On Wed, Jun 25, 2008 at 10:51 AM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Wed, 25 Jun 2008, Wily D wrote:
This doesn't seem to be a case of rules literalism; The official article naming convention says put things at their common English language name, not correct name or official name or any of that.
That's not rules literalism? What else does rules literalism mean, other than blindly doing something just because the rule (in this case, the "official article naming convention") says that? Common sense says that we don't perpetuate mistakes. It would be a different argument if the English translator had intentionally changed the name (though even then it's a bit questionable), but this isn't an intentional change; it's a *mistake*.
Besides, you're choosing a very strained interpretation of the rule. I would say that a "common English name" is a word that has become part of the English language, and can be found in dictionaries and similar places. A character or a sword in a manga would have no common English name at all.
The point, of course, is that the official article naming convention says no such thing. I would not call "taking a random action, justifying it by rules which do not exist" "rules literalism".
Dictionaries aren't very helpful for words less than ~20 years old. The zeroeth order test favours Tetsusaiga about 3:1 http://www.google.ca/search?q=Tetsusaiga&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf... vs http://www.google.ca/search?q=Tessaiga - other tests may be more instructive. The discussion page in question doesn't present any reason we should believe its either accidental or deliberate, and it doesn't matter anyways. Lots of names are made in error, but go into English as that error.
WilyD