User blog:ACDragonMaster/On translations and the importance of getting it from the source

As anyone following this wiki (IS there anyone still actively following this wiki?) may have noticed, I've been going through and adding in or correcting the Japanese names in a lot of the articles. There's a fair number of pages with no information, but there's also quite a few with wrong information. It's a bit of a slow process, especially as I don't always know offhand where to find the scenes that some of the more obscure names and terms actually appear.

But that aside, since I'm hitting a point where it's getting harder and harder to track down both pages to fix and the references, if there IS anyone still hanging around here there's a few things that would greatly help:

- Pointing me towards articles that are missing or have incomplete Japanese name information. Note, however, that not everything actually has a proper equivalent, as some articles are named for fan-created terms or names!

- Giving references of in what chapter/episode a particular name or term appears. This actually probably the most useful thing, as some of these are hard to track down without rereading/watching the entire series (again), which I don't have time to do for every single name. A good example is Wendi Skyrunner, where I distinctly remember seeing the name and am reasonably confident of what the katakana is, but can't for the life of me recall what chapter it was in to confirm it.

- Eventually, pointing me towards articles where the romaji is sloppy. If we want to get technical, it's generally preferred to use "ā" for example to "a-" or "aa" to represent the katakana アー as it just looks better. I know I've left a few sloppy entries because I forget to do the romaji properly and not just wapuro style, myself, so there's plenty to go around. This is a pretty low priority, though, as the other romanizations are still understandable.

With that said, it might be worthwhile to get into the subject of why, exactly, any of this matters.

Really, the long and the short of it is that there's a lot of inaccurate translations. While it looks to be well-intentioned, I've run across many articles where the "Japanese" name listed appears to be someone translating the English translation back into Japanese, and doesn't match what appears in the actual Japanese version at all. Which means that it's inaccurate information.

To give an idea of what I'm talking about, here's an example of the sort of thing I've come across, with an explanation of where and how the mistake occurred:

Prior to me editing it a couple weeks ago, the Oak Family article listed the Japanese name as "オーク 一族" and the romaji as "Ouku no kazoku". Now, technically, the romaji would translate more or less literally to "Oak family", however the word "kazoku" typically refers to "family" in the sense of "family members". As in, if you point to your sibling or parent or cousin or so on and say "they're my family" the word you most likely would use is kazoku. Similarly it's also used in the figurative sense, where if you were to say you and your best friend are so close you're "like family" you'd again use kazoku. The kanji used for the word, 家族, literally mean "house" and "clan" or "group" of people. Therefore kazoku is the people of your physical house, the ones you share your home with.

Next, as anyone paying close attention has probably already noticed, "kazoku" actually isn't the kanji that was used in the article! In fact, the kanji listed is "ichizoku" (and, for that matter, there's no "no" (の) in there either, for that matter). Ichizoku also is a word that can be translated as "family", but in this case it usually means it in a slightly more impersonal sense. The kanji used for ichizoku, 一族, mean literally "one" and again that "clan" or "group" kanji. Essentially, it literally means "a singular clan of people" and can often be thought of in the sense of a family by blood, marriage, and adoption. You don't generally use ichizoku when talking or asking about individual family members, but rather the family as a whole.

Neither of these, however, is what's typically used in Japanese to mean "family" in the sense of "Oak family" or so on. That is actually a single kanji: 家. Pronounced "ke" in this context, again it's that kanji that means "house", used as a suffix at the end of the name. When written this way, it implies, household, therefore オーク家 (ōkuke) could be literally understood to mean "Oak house" or "the household of the Oaks". This is the normal way for expressing this concept in Japanese, and actually is, in fact, what's used in the Japanese version of the 07-Ghost manga.

Oh, and if you were paying really close attention here, you might have spotted that there was one other mistake in the romaji I quoted at the beginning: namely, オーク was romanized as "ouku", which while the Japanese does indeed have a long "o" sound, in this case if not writing it with and "ō" the proper romaji would be a doubled "oo", which is what that little dash-like line in the middle indicates.

I will say though, that obviously whoever added the names to the article originally was clever enough to figure out the correct word(s) for "family" in general in Japanese, it just so happened that they weren't the particular once that were actually used in this case.

So what's the point of all this? Aside from a bit of a Japanese lesson, this is why it's very, very important when adding information to a wiki--any wiki--to make sure that the information is accurate. If you aren't sure, it's best to take a moment to look it up; even if you are sure, still try to take a moment to confirm it! With many of the Japanese names I've been adding, even once I was almost 100% positive I knew, I still often pulled out my copies of the manga to double-check in case I was misremembering. When this step is skipped, it leads not only to misinformation, but also a risk of edit wars as different people remember slightly different things. Go to the source, and whenever possible cite it, and things run smoother for everyone.

And if you're still reading this at this point, I'll just say again, if you come across pages that need Japanese terms fixed or check, OR know where to find one of those terms (just a chapter number is fine; even if you're reading the English version I can cross check in the Japanese!) let me know!

...Especially if you know in what chapter the full "wendi skyrunner" name appears, because that one is currently eluding me, sigh.