26 Respuesta por Recap

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Re: The transliteration thread

icycalm escribió:

The exception to the rule would be the hyphen in sama, san, kun, etc. The rule would be "no hyphens for compound words". As for the reason for this exception... actually I just came up with a pretty good one.

When Japanese people pronounce the sama, san, kun, etc. there is an audible pause between the name and the honorific, correct? So they say Mushihime sama, not Mushihimesama. But when they pronounce Mamonoro they say it as one word. That's why I would not like to use a hyphen.

Now I get what you meant, but to answer your question, no, I don't think there's "an audible pause between the name and the honorific". They indeed say "mushihimesama", "kenjikun" and "miyamotosan". (In fact, Japanese love to "skip" audible pauses, and that's one of the main reasons why Japanese morphology is so confusing -- "words" are linked in "semantic groups" with usually no audible pauses between them).

If that's not enough for you, let me give you another reason to change your mind: hyphens in compound words have nothing to do with phonetics; they're just orthography stuff which serve to evoke the word's origin, but indeed it's still _one_ word. There's no "audible pause" in "self-publishing", "twenty-five" or "hyphen-minus", you know, much like there isn't if you write "Mamo-Noro".

27 Respuesta por icycalm

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Re: The transliteration thread

I am almost convinced!

But damn! Mamo-Noro is a bit hard to swallow! I should start a thread on Shmups just for the hell of it, trying to explain it to them :)

28 Respuesta por icycalm (editado por icycalm 04-12-2007 23:36:11)

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Re: The transliteration thread

On a kind-of related note, you should not use exclamation marks in your URLs, because if you try linking those pages in some forums the links won't work. (For example the Dragon Egg! review).

29 Respuesta por Recap

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Re: The transliteration thread

I'm an idiot. Fixed now, thanks.







.

30 Respuesta por icycalm (editado por icycalm 31-10-2008 02:12:44)

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Re: The transliteration thread

Recap escribió:

Actually, it's Ookina (not an "ou" like, say "chou", but two "o's", like "ookami"). Thanks for the heads-up.

http://postback.geedorah.com/foros/view … 5689#p5689

Can you explain this to me? How do you decide when to use a "u" or an "o" for the extra vowel? I was under the impression that you are always supposed to use a "u"...

31 Respuesta por Recap

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Re: The transliteration thread

Well, it's not "your" decision, actually. Check it out:


超: チョウ, こ.える, こ.す, わたる

http://www.kanjidict.com/demo/8d85.html



大: ダイ, タイ, おお-, おお, etc

http://www.kanjidict.com/demo/5927.html



The confusion comes from certain shitty transliteration methods like Hepburn where they aren't distinguished at all, given that their pronounciation is the same:

Long vowels

In traditional and revised Hepburn:

The long vowels o and u are indicated by a macron—e.g., long o is written ō.
In words of Japanese or Chinese origin, the long vowel e is written ei.
In words of Japanese or Chinese origin, the long vowel i is written ii.
In words of foreign origin, all long vowels are indicated by macrons.

In modified Hepburn:

All long vowels are indicated by doubling the vowel, e.g. long o is written oo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepburn_romanization

32 Respuesta por icycalm

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Re: The transliteration thread

That's perfectly clear now. Should have figured it out sooner -- thanks for the explanation.

33 Respuesta por CIT

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Re: The transliteration thread

大工の源さん ～べらんめ町騒動記～

=

DAIKU NO GEN-SAN ~BERANMECHOU SOUDOUKI~


"beranmechou" is a compound noun and carries an onyomi reading.

More importantly though, it is a play on the term べらんめえ調 (beranmechou), meaning "urban slang" (specifically of Tokyo).


Enjoyed your review, it's a great game!

34 Respuesta por Recap

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Re: The transliteration thread

Thanks a lot for this. The play is indeed really important; I need to rewrite the text in order to include it now. So you'd agree with the current translation "The Story of a Riot in Beranme Street"?

35 Respuesta por icycalm

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Re: The transliteration thread

What is your opinion on the best way to transliterate the names of the Ray series: Rayforce, RayForce, Ray Force, etc?

36 Respuesta por Recap

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Re: The transliteration thread

First off, as I've already explained to you, I'd NEVER EVER use 'camelcase' forms. Any decent linguist will agree (or should agree) that, 'cept for very specific cases, it's an awful misuse of writing. So no "RayForce" here.

I didn't know it with certainty till now, and I've found this:

http://i39.tinypic.com/2me2vs5.jpg

Both logos use more or less the same typography (they're actually for the same game, as you'll know), so they're supposedly using the same 'rules' for spacing characters. And, while the "F" in "force" seems capitalized (so we'd have "Ray Force"), you can see quite clearly that there's a space between the "r" and the "s" in "Layer Section". Given that that space isn't in the "Rayforce" logo, I'd go with that.

Therefore, I'd write "Raystorm" and "Raycrisis" too, though I don't really like it.


We should make a wiki or something with this shit.

37 Respuesta por icycalm (editado por icycalm 15-03-2009 04:18:21)

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Re: The transliteration thread

Good call!

And yeah, if I asked you all the questions on this subject that I have, we'd get enough material for a wiki, I am sure.

38 Respuesta por icycalm

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Re: The transliteration thread

I wanted to ask you about this:

CHOHMAKAIMURA

From your soft list...

Why not Chou Makaimura? Or at least Choumakaimura?

39 Respuesta por Recap

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Re: The transliteration thread

If I chose it, it'd be "Chou Makai-Mura", but this one (much like the whole series) has an official transliteration in the game logo, I'm afraid.

40 Respuesta por icycalm

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Re: The transliteration thread

Oh, I see. Much like "Yoshi's Island" then.

41 Respuesta por icycalm

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Re: The transliteration thread

But then, so does Mushihime-sama -- on the OST, at least, it says "Mushihimesama"... What would be your choice for that?

42 Respuesta por Recap

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Re: The transliteration thread

You meant "Super Mario: Yossy Island", right?


As for Mushi, no, that doesn't count as "the official transliteration" to me. The only ones I accept as such are those in the game logos (being an actual part of it, if not its whole), and only because you can't ignore them. Everything else is just "incidental" stuff, which indeed may vary if it happens to be more than one place using romaji.

43 Respuesta por icycalm

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Re: The transliteration thread

Makes sense. Especially the "and only because you can't ignore them" part.

44 Respuesta por Recap

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Re: The transliteration thread

http://i46.tinypic.com/kaio9h.jpg


As an answer to this:

http://forum.insomnia.ac/viewtopic.php?p=12234#12234

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Re: The transliteration thread

Check also this:

Quote:
Noir (ノワール, Nowāru?)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noir_%28anime%29

Link.


You at least could have used this thread in order to make the thing a little less silly.

What I tried to do with the picture above is showing that Japanese may use more than one single spelling in kana for foreign words. It's not usual, but the French 'noir'/'noire' (both forms have no pronounciation differences, in case it's not clear enough) is not the only case I've found.



Said that and contrarily to what I believed before, 'Noa' is an existing word:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noa

So yeah, Milestone's 'ノア' could be referring to the Hebrew name 'Noa', which, as I've just learned, has already been used even in popular comics such as Patlabor. Still, we got the logo's colors, intentionally inverted in order to make the 'ノア' part black.

So, until it is found out that there's a character in the game called 'Noa', I'd stick to 'Noir', if only because it just makes better sense for the game's own title. Again, being katakana instead of hiragana means, in principle, that it's not an invented word.