think of are the two Paper games, both having good enough EN subtitles and crap localization, Miracle Nikki got change to Love Nikki dress-up queen and Love and Producer changed to Mr. Love queen's choice (such ugly names).

Damian0358 said:

Writing this though reminded me of another mess that we have when it comes to tags of Chinese origin: properties who are tagged under their Japanese name instead of their Chinese ones, ex. Black Surge Night and Velvet Code, presumably done so because even the Japanese name of something would be more recognizable abroad than the Chinese original.

Funny enough, those are both English borrowed words, a lot of CN games will give their JP server English names, I have no doubt that it would be the same name used for EN if these game were ever big enough to reach global, Arknights and Azur Lane already proved this. So it's more like JP followed "EN"'s name. If we want actual JP names though, Onmyoji and Genshin are good examples.

Damian0358 said:

I don't know, I do agree they are way milder when it comes to 'otakuness', but my point is that this trend could be a sign of things to come. It may be games first, but who knows when it might reach anime or manga next. If the old guard finally stopped pushing back on name changes for games, what's stopping other things from changing to EN in the future?

I agree with with all that you said, but it'll be a much drastic decision to extend this on the much more otaku contents for the moment. Question is, as our current position is stuck in the two, where do we consider CN (and KN) to be on and which is the policy they should follow?

magcolo said:

Funny enough, those are both English borrowed words, a lot of CN games will give their JP server English names, I have no doubt that it would be the same name used for EN if these game were ever big enough to reach global, Arknights and Azur Lane already proved this. So it's more like JP followed "EN"'s name. If we want actual JP names though, Onmyoji and Genshin are good examples.

Arknights, and in turn, Girls' Frontline feels like cheating to mention in conversations like this, because the folks behind those games are fucking nerds. But yeah, regardless, I just mentioned it as another factor to consider in the shitshow that is figuring this out.

I agree with all that you said, but it'll be a much drastic decision to extend this on the much more otaku contents for the moment. Question is, as our current position is stuck in the two, do we consider CN (and KN) to be on the otaku side or not and which is the policy they should follow?

Hm, I don't know, honestly. Like, I see the benefit of having CN/KR tags be in English for accessibility purposes, at least those with proper official names, but then there's also everything else mentioned which would indicate it would be better to have things be in CN/KR. It's a genuinely hard question. Should we follow the example of Quan Zhi Gao Shou (CN/KR), the example of To Be Hero (JP when possible), or the example of Tower of God (EN when possible)?

The bulk update request #15782 (forum #236174) has been approved by @nonamethanks.