Translation Policy

The basic policy for works with official translations is now done, as per previous posts. That also covers some general points that will apply to all works.

That leaves us with...

• Fan translations
• Public domain works that no longer have a single "official" translation, if they ever had one.
• Untranslated works being troped by bilingual tropers
• Works that are consumed by an anglophone audience in an untranslated form (pop songs, opera) and may be troped by people who don't speak the original language at all.
• Transliteration issues
• Anything we want to say about troping a work created in English based on a translation into another language (e.g. if a troper in Germany wants to trope the American Barbie film based on the dubbed German version they're getting locally, do we advise against it?)

Anything else for the list?

As a starting point, I'd suggest we look at what was already proposed in the old sandbox, item by item, then put it to a Crowner vote once folk are broadly comfortable that it's clear and practical.

I think the first four ponts can be covered by American and Commonwealth Spellings until there's a consensus that a specific translation is preferable.

For transliteration, I assume either tha same, at least for Japanese going with Romanji convention unless there's a definitie localization.

For troping translations, we may have to treat them as definitive version unless there's evedience of Adaptational Deviation.

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

Not sure that the spelling solution would work - sometimes translations change the applicability of a trope, not merely the way a particular word is supposed to be spelled.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Also I assume the sandbox in question is Sandbox.Rally Bot 2 Translation Policy as I couldn't find another one mentioned.

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

Yep.

*5

The first three bullets can all be summarized as "no official translation." Our policy should in general be first come, first served (unless it's completely obvious what the intended name is, in which case we just use that.)

Works that are consumed untranslated are in a similar situation; it's rare that there will be issues.

"Transliteration issues" (assuming you mean romanized spellings of names without an official spelling) is again the same. First come, first served.

Troping non-original, non-English translations of works can work broadly the same as troping the original untranslated version, but because it's not the original or English it can be hard to determine if the example is present in the original or English. Even if it isn't, it's still a valid trope in that language's version of the work. (Remember, the translation policy only applies to names and titles, not events, characterization, etc.)

Also I have to mention that the sandbox is old and my opinions may not be the same as they were in 2019.

A lot of people seem to like using whatever translation or localization that the wikis use, which most-often isn't the official translation. Probably under the assumption that it is official. It's something I've noticed in regards to the Naruto and Bleach pages in particular.

For example, the Naruto character that the wiki (and TV Tropes) calls "Asura Ōtsutsuki" from is officially localized as Ashura Ohtsutsuki.

And in regards to Bleach, the spelling's been all over the place and even changed over time:

• Are the spiritual swords officially called Zanpakto, Zanpaku-to, or Zanpakuto? Yes.
• Is Ichigo's Sword Beam called "Getsuga Tensho" or "Getsugatensho"? Yes.
• The wiki uses actual German for the Wandenreich's abilities, rather than the pseudo-German that the localization uses (Vollständig vs. Voll Stern Dich, Skalvarei vs. Sklave Rai, etc.)
• The character that the wiki (and TV Tropes) calls Ōetsu Nimaiya is officially localized as Oh-Etsu Nimaya.
• And then there's Tite Kubo's Word of God that the Captain of Squad 2's name is Suì-Fēng despite the English localization being transliterated from the Japanese pronunciation (Soifon) as Soi Fon (which strikes me as similar to Kentarō Miura's statement that Griffith's mercenary group from Berserk is actually called the Band of the Falcon only for the English localization to double down on erroneously calling it the Band of the Hawk).

The subtitles for the Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War anime on Disney+ use the localizations from the Bleach: Brave Souls game, but I've noticed a few errors where the subtitles don't line up with what the characters are saying.

Edited by Arawn999 on Mar 1st 2024 at 1:57:26 AM

If something does have an official localization, then we do need to change it. Otherwise it's whatever people agree to, as long as it's consistent.

Regarding inaccurate subtitles, as-current we kinda have to go by them, but perhaps if there's a consensus they can be disregarded in favor of another localization.

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

I inquired about the discrepency between the page names and the official localization on the Bleach wiki a while ago, during Cour 1 of the Thousand-Year Blood War, and IIRC the response I got was "VIZ's translations suck so we hired our own translator instead."

Unfortunately, the Bleach wiki—for the most-part—doesn't even mention VIZ's official localizations, while the Naruto wiki relegates them to a tiny space on the infobox. And as long as they don't use the official localizations we're probably going to have editors coming in here using whatever homebrewed localizations they use, so we should probably come up with a %% note for those franchises in particular telling people to not use the wikis' spellings.

Edited by Arawn999 on Mar 1st 2024 at 2:13:26 AM

Good thing we're not Bleach wiki can think for ourselves.

We can use a warning note of "This wiki has agreed to use the X localization", which is likely to be the official one. Some pages already do. I've seen recap pages with a reminder to keep Dub Name Change in mind.

Edited by Amonimus on Mar 1st 2024 at 1:17:59 PM

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

Maybe something like:

---

Ditto for Inconsistent Spelling.

Edited by Arawn999 on Mar 1st 2024 at 2:14:42 AM

Right. Well, I handled the Ohtsutsuki Clan page on Naruto (though there's still a lot of work to be done with that franchise) and Soi Fon's folder on the Bleach character pages (ditto there still being a lot of work to get done).

Next batch of proposals for a Crowner. Most of these are going back to discussion on previous pages, regarding public domain works and things like opera:

• For works that don't have an official translation and are widely consumed by an English audience in an untranslated form (e.g. classic opera and other forms of music), we use an English title if it's well known. If not, we use the original title. If it's unclear whether the English title meets that threshold, "first come, first served" rules apply.

So, revisiting the opera examples:

More generally, for any translated work:

• If we use the original untranslated title, the work page should also provide an English translated title near the very start of the description.
• If we use the translated title, the work page should also provide an untranslated title near the very start of the description.
• Descriptions should confirm which language a non-English title is taken from.
• In some cases it may be appropriate to provide more than two titles. For example, one of German composer Johann Sebastian Bach's oratorios was formally titled Passio secundum Joannem (Latin), but better known as Johannes-Passion (German) in his home country and widely known as St John Passion in English. In that case, it's appropriate to list all three.

Views?

Does that imply we'll need to go through the entirety of Manga, Anime and Visual Novel indexes to paste "Japanese"?

Technically, it makes sense to do so.

---

• For foreign language works in the public domain, where there is no longer a latest "official" translation, the preference is to use a widely known English title, if one exists, rather than an untranslated title
• For foreign language works in the public domain, where there is no longer a latest "official" translation, we will only use an untranslated title if that's almost entirely how it's presented to an English speaking audience

Are these mutually exclusive?

Edited by Amonimus on Mar 12th 2024 at 10:24:21 PM

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

On the first point — I think it's generally implicit in the fact it's labelle as manga or anime etc.

Might be a good habit to make sure it's obvious on new pages, but I don't see any need for a grand cleanup of existing works.

On the second point, as mentioned in some of the previous posts here, there will always be a grey area and a little bit of subjectivity, but they should be broadly mutually exclusive.

The complication is that middle ground scenario where it's been retitled in English for a few versions, but it's by far better known under the original title. Then we have a judgement call as to whether the English is sufficiently well known for us to use it.

That's getting into a whole 'nother debate on whether OEL Manga etc. "count" as manga for namespacing purposes which is already the subject of multiple threads. But, as a rule, anytime I make a page for a translated work, I always include the original-language name somewhere in the description anyway, e.g.

for a case where the work originated in Japanese and got a Completely Different Title in English.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I was aiming for.

Posting this comment to make public that I voted in favor of all options.

135 - 169 - 273 - 191 - 188 - 230 - 300

Same.

Though I wonder why "Descriptions for any page for a foreign language work should clearly state that it wasn't created in English and identify what the original language or languages were." is getting the most downvotes so far.

Pantheon Wick Cleaning | "And your Lord never forgets." - 19:64

Probably because it implies a lot of backtracking to add these things to anime and manga pages. Despite Mrph saying it wouldn't be necessary, not everyone reads the discussion when voting.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

After reading this, I changed my downvote on that to an upvote. Thus, I'm now upvoting all options.

I'm lovin' it. (My Troper Wall)

Yeah, I downvoted that one too: not just because it seemed like more work than necessary, but also because in most cases it's kinda obvious what the original language was.