Does this question apply to the rare use of ー in hiragana as well?
That would probably make most sense, yeah.
I prefer wa, o, e in writing but it's not really important. As long as we're consistent, any choices are fine with me.
I guess that's settled by the majority's vote then. XD
Should ん always be romanized as n, or as n or m depending on the following sound?
Example: 先輩 : senpai VS sempai
I still think an m should be used where apropriate. Users without knowledge of Japanese might try to force out an n if it says n.
I'm going to disagree here, because of the point Harrason made about this before. The Japanese themselves use one and the same character for it, and the sound is created the same way. It's just that it naturally ends up sounding like an 'm' in some cases, and that should be the same for speakers of just about any language. If users don't have knowledge of Japanese (pronunciation) I don't think they'll be trying to force anything anyway.
Edit which isn't actually an edit: Yeah, Procyon made a good point. By nature syllables will usually be more clearly divided when singing, reverting the sound to an
n even in words like
senpai.
However, in rare cases the reading used will vary per idol. What should we do in these cases?
I've nothing new to add here. Put up all different versions, there's no lack of space in a wiki.
*Agrees.* And it's only a few words out of 1xx song pages we're talking about here anyway, so space definitely won't be the problem.
Example: そっと目を伏せて 忘れるわ: sotto me wo fusete wasureru wa VS sotto me wo fusete wasureru wa
I think it's natural to use it. It also makes it easier to see how the Japanese and romaji lyrics correspond to each other.
/agree
Should non-existent punctuation/symbols be carried over to the romanization or omitted?
Example: 夢の中で また☆*:包んで*☆: yume no naka de mata ☆*:tsutsunde*☆: VS yume no naka de mata tsutsunde
It's true the star is sort of useless, as far as I know it has no official meaning. Same with the heart. What other signs are we talking about here?
More useless stuff.
･:* :花: *:･
o。oO
☆⌒Ｙ⌒Ｙどう転んでも⌒Ｙ⌒Ｙ⌒★
And some more of that.
I'll stick to what I said about this before. It's fine to carry over all this for the reader's enjoyment and whatnot, but it should be saved for the translation. The romanization should focus on the actual Japanese IMO.
[ Leaving out this part because I agree with Laburey's points ]
If punctuation is used, should a ?, ! or . be followed by a capital letter in the romanization?
I don't really have a strong opinion here.
Me neither, but if we're capitalizing the first letter of the line for reading ease, might as well do these too.
What if English in the official lyrics goes against common capitalization rules?
Example: arcadia
Example: It's livE. It's eviL.
The second example looks strange to me, so I would like it changed. Not sure about the first one.
Err, I guess that second example was in the wrong place anyway. i r silly. It should have been with the Shooting Fire example. The point about
arcadia was that it's the name of a place (although fictional) so it should be capitalized, but the people who made the song decided not to do so. I now agree with Harrason on this: Those people who made it probably thought about why they wanted it this way so it'd make sense to respect their wishes.
And about ボーカル, this can be sung as BO, UU, KA, RU. That means BOUKARU is not that silly.
I think most people who want to sing the songs don't necessarily know Japanese but are proficient in singing romaji. That means indicating -n and -ou -ei and such is important for them.
I guess you have a point there, but there really is no U in there, ー only lengthens a vowel, so I feel that using a different vowel to romanize that would be off.
