MarioWiki talk:Japanese

Is this a Writing Guideline or not? It is linked to from the policy page yet it doesn't belong to the category.-- 17:24, 8 December 2011 (EST)


 * The page has been under construction and was being developed largely by . But as he seldom appears in the Wiki now, the page is unfinished. You should talk to him about this topic.
 * I'm not sure if there was much that needed to be added anyway. However, I've been wondering if it might be better to make this page just "MarioWiki:Japanese" and reorganize it a bit, since it already has aspects of policy that go beyond plain romanization. On a policy note, I also think we should just use plain Hepburn and allow long え and い to be romanized as ei and ii as well as ē and ī - that's what all the other wikis do, iirc. It might also be a good idea to just let proper names/titles be capitalized in foreignname, since that's how most people try to enter them anyway, and from what I've seen, Wikipedia, Bulbapedia and Zelda Wiki all capitalize names even if they're not used in the article's title. - 00:03, 9 December 2011 (EST)

English capitals
If an English letter appears in Japanese text, should it be written literally in the romanized text (A, B, C, ...) or rendered in Japanese pronunciation (ē, bī, shī, ...)? A gossip-loving Toad (talk) 03:59, 4 February 2016 (EST)


 * I think it should be written literally, and same with numbers: romanizing them just looks a bit too earnest and excessive, imho (and can make things hard to understand, since it could seem like the letter/number was skipped, especially if the romanization's done poorly, with no spaces separating the letter/number). On the other hand, I would advise using the hover-over text to include the kana that would have been used in place of the English letter/number, going by the same logic as showing the kana for kanji - I've even seen furigana used this way in manga (including Super Mario Kun). The same thing could be done for the romanization itself too, for that matter, so then it'd be best of both worlds: all the info, but none of the artificialness of writing letters. - 12:05, 4 February 2016 (EST)

furigana template
Is there a template for furigana marking? A template not only makes code cleaner, it can also make furigana available to those who don't have a mouse. A gossip-loving Toad (talk) 02:34, 13 February 2016 (EST)

Rendaku
The Japanese language has a strange rule such that
 * kodomo + heya = kodomobeya

similar to how "furi" and "kana" make "furigana". Should such things be taken into account if Nintendo does not provide a pronunciation of the kanji in a name? 21:46, 8 May 2016 (EDT)
 * As I continued learning Japanese I found that this needn't standardisation. Shame on me.  00:13, 31 May 2016 (EDT)

Official romanizations
Are official romanizations which are given by Nintendo allowed? -- 12:31, 4 November 2018 (EST)

Kanjis
Certain games do not use the "Hiragana above Kanjis" thing, such as Super Mario Maker 2, which complicates reading for non-kanji reading people in Japan. How would they expect everyone to read Kanjis? -- 10:52, July 3, 2019 (EDT)

Fake Dakuten R letters
I've found out that the "r" letters shown with the Dakuten are fake. If you try to copy-paste them, you can see that it is a fake. If there was an "l" sound, it'd have been a Handakuten. Does the "l" sound even exist in Japanese? -- 03:41, July 13, 2019 (EDT)
 * From what I've seen, they can technically be used to represent non-Japanese words with L sounds. They're basically never used, though. 04:04, July 13, 2019 (EDT)

"So"-like letter
I've found a letter that looks like a "so", but looks distinct from it. I've found it here. It has a Handakuten, but it isn't that that makes it looks different. It's at the end of the last sentence. -- 07:06, August 3, 2019 (EDT)
 * That's just another way of writing so (or in this case, zo). 07:08, August 3, 2019 (EDT)

Reliable translator
Yes i'm aware that i've been posting multiples messages in a row in htis, but what is the most reliable translator? I use Yandex translator, but i believe it has the same reliability as Google Translate. Also, i've seen names in Hiragana using this ー, see Balloon Teresa. Also, when it comes to loanwords, are they ever written in Hiragana? -- 05:57, August 20, 2019 (EDT)
 * Late reply, but...
 * 1. Online translators generally aren't very accurate, I'd recommend cross-referencing Japanese words with a dictionary in case something was lost.
 * 2. The chōonpu is sometimes used in hiragana for stylistic reasons (such as 「らーめん」), though this is unusual. In the case of Barūn Teresa however, the word 「ばるーん」 is simply a transliteration of the English word "balloon", which would normally be written in katakana as 「バルーン」. For reasons unknown (probably a stylistic choice), they wrote it in hiragana instead but kept the chōonpu, instead of changing the spelling to 「ばるうん」 or something.
 * 3. I've seen it before (see above), probably just as a stylistic choice.
 * 15:42, October 6, 2019 (EDT)

C vs. T

 * Note that っち should be cchi, never tchi, as it is in other romanization systems.

But why? Not only is it, as noted, more commonly spelled with a "t", but it's more obvious to casuals how it's supposed to be pronounced if it's spelled with a "t". RickTommy (talk) 22:05, September 15, 2019 (EDT)


 * I think the rule was created to simplify the transcription rules (so that っ always doubles the next letter). --Dine2017 (talk) 23:56, February 11, 2022 (EST)
 * By the way, here are some romanized words found on the wiki in violation of this rule: Atchimuitehoi, Atchitchi, Batchiri, Batchī, Chitchai, Dotchi, Etchi, Hotchikisu, Kotchi, Kyatchi, Matchi, Matcho, Ritchi, Suitchi, Suketchi, Sukuratchi, Tatchi, Uotchi, Wotchi, suketchibukku. --Dine2017 (talk) 05:53, August 13, 2022 (EDT)


 * I'm here a bit later because I wanted to fix "Jump Up, Super Star!" which was using both -tchi and -cchi. Because both were present and this page specifies Hepburn romanization, I assumed that the above quote was a mistake— Hepburn uses -tchi. So saying "other romanization systems" when the prior section says the wiki uses Hepburn is contradictory and confusing.


 * In any case, I'd strongly advocate for -tchi, as it is consistent with the other rules to use Hepburn romanization and the other standards that prioritize pronunciation along the same lines— such as that は, へ, and を as particles are written as they are pronounced (wa, e, and o instead of ha, he and wo), and a long o as おう is written as ō to avoid confusion with separate syllable o and u. Also, as pointed out, it's more intuitive for those without this knowledge of Japanese. Chubby Bub (talk) 02:48, April 11, 2023 (EDT)

An edge case: スゥー
The page says: "Sometimes a small kana might be used elongate the preceding vowel for stylistic reasons (e.g. for names, etc.), but should still be romanized the same way as if a ー symbol was used." What if both a small kana and a ー symbol are used? マスク・ド・スゥーパー is an example (and it's currently romanized as Masuku do Swūpā). --Dine2017 (talk) 10:11, July 26, 2022 (EDT)
 * Two more examples: Dōryī and Kānyī. --Dine2017 (talk) 10:31, July 26, 2022 (EDT)
 * Since it's still elongated, it probably should be romanized the same way. "Swūpā" I think is still appropriate even though the elongation is longer than normal. 16:55, July 29, 2022 (EDT)

Are there any standards for other non-Latin transliterations?
I'm sorry if I'm writing in the wrong place now, that's the most relevant talk page I've found. So, I've seen that transliterations of Cyrillic languages (such as Russian) are inconsistent (using different translit methods) and sometimes plain wrong (I've seen Cyrillic Р transliterated as Latin P, although AFAIK all methods use Latin R instead). It's possible that similar problems might exist with other non-Latin languages, such as Korean or Chinese. I know all these languages are, in case of this wiki, less significant since most non-English-language things about Mario are in Japanese. But these languages are commonly seen, for example, in articles devoted to names of characters, items, etc. in different languages. So, are there any guidelines for that? SuperJosipBroz (talk) 15:08, January 25, 2023 (EST)
 * There are no official guidelines as far as I know. The status quo: Chinese text is almost always transcribed using Pinyin, although non-native speakers of Mandarin occasionally make mistakes. Korean transcription exhibits less consistency: either Revised Romanization of Korean or a custom transcription. I'm not knowledgeable about Russian.
 * One issue concerning Pinyin is whether to transcribe 马力欧 and 瑪利歐 as Mǎlìōu or Mǎlì'ōu. The official Pinyin orthography says an apostrophe should be used before a, o, e where syllable boundaries may be confused, and convention dictates Mǎlì'ōu accordingly. But some editors favor Mǎlìōu, possibly because the last two tone marks naturally distinguish the two syllables, dispensing with the need for the apostrophe. It's an unclarified issue in official Pinyin rules.
 * Another is that Traditional Chinese may also be pronounced in Cantonese. We don't seem to have any Cantonese transcription on the wiki yet.
 * I agree that Cyrillic Р should not be transliterated as Latin P. --Dine2017 (talk) 22:31, January 26, 2023 (EST)
 * Thanks! I guess I won't touch the Cyrillic transliterations unless they have obvious errors. SuperJosipBroz (talk) 17:12, January 28, 2023 (EST)