Romanization Standardization

[Procyon]

Ah looks like I missed a word, thanks for fixing it Nanashi. (1 AM is not a good time to edit the wiki)

Watashi ha idol should probably be moved to Watashi wa Idol.

Watashi wa Idol seems to be the more popular variant on Google, so I think that is a good idea.

[Nanashi]

Oops. I only just now noticed I edited it wrongly in my first post here before. The consensus was ha, not wa.... Sorry.  Although if someone strongly disagrees I guess we could discuss it again or vote over it.

Anyway, that's why I moved it to Watashi ha Idol before, since I thought it'd be weird to have 1 song title as the only exception to the rule. And wa being more common shouldn't be a problem imo, since the Watashi wa Idol page redirects to Watashi ha Idol ♥

[Laburey]

It'd be great if some more people could post their input.

How should long vowels be romanized when lengthened by a katakana ー ?

What if English in the official lyrics goes against common capitalization rules for names and places? / If the original capitalization should be preserved, should this be done for incorrect capitalization?
Example: arcadia
Example: It's livE. It's eviL.
Example: Shooting Fire! : Shooting Fire! VS Shooting fire!

Should non-existent punctuation/symbols be carried over to the romanization or omitted? (Note that omitting it in the romanization does not mean it can't be included once more in the translation)
Example: 夢の中で　また☆*:包んで*☆: yume no naka de mata ☆*:tsutsunde*☆: VS yume no naka de mata tsutsunde

I tried the ボーカル example from before in some online romanisation tools. Most of them just used "o-", but two of them gave "oo". None gave "ou".

Anyway, it seems maybe everyone has said their piece. And it's only the ー quesion we're sort of divided on, isn't it? As for the capitalisation, I say only 2nd example should be changed. And weirdo punctuation, remove it.

Should we call this "The Project-iM@S Guide to Good Romanization of Japanese Song Lyrics". 

[RoninatorMarx]

Should we call this "The Project-iM@S Guide to Good Romanization of Japanese Song Lyrics". 

Rather, "The Project-iM@S Guide to Good Japanese Romanization."

[Trance Blossom]

I'm making a wiki page that's basically a copy paste of the second post, and also adding in some japanese clarifications (ie ha as a particle is pronounced wa)

EDIT: http://www.project-imas.com/w/Romanization_Standardization_and_Clarifications

There are still two unanswered issues, Long vowels when lengthened by a katakana ー and superfluous symbols (☆s for example).

I thing katakana long vowels should be treated like any other long vowel. Superfluous symbols should be kept in the translation, but omitted in the romanization.


Also anyone with knowledge of japanese should add to the "Clarifications" section.

[Procyon]

I thought the particle ha was to be written as wa. Maybe the bot can change " wa " into " ha "?

[Nanashi]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems we all agree about the weird symbols, so that's one more issue out of the way.

As for katakana ー, I still say BOOKARU > BO-KARU > BOUKARU.
I'm opposed to BOUKARU because there really is no U in there, and opposed to BO-KARU because the roman - does not normally (e.g. in English) indicate lengthening of a vowel like the Japanese ー does. So essentially they're very different symbols despite looking similar.

I thought the particle ha was to be written as wa. Maybe the bot can change " wa " into " ha "?

Yeah, like I said, that was a mistake on my part. What we ultimately 'agreed' on was ha, not wa, but somehow I wrote wa in the second post by mistake. Sorry. About the bot, I'm afraid that's not possible, since it wouldn't be able to distinguish the particle はwa from the particle わwa.

[RoninatorMarx]

I see that there. I tried using some online Kanji to romaji translation to convert kanji characters to romaji when I put songs into my MP4 (Because it can't read kanji). Before, 私はアイドル is converted to "watashi wa aidoru" but when I tried it just now, 私はアイドル translated is "watashi ha aidoru."

In case you wanna know what I use, I go to this site for my conversion needs: http://nihongo.j-talk.com/parser/

[Laburey]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems we all agree about the weird symbols, so that's one more issue out of the way.

I think you're right.

As for katakana ー, I still say BOOKARU > BO-KARU > BOUKARU.
I'm opposed to BOUKARU because there really is no U in there, and opposed to BO-KARU because the roman - does not normally (e.g. in English) indicate lengthening of a vowel like the Japanese ー does. So essentially they're very different symbols despite looking similar.

Using a dash isn't a good idea in general, either, since it's often hard to know exactly which dash it is.
I'm fine with both OU and OO really, as long as the use is consistent.

[Procyon]

I prefer OO too. I haven't seen any cases where OU would be better.

[Laburey]

I edited the romanisation page on the wiki, since some parts were not all that clear.

As for the katakana ー question, I put in that "Vowels lengthened by a ー (chōonpu) should preferably be romanized aa, ee, ii, oo, uu for a, e, i, o, u respectively." since this is what most of us seem to think.

I also added that "The word-separating katakana middle dot ・(nakaguro) is romanised as a space." This is perhaps obvious, but was never brought up before.

http://www.project-imas.com/w/Romanization_Standardization_and_Clarifications

I also moved the link to it on the main wiki page to a more prominent position, since the "Links" section down right should be reserved for external links, IMO.

[Trance Blossom]

I'm going to bump this because

I really really really disagree with romanizing the particle "は" as ha. I believe it should be "wa," like it sounds, so singers with no or little japanese knowledge won't get it wrong.

Also, whenever I read over the romanization, in my head I hear "ha" even though I know it's "wa," and it sounds so wrong.

Same goes for "wo" and "he" too.

[h4ataraxia]

i agree with you at some sense trance
but even with romaji you have to spell out は and ha, it does sound like alot like 'wa' but people are actually saying 'ha' 'he' or 'wo' when pronouncing as well. its like how in spanish, you dont pronounce the J.

edit: whoops sorry I was mistaken, after asking my parents and gradparents (and getting called a dumb retard to ask such a stupid question coming from me) it is pronounced like wa, e or like o
but the actual hiragana letter を　は　へ　are considered 大文字(oomoji) meaning 'big letters'. they are called this because they have big roles and add context and connect sentences. the 'h' in ha  or he and 'w' in wo makes it so that you know its the oomoji letters, and you can then continue on with the sentence without getting confused.

sorry if the explanation is bad, this is beyond basic writing so i forgot why its like that.

[Laburey]

As you can see from my first post in this thread, I was all for wa, o, e from the start. Although I only have my intuition as reason for those choices seeming better to me. >_>

Well, I guess you could say that for me romaji is all about how it is pronounced, and not how it is written.

[Procyon]

Even those who prefer ha/he/wo will know what wa/e/o mean too (but maybe not quite as fast or with a little annoyance), so this change is probably OK.

I do think `e` and `o` look bad though, but that's not much of an argument.