Terminology in the Dragon Ball pages

So far we've been searching for the One Magical Translation(TM) that should be universally used here, and the two that have been proposed are the most recent subtitle track (which fits the "most recent official translation" rule) and the most recent dub translation (which is likely better-known, although by exactly what margin is up for debate), both by Funimation. The most recent Viz manga translation has also been mentioned in passing, but not seriously put forward as a candidate, being both less recent and lesser-known than either.

There is potentially another solution. We could rule that all three of the above translations fit the criteria of "most recent official translation" in their respective medium, and as the various Dragon Ball pages are meant to cover them all (we do not have separate pages for Manga.Dragon Ball and Anime.Dragon Ball), all of them are acceptable.

The obvious question is, "well then, in cases of conflict, who wins?" To which I submit that a "first come first served" rule similar to the one we use for American and Commonwealth Spellings is as good a way to prevent Edit Wars as any.

Thoughts?

Edited by HighCrate on Jan 5th 2019 at 7:01:46 AM

That is liable to lead to confusion though, unless every editor needs to then explain the other translation equivalents anyway so that the entire page is even somewhat coherent to someone not in-the-loop about the translations.

More confusion than choosing a single translation to be the definitive one for our purposes? Sure. But there isn't any solution that is going to result in zero confusion, and most of the differences are minor alternate spellings such that most people will know what is meant most of the time.

As it stands right now, if you look on Characters.Dragon Ball, you'll notice that most characters that have major naming differences have both names separated by a slash (e.g. "Kaioshin/Supreme Kai"), and in most cases where the difference is minor and it's easy to tell who is meant (e.g. Freeza/Frieza), both spellings are used interchangeably.

I don't think there's anything so wrong with that.

Edit: Reworded for clarity.

Edited by HighCrate on Jan 5th 2019 at 2:25:24 AM

Maybe I'm misreading your post, but do you mean that having no solution will create no confusion, or that none of the solutions will be confusion free? If the first one, then there's really no need to worry about this at all, and if the second, well, I suppose- I'm just saying that the first come / first served rule works for word spellings because the differences are minor; however, a reader who doesn't know the show (can't assume everyone on the page does/will) might end up thinking that a different name translation is a different character altogether, unless maybe there's a part added onto the description about the translations.

That is, quite frankly, a terrible idea unless you plan to split the DBZ pages by medium. It will just lead to more confusion and blatant inconsistencies between pages. It's far easier to say "use names from [x]" than deal with keeping track of which names are used where and were first. You're going to have to deal with people not knowing the rules no matter what, so you might as well go with the simpler solution.

Also the first-come-first-serve system with American vs. British spellings has its own issues, but that's off-topic.

Basically it would just be formalizing what already exists: there are a couple different more-or-less concurrent "most recent official translations," and we use them interchangeably.

The only change would be saying that we don't allow people to make edits for the sole purpose of changing to their preferred spelling. E.g. no going through and changing every instance of "Freeza" to "Frieza," because they are both valid spellings for our purposes. (That's not my personal feeling, btw— I have a rather strong opinion on which one is correct— but I'm not going to get my way on everything.)

We don't have to keep track of what goes where or what got there first. What is there now is what got there first. If someone changes it, we poke them and revert it. If somebody adds a new entry, they use the spelling they're comfortable with, as long as it comes from one of the current official translations (as opposed to something weird like the Big Green Dub).

Now, you're certainly right that there are disadvantages. It allows for inconsistency (although it doesn't "lead to it"; the inconsistency is already there). It's also true that it's marginally more complex a solution than picking One True Official TV Tropes Sanctioned Translation(TM).

The advantages are that it doesn't require a massive cleanup effort and that it's consistent with the general "most recent official translation wins" policy.

Edited by HighCrate on Jan 5th 2019 at 5:43:55 AM

bwburke94, thoughts on the above?

One problem with saying "dub wins because it's more recognisable" is that there are multiple dubs, and everyone will have grown up with a slightly different set.

Someone who watched from the DV Ds will have seen the "Remastered" dubs of the three original series. Someone who watched Kai and Super instead of Z and GT will have seen the updated terminology Funi used from Kai onwards, and likely be most familiar with that. Someone who watched the show on TV in the USA or Australia in the original run will be familiar with the original, censored Funimation dubs, with censored names like Hercule which persist into most video games. Someone who watched from the oldschool DV Ds in the USA or Australia will be familiar with the uncut original dub... Someone who watched the TV run in anywhere that isn't the USA or Australia will know the Westwood media dubs, which based its scripts of Funi's for Z and DB, but often changed names around, particularly for DB and GT, which generally went with almost completley different terminology to Funi's dubs, especially for GT which didn't even reference Funi's scripts.

General consensus here looks to be that dubs are best for the terminology in this series because most people tend to have watched the dub. I would contest this a little, but if we're pretty certain dub wins, there is still the debate of which dub terminology wins out overall. I do think we should just go with one set of terminology, and put into place a sizeable Spell My Name With An S section to cover bases, maybe drop a note or two in for any names that may be impossible to navigate(The subs' and Westwood dubs' "Crane Hermit" is Funi's "Shen", and the subs' and Westwood dubs' "Shen" is Funi's "Hiro").

Do we say Vegito(All dubs until 2009) or Vegetto(Funi dubs from 2009)? Do we say Buu and Uub(All Funimation's dubbing, all of Westwood's until 2003) or Boo and Oob(Westwood from 2003)? Do we say Tuffles(All Funi's dubbing) or Tsufles(All Westwood dubbing)? Ii Shenron(Westwood dub) or Syn Shenron with a name change to Omega Shenron later on(Funi dub)? Tao Pai-Pai(Westwood), General Tao(Funi until 2002), or Mercenary Tao(Funi from 2002 onward)?

We don't want to rock the boat, but unfortunately in Dragon Ball, all positions are contradictory to a large part of the fandom. Like Doctor Who fans, Dragon Ball fans are physically allergic to the concept of consensus. Even one set of seemingly-consistent dubs will have differing names sometimes, and there's no easy way of deciding which is better; Funimation's original and remastered dubs of DB and Z refer to Tao as "General Tao" in Z, but "Mercenary Tao" in DB. Z comes after DB, so presumably that's fairly straightforward, but DB was dubbed during Z. In fact, they started doing DB in the Cell arc, which was when "General Tao" is mentioned in Z. Tao doesn't appear in Kai or Super, so there's no modern dub version to check. And of course, Westwood called him "Tao Pai-Pai". And as I recall, DB was more popular in the UK and Canada than it was in the USA at least in terms of ratings numbers. And since Westwood dubbed DB after both Z and GT(I didn't mention this earlier because I haven't thought it worth mentioning 'till now, but the Westwood dub of DB also aired significantly long after Funi's DB, making it the most recent dub of DB, and also the most recent set of terminology... But good luck trying to make that gel with any translations of Z, GT, Kai, and Super's terminology...), that makes Tao Pai-Pai the most recent name, from a more popular version than Funi's during the original TV run, right? And the "Remastered" dub of DB simply was a remix of the audio into surround, unlike Z's massive amounts of audio re-recording... So in terms of both most-recent and more-popular, there's no clear answer as to whether Westwood or one of Funi's two names for Tao is best... If we go with Funi dub names, the way I personally would solve Tao is to say that "Mercenary Tao" was what he was called when he was a current villain in DB, while "General Tao" was only in brief flashbacks and a couple of filler episodes of Z. But, that's just my opinion, and only if we decide to go with Funi's namings...

And all this is without questioning the central pillar of "Not rocking the boat"... Since we're rocking the boat whatever we do, do we really gain anything from going with dub over sub? And if not, then where does that leave us? Again, I don't mind if we go sub or dub, I just want a decision made that's well-considered. If the letter of the translation policy which says X is irrelevant because the spirit says Y, but both of these approaches of reading the policy are inherently deeply flawed, and the two give entirely different answers, what do we do?

Apologies for making another long post. My head is full of this nonsense, and this is the first time it's ever been useful for something mildly constructive.

Edited by Robo4900 on Jan 6th 2019 at 10:01:35 AM

I think this thread has gone off the rails.

Yes, I believe "most recent" should be trumped in cases where it's obviously not the most recognizable.

Again, I agree that "most recent" should be trumped by "most recognizable" in cases where there is a clear "most recognizable."

In this case, there isn't.

Preventing debates over "most popular translation" or "best translation" are exactly why the "most recent translation" rule was created.

~High Crate — Exactly. That's the problem. And that's why I opened this thread. :)

~crazysamaritan — Sure, but for Dragon Ball, it's not as clear cut as that, unfortunately.

Since the subs are the most recent translation, and provide one consistent set of names that doesn't require any fumbling with priorities of dubs and such, I think that would be a good solution to this. And yet when I suggest this, apparently I'm a crazy elitist who's using the letter of these unwritten, vaguely-defined rules to suit my evil ways, rather than paying attention to the unspoken spirit of them that people somehow understand despite the "Spirit" apparently being the antithesis of the policy itself, assuming you're laying out the point of the policy correctly, which I imagine you are... So you can see why we're having so much trouble.

As I say, I think the subs is the best solution to this, since it's just a clear cut "Translation policy says this; if we go against the TL policy's letter, then it just creates endless debate with no satisfactory answer", rather than any other answer being "A group of people argued for three pages about this and came to this hacky mess of a solution that we've decided to stick to. Maybe we'll revisit it in future if enough people make a fuss about it but IDK"...

~bwburke — I wouldn't say this is going off the rails, we're just discussing all aspects of this mess. The confusion about what exactly we should do stems from how much of a mess names in Dragon Ball are, even within one translation, so naturally we'll drift around a bit in what precisely we talk about when addressing this problem.

As for most recent vs most recognisable... Yes, I agree, but what is the most recognised translation, and how do you define that? If we say it's "The dub", then what exactly does that mean? What denomination of dubs? Which subset of terminology? What overrides what? Yes, many of the dubs have similar terminology, but not even multiple dubs by the same company tend to have the same terminology. How do we deal with conflicts?

Much as I agree with the idea of using the most recognised translation, what exactly does that mean? Can this be determined fairly? I'd say no.

However, if we briefly stick to "Dub is most popular", I would say the best solution is to use terms from the Funi dubs of DB, Kai, and Super, with any conflicts going with the last name used, and any names not used by DB, Kai, or Super coming from the uncut Z, GT, or movie dubs from Funi, again favouring later versions of names for conflicts. As far as Dragon Ball dub names go, following this scheme is probably the best way to have some kind of consistent naming scheme; since the only dubs produced and aired since 2006 have been from Funi, there is a logic to it beyond simple consistency, especially since this is all what's available on the DVDs. Since Super is still running, and Funi never dubbed the three 2008-2011 OVAs(Plan To Eradicate The Super Saiyans, Episode Of Bardock, and Yo! Son Goku And His Friends Return!) but those OVAs and Super have had official subtitles produced by Toei, any names that haven't been introduced in Funi's dub yet should be taken from the official subtitles until such a time as Funi dub that material.

This is a rather inelegant solution; a bit of a hacky mess to suit the hacky mess of the dub terminology, so I still say it's best to use the translation policy as a way of avoiding debates over what "Most popular" or "Best" means; rather than argue over which different terms are "Better" or "More popular" which is probably impossible, we could jsut go with the letter of the policy and go with sub names. That way, we have a clear-cut answer, as the policy was surely intended to deliver, no?

Either way... I suggest we go with one of these two solutions — the set of dub names I outlined a few paragraphs up, or the sub names. Neither solution's perfect, but at least now, assuming I haven't made a massive cockup somewhere in this ulyssesian mess of a post, we can work on the core of the debate — does the translation policy point us to the sub or the dub — rather than get lost in the details of what those two answers mean.

Edited by Robo4900 on Jan 6th 2019 at 9:27:13 AM

Is everyone just going to run off every time I make a long post? 😆

Come on, guys. We have to reach some kind of decision on this. It's clear the translation policy points to sub, and the intent of the policy is to eliminate problems of "Which is more recognisable?" and other such ambiguous questions that can never be answered, right? So, surely by this logic, we should go with sub terms.

So... Do you agree? Disagree? And either way, why do you think that? Let's get this debate done and dusted so we reach a definitive conclusion and don't have to come back to this ever again.

Edited by Robo4900 on Jan 10th 2019 at 3:17:06 PM

My problem is just that I personally don't know Dragon Ball, so when you go off on giant posts about the various translations and such I don't know how to respond and I prefer to wait and see if other people have anything to add to the conversation. I'm not really swayed to any solution in particular as long as it's not the "first come first served".

Point of order; you're not talking about the Fuji Television subtitles, so could you please not use "the subs" as if they were a single translation? I understand that it might be longer, but identifying which translation is part of the objective here.

~crazysamaritan — That's fair, I guess... The Funimation subtitles, then. :)

~War Jay 77 — Fair.

I think the question ultimately boils down to whether the letter of the policy should be listened to, and if going against that is more in spirit or out of spirit with the policy. At least, that's how I see it...

By the letter of the policy, the Funimation subtitles are what we should go with, but people are arguing the dubs are "More popular"

Ultimately, boiling my long-winded nonsense down to its simplest form, what I've been getting at is the only way you'll get one set of "Dub terminology" is a clunky, tiered priorities list involving about four different eras of dubbing that tend to be slightly at odds with each-other, and which arguably plays against the narrative of there even being a "Most popular version" people here have pushed, even if we entertain "Most popular" as a concept that can be coherently or definitively gone into. And, to me personally, the final nail in the coffin is the fact that the idea behind the policy is to provide a clear-cut blanket rule of "Latest translation wins" to prevent debates like "What's most popular?" and such raging with no real answer possible. That's my take.

Does that make things a little clearer/easier?

Edited by Robo4900 on Jan 11th 2019 at 3:51:57 PM

Look, I don't want to keep bumping this, but we need to come to a consensus on this. Exactly what that consensus is, I don't care, we just need to reach it.

Edited by Robo4900 on Jan 18th 2019 at 5:50:25 PM

I also want a consensus, but the problem here is that we're essentially trying to overturn policy right now.

~bwburke94 — Surely not?

My argument is that the Funi subs are what the policy points to; the argument against that is that the policy's intent is to point to the "Most popular" translation which many contest is the Funi dubs, one argument against that is that such arguments are against the intent of the policy to avoid such debates...

So, surely it's not so much a case of whether or not to pay attention to the policy, but one of interpretation of what the policy is; what it means, what the intent behind it is, etc.?

Edited by Robo4900 on Jan 19th 2019 at 9:38:19 AM

The translation policy was put in place to minimize the amount of edit warring that happens on the wiki. In this particular case, no decision we make will be effective in halting the arguments and edit wars completely (as is abundantly clear by the fact that this thread continues to exist).

Dragon Ball is a special case where the usual rule doesn't work very well due to the multitude of different translations and on-going concurrent translations. That's why we decided to generally stick with the Funimation dub, as it was felt that was the most common translation for English-speaking fans.

What I am saying is that the policy of "most recent translation" is not sufficient to solve Dragon Ball's mess, so it was a case of "We have to choose something, regardless of the letter of the policy". Most tropers felt that Funimation's dub was the most commonly known, so we went with that. It isn't a perfect solution, but it was judged to be the best we could do in this case.

Personally, I feel like going into such minute detail that Funimation's English subs are technically a few months more recent than their spoken dub is splitting hairs, and that discrepancy is not enough to warrant a change in how we handle Dragon Ball's translation. My opinion is that we stick with the Funimation dub (specifically the Kai and on-going Super dub), which to my knowledge is the most common one used on this wiki, and thus would require the minimum amount of clean-up. If there are any pages that are not consistent with this (which I have no doubt there are, given the size of both this wiki and the Dragon Ball franchise), they should be cleaned up.

I suppose the Funi dub is the best option, then.

~Dark Hunter — You say "We decided"... Only evidence I've seen of any discussion about this was the Ask The Tropers conversation about my edit warring, where there wasn't really any discussion about that, it was just "this guy's edit warring. we revert it." This thread we're talking in now, as well as the now-closed Ask The Tropers thread this discussion started in, is the actual discussion.

"More popular" is, I would say, not something worth getting into. That way lies madness. First off, how do we account for the fact that Funi's dub only aired in the US and Australia, with an alternate dub with different terminology airing in Canada, the UK, and various European territories? And these days, the new iteration of the show only airs late nights on Adult Swim in the US, which pretty much just caters to existing American fans who've grown up, and everywhere else, the only way to watch in English is to stream the Toei-subtitled version, which is doing really well on the relevant services. As I say, this way lies madness, and I'm honestly starting to get annoyed that people keep bringing this angle up. >_<

Regardless, it's all well and good to say "this was decided", but it's not really much of a decision if it wasn't properly discussed, or was decided on a false premise; remember, people still hold my initial display of sub purism against me regardless of the merit of my arguments, but a handful of people showing a preference towards dub is just as invalid an argument as one person showing a preference towards sub.

As for the recency, the DV Ds were often as much as a year or two after the dubbing; this is consistently the case with the modern series like Super and Kai.

As far as ease of editing goes... If we make a decision based on what's easy to do, then honestly I don't think the conversation is even worth having. If we make a decision that goes against what's currently — though inconsistently, as I've noted before — in place, then we start a short-term project to fix that. I don't see how that's a reason not to do it.

Look, ultimately, my thesis here is that the only claim the Funi dubs have is vague impressions of popularity from people who happened to grow up on that version, which translates to absolutely zilch in terms of any useable information in a discussion. Going with the fact the subs were later circumvents any such impossible arguments, and gives us a simple, clear-cut "Translation policy says X, we do X." To me, it seems the only way through this mess. So far, I've not seen a refutation to this that I haven't immediately refuted myself, so you can see why I'm sticking by this.

Edited by Robo4900 on Jan 21st 2019 at 6:24:23 PM

Well, we do sort of have to consider how much editing each solution would take. It's why actions like changing the name of a trope require a lot of consensus— people don't want to have to go through changing every single wick if the title isn't demonstrably bad. And while I can see your point about the dub only being the most popular for the region, it's the most used translation on Tv Tropes, so it probably is the safest bet.