Translation Policy

Paging those involved in the discussion in the Outdated Administrivia Pages thread:

• ~RallyBot2
• ~Amonimus
• ~bwburke94
• ~The Mayor of Simpleton

I mean, I mainly was just suggesting such a thread be made. I don’t know enough about this subject to go into detail, but I guess I’ll see what I can do.

That's fine. I actually wasn't sure whether to page you, but went ahead and did it because at the time I didn't see any reason not to.

The reason for my "unofficial translations are okay" position is because many foreign works (my experience is primarily with anime/manga, but it also applies to other media) are primarily known by a translated title even before being localized (or when never localized at all.) The intent of the translation policy is, in my opinion, to follow the most popular name/title, which a rigid "use the transliterated original name" rule wouldn't allow in some cases.

I'd consider the same reasoning to apply to names^note both the work name and character names from fan translations when no official translation exists, but that's technically a separate topic so we can table that for now.

Gihren's Greed was brought up in the localization thread because the game had no official translation but was titled Gihrens Greed because that's what English speaking know it by. I prefer to go with the work's original title for works but this is a wiki for English speakers and people are going to gravitate to whatever translation is available so I guess prioritizing popular fan translations over the original untranslated work might make sense.

Different work but Ace Attorney Investigations 2 uses the game's unofficial English title and the dub names the fan subs gave the characters.

My reasoning against fan-translated titles was 1. It's generally way more common on the wiki to use Japanese titles if they're not localized, and many other sites also don't use fan-translated titles. 2. How to Create a Work Page says use native titles and fan-translated titles are only fine as redirects (Which VisualNovel.Ace Attorney Investigations 2 is, the characters page is named Gyakuten Kenji 2 Minor Characters because of that).

I wouldn't mind if that policy bit gets replaced.

Edited by Amonimus on Aug 21st 2022 at 3:05:44 PM

I don't have a problem with using fan translations if there is no official translation. Pretty much everything on the page for Trials of Mana (back when the page was located at VideoGame.Seiken Densetsu 3) was based on the fan translation (since that's a common way for Westerners to play games that were only released in Japan, and that game was subject to Late Export for You along with a lot of other '90s JRPGs) before the official translation was released in 2019, after which the page was overhauled to primarily use official names and terminology (with a lot of said overhauling being done by me).

I think we should prioritize translations of foreign-language works in this order (from highest to lowest)

1. The most recent official translation, if there are multiple official translations
2. If there's only one official translation, use that one
3. A well-known fan translation (or at least well known within a niche that uses fan translations), if there's no official translation
4. Directly use the original language's names, if there's neither a fan translation nor an official translation

Edited by GastonRabbit on Aug 21st 2022 at 7:10:33 AM

The issue I have with "most recent official translation" are

• What if there are more than one simultaneous release from different publishers, like for old Literature or ongoing anime? Bonus point if they repeatedly supersede each other.
• What if the author has a favored way their work should be called internationally but one publisher didn't get the memo.
• Someone would have to constantly monitor for new releases, and there isn't really like an one update site every publisher posts on.

Edited by Amonimus on Aug 21st 2022 at 3:31:20 PM

Okay, so what's your suggested fix for that? I've seen several people who have said they don't like it, but no one has come up with a usable solution as of yet. If there were any time to push for a change, now is that time — I encourage you to propose whatever you think is the better option.

As I said before, the spirit of the rule is is "use what's most common/most popular among English-speaking fans." To put down my preferred options in order as did: ("Name" applies to both the title of the work and character names.)

1. The most recent (or only) official English name.

2. The English-language name intended by the work's creator, if known.^note This is going to be fairly rare; remember that English is distinct from romaji and the mere presence of Latin script in a Japanese work does not indicate that it is an English-language name.

3. A widely accepted fan translation name.

4. The name widely accepted by the English-language fandom, if there is one.

5. The original language name if it is in Latin script, or a romanization of the original name if it is not.^note Proper names originally written in Japanese need not strictly follow Hepburn, but they should be sensible and identifiable.

Edited by RallyBot2 on Aug 21st 2022 at 5:50:47 AM

I've already gave the solution. To clarify, to use the first official translation, and discuss any subsequent versions if any brought up. It's in spirit with the official rule that's used in a lot of decisions: American and Commonwealth Spellings.

I don't really like that. The localization thread has had a hard time coming to a consensus on any dueling translation case (see JJBA and Pretty Cure/Glitter Force.) Requiring consensus to change from an older English name to a newer one would more commonly result in us using the older and less popular names, not to mention that it would vastly increase our workload having to debate every single changed translation.

I'm fine with retaining an older name if there's a consensus for it, but the more recent name needs to be the "default" option.

(As an aside, failing to come to a consensus should not be taken as an affirmative "status quo" result either way, as the status quo on this site is whatever it was last changed to and these debates usually start because someone changed something. A failed consensus is a "no result," which means that we follow the site's general policies without setting any sort of lasting precedent.)

Not constantly. One of the (unofficial) rules that we have used is that all past versions of the official work name translation are allowed on the wiki. At most editors would move the article and fix the indexes when they become aware of the new name.

A work that has been given twenty different official English translations can have twenty different redirects. If there's an official translation, the wicks should use one of them, but we don't need to insist that all examples need to be updated to the newest translated name, only the article.

Suggested rewrite:

The above change is fine with me; English works rarely change names in English anyway (and those that do are usually fan works.)

We may also want to add something saying that if translations across different media differ, the name of the work page should match the translation used for whichever medium it is namespaced under. (For example, Manga.Fly Me To The Moon, not Tonikawa: Over the Moon for You, the later-translated anime's title.)

Something to consider since I know someone will try to Rules Lawyer it: English translations occasionally get released in places outside the Anglosphere (I'm thinking along the lines of the Singapore dub of Yu-Gi-Oh!), and can theoretically end up as the "most recent" translation. I feel like these should be excluded from consideration as the "default" for obscurity.

The more obvious case is any attempt to export Super Sentai in a non-Power Rangers form. The Sentai fandom universally ignores those translations^note except maybe for the Shout! Factory subs, and trying to force them through will get us laughed out of the room.

Those suggestions sound like a way to create a back door for the fandom wars.

For the first, I can suggest that if the "more recent translation" produces fewer translations than an earlier one, that could work as an exception. (If the American release did 50 episodes and the later Singapore release only did 20, then we have an argument that the earlier one is more complete, therefore maintaining priority.)

Aside from that, what it really sounds like to me is people trying to use Fanon Discontinuity to dictate wiki policies. "I don't like this translation; I refuse to recognize that it is official."

In practice it's what's going to happen anyway; I don't think we should make it an actual rule as it stinks of favoritism. I can't think of a single major work where we follow a translation from Southeast Asia.

I agree with what you said about making exceptions to the "most recent translation" rule if the most recent translation is incomplete while a previous translation was complete, and also that we should avoid adding any subjective aspects to these decisions.

I could see a translation being disregarded unintentionally because the page's editors simply don't know about it (or at least don't know anything about it other than that it exists), but intentionally disregarding a translation because fans don't like it wouldn't be acceptable. I think we could give the former a pass (at least until/unless someone changes the page to be based on that translation), but not the latter.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Aug 22nd 2022 at 10:14:25 AM

We should probably make a list somewhere of specific translations we've opted to use.

Why would that be necessary?

I think it would be better to add commented-out notes to work pages saying which translation is used, if we're going to specify the translation at all.

Detective Conan got a Southeast Asia translation with a release roughly simultaneous with the American release. I recall an ATT using that factor to leverage the overall franchise page away from Case Closed. Simultaneous release has already been stated as a grey area. I expect community consensus for such situations, as long as all translations are official.

The SEA translation had been over for years and couldn't realistically be called "more recent". Basically no one was trying to justify it that way.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/LightNovel/KenkyoKenjitsuOMottoNiIkiteOrimasu

Is called "My Motto Is Living [...]" On Trope Makers, Dead Unicorn Trope and "Reborn as Villainess" Story, but is that any official translation?