Tag Alias: utawarerumono -> utawareru_mono

Aliasing utawarerumono -> utawareru_mono.

Reason: Consistent romanization. When a verb modifies the noun it precedes, a space is inserted between the verb and noun.

We have precedent in at least all the following cases:

akane-iro_ni_somaru_saka
aozora_no_mieru_oka
elf_wo_karu_mono-tachi
hanbun_no_tsuki_ga_noboru_sora
harukanaru_toki_no_naka_de
kami_nomi_zo_shiru_sekai
koisuru_otome_to_shugo_no_tate
komorebi_ni_yureru_tamashii_no_koe
sora_wo_kakeru_shoujo
toki_wo_kakeru_shoujo
yume_miru_kusuri

Previous discussion of this topic occurred in forum #33382, with little bits in forum #39500 and forum #42577. Counter-arguments include popularity of usage and the somewhat dubious supposition that うたわれるもの is in fact not Japanese.

I apologize for creating a new thread instead of bumping the first one, but I thought after seven months it's better to start with a clean slate.

I still disagree.

Just because, mostly.

Sigh.

Done so I never have to hear anyone ask about it again.

jxh2154 said:
Done so I never have to hear anyone ask about it again.

Or maybe that'll just reverse the direction.

RaisingK said:
Or maybe that'll just reverse the direction.

I'll have someone write me a script to flip the alias every 6 hours. Everybody wins!

jxh2154 said:
I'll have someone write me a script to flip the alias every 6 hours. Everybody wins!

Having people win is boring, I say alias them both to Shadow_Warrior_Chronicles so nobody wins.

Did some clean-up on related tags last night.

Last I checked, pleasing everyone was never a priority on Danbooru. Consistency, however, does have its merits.

NWF_Renim said:
Having people win is boring, I say alias them both to Shadow_Warrior_Chronicles so nobody wins.

I lol'd.

I see the case of Utawareru_mono as most similar to Ookamikakushi and Sora_no_Woto. Among the examples listed by Soljashy, all are written with appropriate kanji except for Yume_Miru_Kusuri, which is a single katakana phrase.

Utawarerumono and Ookamikakushi are written as a single hiragana phrase while Soranowoto is written as five individual katakana syllables separated by dots. What ties them all together is that they are purposefully not written in kanji and should not be interpreted as if they were.

It is neither consistent nor helpful to apply grammar rules to phrases where the creators specifically removed the grammar. This is easiest to see with Ookamikakushi, where the title is a portmanteau of Ookami (wolf) and Kamikakushi (spirited away). It is not possible to portmanteau the phrase using kanji and luckily the title has been left as a single unbroken phrase on danbooru.

In the case of Yumemirukusuri, the game was licensed and released in English as 'Yume Miru Kusuri: A Drug That Makes You Dream'. Breaking the title into 3 parts helps to make it readable and adding a translation of the title as a subtitle is effective. This is a good translation. However, tags on danbooru are not translations. Tags should keep what grammar is in the original and add no interpretation of their own.

For this reason I am in favor of using Utawarerumono, Soranowoto, and Yumemirukusuri.

The example of Mononoke_Hime from forum #33382 is also good. Mononoke is written as an unbroken hiragana phrase as opposed to in kanji (物の怪) and thus we keep it unbroken in the tag. The 姫 (hime) in the latter portion of the title is written in kanji and so we place a break at that point.

Ultimately, the alias system makes these arguments a mostly moot point. As long as all common usages are identified and aliased the end result is similar enough that I won't be upset by whatever decision is reached.

I don't believe the fact that a title is written only in hiragana or katakana should mean that we don't apply grammar at all. It might alert us of a possible pun, yes, but sometimes it's just a stylistic choice.

I believe うたわれるもの is different from Ookamikakushi, where trying to separate the words would break the ookami/kamikakushi pun (Bakemonogatari is another such example, by the way). If there is any ambiguity in うたわれるもの that is lost by applying this romanization, would someone kindly enlighten me of it?

Note that I did not cite ambiguity as a reason for keeping the phrases unbroken. うたわれるもの is, without question, most intuitively interpreted as 謳われる者. However, it is not written that way, and tags should reflect that fact.

My point of view stems from respecting the author's usage of the phrase. Stylistic choices are not to be ignored, especially for titles, which are never chosen lightly.

Utawarerumono is meant to be a mouthful. It is not easily read in Japanese, let alone when romanized and read by a foreigner. I recall reports on /a/ some years back which stated that the drama CDs included examples of the voice actors stumbling over the title. The difficulty is intentional.

If the title had been 謳われる者, I would agree that the tag should be utawareru_mono. The author did not do that, though, and it is not part of the tagging process to do so for them.

In the case of Bakemonogatari, it is a slightly different situation since the mono (物) in both words are the same and the title is written in kanji anyway, but I see your point.

As an aside, ambiguity does not necessarily mean that there are multiple intuitive readings.

Removing the kanji from a title literally makes it ambiguous. It may have only one intuitive interpretation, but it will never be anything more than one possible reading. The fact that it is ambiguous becomes a part of the title when it is written in kana. To grammatically analyze such a title removes that ambiguity by making assumptions.

As a further segue, sometimes phrases are written only in kana to denote an emotional state or lack of proficiency with the language. An exceptionally upset character may add dakuten (濁点) to words and drop kanji in favor of kana. Children and foreigners also often speak with katakana in place of kanji and particles to show subtle mispronunciation. Such factors would have to be accounted for in a proper translation. They should not be ignored in titles, either.

We don't grant artists' names stylistic romanizations, why should we make an exception for copyrights?

Aside from that, this entire issue begs the question of whether eliminating spaces from a romanization is in any way analogous to writing a title all in hiragana. To me this seems very unintuitive. Changing case or using italics might better approximate the effect, but that obviously doesn't affect tagging.

(Incidentally, I also own every one of those drama CDs and I do not recall any stumbling.)

Soljashy said:
We don't grant artists' names stylistic romanizations, why should we make an exception for copyrights?

This is quite simple. Artists discussed here are usually native speakers of Japanese. They also often have varying levels of training in English as a second language. They do not use romanizations in the same way as foreigners do and do not understand the harm of non-standard romanizations. Romanization is used almost solely by, and for the benefit of, foreigners. When Japanese attempt to create their own romanizations, it is like speaking another language to them, and they often do it badly. When they create a title, they are speaking their native tongue.

Aside from that, this entire issue begs the question of whether eliminating spaces from a romanization is in any way analogous to writing a title all in hiragana. To me this seems very unintuitive.

Taking a Japanese sentence and replacing all kanji with hiragana while at the same time removing all formatting such as spaces and commas produces a largely unreadable mess which is very similar to taking an English sentence and removing all the spaces between words.

Trying to read an uninterrupted stream of hiragana is almost exactly like a sequence of English words sans spacing. You no longer have a clear idea of where words begin or end and must make inferences at every turn. As I have said, breaking Utawarerumono into two parts is just such an inference which one would make when trying to read it. However, it is only an assumption and is not a part of the original title.

seabook said:
When they create a title, they are speaking their native tongue.

Even so, I believe the same care should be taken with copyrights as with artist and character names so as to sustain a consistent romanization scheme. This means any stylistic flourishes should be largely ignored.

seabook said:
Trying to read an uninterrupted stream of hiragana is almost exactly like a sequence of English words sans spacing. You no longer have a clear idea of where words begin or end and must make inferences at every turn.

You are right, but this is something that comes into play when translating a title, not when romanizing one.

seabook said:
As I have said, breaking Utawarerumono into two parts is just such an inference which one would make when trying to read it. However, it is only an assumption and is not a part of the original title.

Sometimes we have to make assumptions in romanization. For instance, whenever we romanize は, we make a judgment call as to whether it should be written as "ha" or as "wa". I see the distinction between "utawareru" and "mono" as no different. Furthermore, I refuse to believe that the level of ambiguity in うたわれるもの is such that any native Japanese speaker cannot make this distinction immediately (nor can I think of any other way to interpret it, personally).

I grow weary of this topic. I intend to spend no further time on it. I often avoid these threads because I do not want to start a needlessly lengthy and unproductive discussion.

I have clearly stated my opinion in my first post, summarised by:
"It is neither consistent nor helpful to apply grammar rules to phrases where the creators specifically removed the grammar."

I already addressed the 'ha' particle and other cases where interpretation is required:
"Tags should keep what grammar is in the original and add no interpretation of their own."

and I already addressed the 'ambiguity' question:
"Ambiguity does not necessarily mean that there are multiple intuitive readings." Ambiguity "becomes a part of the title when it is written in kana."

Apparently you are willing to step over the author and change the title from うたわれるもの to 謳われる物 because the author's choice of script is nothing more than "stylistic flourish." This disrespect towards the author is completely beyond my comprehension.

And yes, I am butthurt.

Just like I was when fansubbers romanized ソ・ラ・ノ・ヲ・ト as Sora no Woto. Even en.wikipedia (which uses So Ra No Wo To) and ANN (So-Ra-No-Wo-To) did better than that. English language distributors chose to break the name into the same 3 parts as fansubbers (which is fine) but I see no reason why we should conform to the English distribution name on danbooru.

Gosh, I'm sorry if I got under your skin, seabook. I happen to enjoy a little debate (what you deem "needlessly lengthy and unproductive discussion"). Never meant to offend anyone in the process.

That said, I just want to reiterate that I do not see the author's choice of using all hiragana instead of kanji as "eliminating grammar", which appears to be what you're basing your argument on.

Again, sorry if I annoyed you. I think you should try not to get so emotionally involved in threads like these. I actually enjoyed our little discussion and I'd like to thank you for your participation.

Considering this alias was defeated both here and in the previous thread, yet we went with it anyway, I'm wondering if these tag debates even mean a damn when you can just win by attrition.

By the way, someone needs to move the wiki page over to the new tag.

Hillside_Moose said:
Considering this alias was defeated both here and in the previous thread, yet we went with it anyway, I'm wondering if these tag debates even mean a damn when you can just win by attrition.

Defeated? All I see is discussion threads that got buried and were never resolved (in fact, looking at forum #33382 I see some good points made by 0xCCBA696 that nobody ever countered).

Also, in terms of attrition, it has always appeared to me that the majority favours utawarerumono for whatever reason.

Algasir said:
By the way, someone needs to move the wiki page over to the new tag.

I copied it over, but I can't delete the old one.

Soljashy said:
(what you deem "needlessly lengthy and unproductive discussion")

I'd say thats a dandy description of much of what goes on here.

Which isn't precisely bad, but we have a tendency to go on, at length, about things and then never resolve them.

Like this.