Bleach Wiki talk:Policy & Standards Committee

Common name - best name?
Hey everyone.

I've noticed that we've lately had a tendency to move pages from English titles to Romanji titles. I started a discussion about moving Chain of Fate, which Mohrpheus, Godisme and Lia already commented on.

As suggested I brought in Salubri and his reaction was that this trend is unwelcome, since most users will usually search for the familiar English term, mostly from dub anime. So the moves of Hell Butterfly→Jigokuchō and Artificial Soul→Gikon might not be the best policy. I suggest we make a clear policy as to how we name an article whose title has more than one known version.

I think the rule of thumb should be this: Give the article the title most users are likely to look for when they get into the Wiki for the first time, looking for information on the subject. That is because our auto-complete only completes the names of main articles, not redirects. This would rule out Jigokuchō, Gikon, Denreishinki and even Ōken, although the last one is debatable. WD  Converse  00:27, October 31, 2010 (UTC)

This is what i have been saying for a while. When it seemed we had a standard of moving items to the Romaji, I said ok only because I believed that this was the standard. People will be searching for the english names. If they want to learn the Romaji, we have translation templates for that but for the most part, we should be putting what people know as long as it is correct--God (Pray)  03:34, October 31, 2010 (UTC)

I actually prefer the Japanese names, mostly because the translations can be inaccurate. I understand that people and titles are out of the question, we can't go around the wiki changing all "captain" to "Taicho", but I think the articles look better with the Japanese names, and I feel some cases like the Denreishinki, what's the translation of that?. Of course, functionality-wise, yes, the English names are better. But the Japanese terms are the actual names, just like we use Zanpakuto and Shinigami. And the auto-complete doesn't work on certain articles BTW. I can never get auto-complete for Aizen because the second letter is an Ō, (finding his image gallery is a pain) but as long as there's a redirect for the English name, I don't see the problem to keep the original Jap for items and objects. As long as anyone can find the article, it should be fine Lia Schiffer   (Talk)  06:03, October 31, 2010 (UTC)

Lia's point is basically the perspective I've been seeing this whole thing through. Case and point, the Japanese terms are static, since they are derived directly from the raw source material. However, translations can vary greatly depending on who is doing them, most evident among the various scanlators that host the series. We accept Ju-Ni as our standard translation hub, but this causes inconsistency because not only can we not access older chapters, I don't believe the group even worked on the series that far back. Even our resident translator Adam has told us that there are many different ways to interpret the language that are all correct; the ones he suggests are often the ones that generally sound better. Asides from that, I'm not even sure how we can even gauge what fans consider the most "common" term. Mohrpheus  (Talk)  23:40, November 1, 2010 (UTC)

The point here is the perspective lia brings up is counter to what the site does. Yes Japanese is the prime point and will always be featured, though in some places it stands that they just dont make sense as the main tag line. Nobody in english knows of it or uses it, lets be honest no one is gonna look for the japanese version of the attack. But some just make sense over the english translation as well. The point here we can argue perspective to we are blue in the face but the fact is this is a english based wiki of a japanese based manga series and we have to walk a line. In light of that i think further moves or changes shouldn't be made there is a simple medium that we have currently some things are in japanese and thats fine others are english and thats fine alot of the series translations provide for these two points to exist. --Salubri (Talk)  23:57, November 1, 2010 (UTC)

My feelings are that anything that we all know by a universal english name, such as Hell Butterfly and such should be left in english. Basically if we have to go to the raws and find the japanese, then it should be in english. However, anything that has varying translations and is left in japanese in the translated manga, such as Getsuga Tensho, should be left in japanese--God (Pray)  02:53, November 2, 2010 (UTC)

thats also a good point.--Salubri (Talk)  02:55, November 2, 2010 (UTC)

If we can have the raws translated to the most accurate possible English translations, then I'm all for using them. Mohrpheus  (Talk)  03:03, November 2, 2010 (UTC)

Yes, accuracy in translation is important, but some English terms have been well established like Hell Butterfly, Artificial Soul and Chain of Fate. This far I agree with Godisme. However I do think we should decide on a policy about the titles of objects and stick to it. I can say from experience that having exceptions in the policy only leaves an opening for unending moving feuds, which forces us to lock the page. I must say I too feel uncomfortable with having some items named one way and some another, and so, as Salubri said, this is an English site and most users will search for the terms they picked up in English sources. If it's a voting thing I would vote for using the English terms which could be taken directly from officially subbed anime (since Ju Ni, apart from being problematic in use, is after all just another scanlation), or if there is none, supplied by our own A. Restling. On the other hand we can go with Romanji titles for all items and that's fine too, as long as we keep our redirects up to speed, it should work out OK. WD  Converse  22:51, November 4, 2010 (UTC)