Change to English if they have them.

^As an addendum to this, if the characters are from the Japan-only sequel to Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, their Japanese names are the only official names, rather than the names the Fan Translation used.

Edited by GastonRabbit

^ We use the fan translation names for Investigations 2 (as they are the names the fandom is likely to be familiar with.)

OP, can you point us at what page/pages in particular use the JP names? I haven't seen them used much if at all on TV Tropes before (barring the untranslated games for obvious reasons.)

We may use fan translation names, but are we supposed to use them? The general rule, as I understand it, is "official English if available, native language if not". How to Create a Works Page mostly has it as a rule for titles, but I generally assume it extends to names in the work itself, as well.

Edited by sgamer82

This conversation crops up every once in a while, as far as I'm aware the usual opinion is that while we technically only want official names, AAI2 is one of a few specific cases where the fan translation is so pervasive in the (western) fandom that it's what most people use, even the AA wiki does this.

Edited by iloveserperior

So this game's names are allowed as a specific exception?

Uhh, no. As far as I am aware, we haven't made any exceptions to the policy of "we do not treat fan opinions/names as part of the work". The closest I'm aware of is the occasional disambiguation name or YMMV examples or when a fan opinion is turned into some sort of derivative work (which still doesn't go on the official work page).

We have no official policy (or at least no enforced official policy, as this isn't the first time this issue has come up) as to what to do with material that has no official translation, hence whoever made the page way back when deciding to use the (omnipresent in the fandom) fan translation names. The same thing could be said about other fan translated works, but fan translations keep the original names far more often than official translations do so it rarely becomes an issue.

This non-policy also occasionally appears when debating page titles (usually between a direct translation and a transliteration.)

^^ AAI2 isn't unique in this regard; the page for Mother 3 technically uses fan names as well, but it isn't as obvious because the Mother 3 fan translation kept most of the relevant names.

Crazysamaritan, do you still stand by your statements from this previous query? AFAIK that's the most recent time you've participated in a fan-translation discussion before now.

Edited by bwburke94

^^ We do have an official policy when it comes to work titles with no official translation.

From Administrivia.How To Create A Works Page:

You are correct that there's no official policy for names within the work, so far as I know. I primarily tend to extend the above to that situation though, because I see no reason why the same logic of "use official English if it exists, original language when it doesn't" shouldn't apply. Maybe not as universally, since I don't always worry overmuch about it and/or it's not always obvious like in the Mother example ^, but if the names are actually changed in a fan translation from what they are in the original language, which it sounds like is the case for these Ace Attorney games, that's a bit of a different situation.

Also, in response to ^, just because Ace Attorney isn't unique, does not mean that it's correct. It could be that Mother 3 is doing it wrong, too.

Edited by sgamer82

Yes, a fan translation (by definition) violates copyright. Fan content has no place on articles describing the original work.

Fan Translation probably shouldn't be Trivia, then.

No, fan translations do not violate copyright by definition. That is a ridiculous claim.

^^Maybe YMMV would be better, since fan translations are a way the audience reacts to a work that's not in their native tongue.

Fan translations contain the script of a game translated into another language, but whether this violates copyright is (probably) beyond the scope of this wiki, and the copyright status of fan translations is irrelevant to coverage once we acknowledge the translations are fan translations.

The copyright status of fan translations is an unsettled question due to the lack of court rulings, and fair use could apply.

I would strongly recommend that people refrain from using copyright-related arguments in such discussions. They tend to be hypothetical most of the time.

It is copyright law, after all, that provides the framework that enables publishers to control content, which in turn enables them to make money by selling books and licensing subsidiary rights, such as [foreign translation].

Thus, a work of fiction or a best-selling biography cannot be translated into another language and distributed without the original author’s or copyright holder’s permission.

This is all about plaigerism again. Yes, it is plaigerism if you copy the original work word-for-word. Yes, it is still plaigerism when you make a translation. [If] you plan to publish the translation and share it with others, then you will have to get permission from the publisher first.

There may be a background difference in how we evaluate this problem; I'm coming from book publishing where litigation has occured several times and this is an extremely settled question. I don't see changing the medium (to video games or movies) as changing the situation, even if that specific situation hasn't been to court in America. It isn't hypothetical from my perspective.

So returning to the part of the discussion that isn't hypothetical, we have no policy for what names to use if there's no official translation.

The page was XMeetsY.Danganronpa, and I already changed the names. They're characters from games that were officially released and localized in English.

This is starting to go off topic, what OP wants to know is if it's okay to use the English names (they never specified on which page). I recommend taking this type of discussion to the Wiki Talk thread. edit: got ninja posted

Edited by audasious