In a message dated 7/20/2008 8:51:10 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, arromdee@rahul.net writes:
Therefore, I can look at the original Japanese version of Inuyasha and read the name off, and that's a legitimate source. >>
------------------ Ignoring of course that other editors on this article, reading the same source, come to the opposite result as you. That is the entire basis of the problem. Which character is actually being shown.
Continuing to cast this as a "mistake" when it's a perception issue, doesn't make your argument stronger.
Will Johnson
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On Sun, 20 Jul 2008 WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
Ignoring of course that other editors on this article, reading the same source, come to the opposite result as you. That is the entire basis of the problem. Which character is actually being shown.
Continuing to cast this as a "mistake" when it's a perception issue, doesn't make your argument stronger.
The first person who denied that it's a mistake used an *audio clip*, rather than reading anything. It's obviously a lot easier to mishear an audio clip than to misread printed material.
The second person who did so did so on the grounds that the first kanji is pronounced "Tetsu", rather than by reading the kana. It was rebutted by a later editor, who pointed out that kanji change their pronunciation in compounds.
The third one says he got it from the manga. Of course, the *English* manga has the mistake in it. He also claims the professional translators must be right, which isn't true. If he claims to have read any kana, I missed it.
There are no editors that looked at the kana and concluded that it's anything other than "Tessaiga".
Y'know, there's no shortage of Japanese-English translators in Wiki-land. Why not just, say, pick five at random and see if there's any disagreement regarding the pronunciation? "Reliable sources" are for _facts_. Translations are not "facts". "Ich bin ein Berliner" translates solely as "I am a Berliner". It requires reliable sources to determine whether that is generally parsed as "I am a person from Berlin" or "I am a jelly doughnut". The correct transliteration (not translation) of a Japanese word is a matter of recording in Romanji how the word is pronounced.
However: has the incorrect transliteration become the English name? We'd need a reliable source asserting _that_. There's too small a base to claim "common usage", since that common usage comes from the fans who have read the mistranslated version.
I think it's too soon in the life cycle of the English translation for Wikipedia to be perpetuating a recent transcription error (as opposed to, say, Gojira vs Godzilla).
On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 5:53 PM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Sun, 20 Jul 2008 WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
Ignoring of course that other editors on this article, reading the same source, come to the opposite result as you. That is the entire basis of
the
problem. Which character is actually being shown.
Continuing to cast this as a "mistake" when it's a perception issue,
doesn't
make your argument stronger.
The first person who denied that it's a mistake used an *audio clip*, rather than reading anything. It's obviously a lot easier to mishear an audio clip than to misread printed material.
The second person who did so did so on the grounds that the first kanji is pronounced "Tetsu", rather than by reading the kana. It was rebutted by a later editor, who pointed out that kanji change their pronunciation in compounds.
The third one says he got it from the manga. Of course, the *English* manga has the mistake in it. He also claims the professional translators must be right, which isn't true. If he claims to have read any kana, I missed it.
There are no editors that looked at the kana and concluded that it's anything other than "Tessaiga".
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On Sun, 20 Jul 2008, Josh Gordon wrote:
Y'know, there's no shortage of Japanese-English translators in Wiki-land.
Why not just, say, pick five at random and see if there's any disagreement regarding the pronunciation?
Good call. Someone already put up screencaps of episode titles that contain the word; they are at http://i180.photobucket.com/albums/x51/sparktg/tessaiga1.jpg http://i180.photobucket.com/albums/x51/sparktg/tessaiga2.jpg Where do I find such people?
I think it's too soon in the life cycle of the English translation for Wikipedia to be perpetuating a recent transcription error (as opposed to, say, Gojira vs Godzilla).
Unfortunately, our rules don't contain any exceptions for perpetuating recent errors. I've argued that we should avoid doing so out of common sense, but there's a reason why my initial message called this a rule literalism problem.
Ken Arromdee arranged electrons to indicate (back on 07/21/2008 06:46 AM) that:
Good call. Someone already put up screencaps of episode titles that contain the word; they are at http://i180.photobucket.com/albums/x51/sparktg/tessaiga1.jpg http://i180.photobucket.com/albums/x51/sparktg/tessaiga2.jpg Where do I find such people?
I read Japanese well enough to transliterate hiragana, and those screenshots clearly show a "chisai tsu" less than half as tall as the "te" preceding it and the "sa" following. Accordingly, those five characters should be read as "te s sa i ga."
Which doesn't mean the article should be moved! As someone else pointed out, our article on the big guy is at [[Godzilla]], not [[Gojira]].
Disclaimer: I know nothing whatsoever about anime of any sort, and I am nowhere near fluent in understanding Japanese (but I don't need to be to simply map one character set to another).
On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 7:24 AM, Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.com wrote:
Ken Arromdee arranged electrons to indicate (back on 07/21/2008 06:46 AM) that:
Good call. Someone already put up screencaps of episode titles that contain the word; they are at http://i180.photobucket.com/albums/x51/sparktg/tessaiga1.jpg http://i180.photobucket.com/albums/x51/sparktg/tessaiga2.jpg Where do I find such people?
I read Japanese well enough to transliterate hiragana, and those screenshots clearly show a "chisai tsu" less than half as tall as the "te" preceding it and the "sa" following. Accordingly, those five characters should be read as "te s sa i ga."
Which doesn't mean the article should be moved! As someone else pointed out, our article on the big guy is at [[Godzilla]], not [[Gojira]].
Disclaimer: I know nothing whatsoever about anime of any sort, and I am nowhere near fluent in understanding Japanese (but I don't need to be to simply map one character set to another).
Godzilla is a long established error -- so well established it's even mocked in at least one of the remakes. ("it's GOJIRA, you idiots") or something rather like that. It's actually an interesting question: at what point does Wikipedia accept an obvious mistake as fait accompli?
I read Japanese well enough to transliterate hiragana, and those screenshots clearly show a "chisai tsu" less than half as tall as the "te" preceding it and the "sa" following. Accordingly, those five characters should be read as "te s sa i ga."
Which doesn't mean the article should be moved! As someone else pointed out, our article on the big guy is at [[Godzilla]], not [[Gojira]].
I think there's a difference: Godzilla was intentionally changed. It's not the same as the original Japanese, but it's not a *mistake* either. It didn't arise because someone confused two similar-looking characters.
On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 8:35 AM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
I read Japanese well enough to transliterate hiragana, and those screenshots clearly show a "chisai tsu" less than half as tall as the
"te"
preceding it and the "sa" following. Accordingly, those five characters should be read as "te s sa i ga."
Which doesn't mean the article should be moved! As someone else pointed out, our article on the big guy is at [[Godzilla]], not [[Gojira]].
I think there's a difference: Godzilla was intentionally changed. It's not the same as the original Japanese, but it's not a *mistake* either. It didn't arise because someone confused two similar-looking characters.
Was it? Our [[Godzilla]] article speculates (unsourced, probably needs citing) that it's a matter of using the wrong transliteration; ジ is "ji" in modern Hepburn romanization, while it's "dzi" in the first edition of his dictionary. Since the pronunciation "God-zi-la" doesn't work in Japanese phonology anyway -- correctly, it would be Go-dzi-la -- it does seem to be just an error.
On Mon, 21 Jul 2008, Josh Gordon wrote:
Was it? Our [[Godzilla]] article speculates (unsourced, probably needs citing) that it's a matter of using the wrong transliteration; 㸠is "ji" in modern Hepburn romanization, while it's "dzi" in the first edition of his dictionary.
Um, the article says nothing about a dictionary in that context.
Personally I'm skeptical that it's an error because at the time, Japanese material was routinely changed a lot when brought over, the names being the least part of it.
But even then, there's another difference: the name is already in such wide use that Wikipedia isn't going to affect it much. Google shows that "Godzilla" has 11 times the hits of "Gojira". But Tetsusaiga gives me 112000 hits and Tessaiga gives me 83300; under these circumstances, Wikipedia is likely to *influence* adoption of the incorrect name. (Especially since there are fewer independent reference works dealing with Tessiaga than with Godzilla, so Wikipedia's influence is a much bigger piece of the pie.)
On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 9:14 AM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Mon, 21 Jul 2008, Josh Gordon wrote:
Was it? Our [[Godzilla]] article speculates (unsourced, probably needs citing) that it's a matter of using the wrong transliteration; ジ is "ji"
in
modern Hepburn romanization, while it's "dzi" in the first edition of his dictionary.
Um, the article says nothing about a dictionary in that context.
Personally I'm skeptical that it's an error because at the time, Japanese material was routinely changed a lot when brought over, the names being the least part of it.
But even then, there's another difference: the name is already in such wide use that Wikipedia isn't going to affect it much. Google shows that "Godzilla" has 11 times the hits of "Gojira". But Tetsusaiga gives me 112000 hits and Tessaiga gives me 83300; under these circumstances, Wikipedia is likely to *influence* adoption of the incorrect name. (Especially since there are fewer independent reference works dealing with Tessiaga than with Godzilla, so Wikipedia's influence is a much bigger piece of the pie.)
No, I followed the link to Hepburn romanization to see what the history of the phoneme in question was. I hope you notice I'm agreeing with you, not arguing.