Forum:Community call, macron change

A fairly big change was recently made around the wiki. We switched from using names like Choji, Chunin, and Tenzo to using Chōji, Chūnin, and Tenzō. This decision was made fairly hastily over a discussion made by only 3-4 members of the wiki's community. Any person, editor or reader is urged to comment below if they have any issue with this change.

It's also advised to read over the discussion at Forum:Primary source where this started from. For those wishing to research a bit more the community has made some discussions on names used on the wiki in the past at Forum:Names, Forum:Character and Jutsu Names, Forum:Character and Jutsu Names, and Forum:Name Changes. ~ NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) Dec 18, 2009 @ 02:39 (UTC)


 * Not gonna lie. It bugged me at first. Now however, it really does not bother me. At the end of the day, Anons still come on and write things like "Jinchuuriki" and forgo the macron or just the one "u". At this point, as long as it's accurate to the original Japanese, it's fine. I will say this though, as I feel it will come up at some point: We are not employees of Viz Media.--TheUltimate3 (talk) 03:09, December 18, 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll bite. What exactly was that survey about?--TheUltimate3 (talk) 04:37, December 18, 2009 (UTC)
 * Trying to statistically understand what media our readers are familiar with and what name formats they are used to. ~ NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) Dec 18, 2009 @ 04:50 (UTC)
 * I think if we are not going to go with the English version of Naruto for correct spelling than using the most popular translation would be best. Adding characters that I feel compelled to type out ASCII code for isn't useful for writing.  I think that KISS is a system that would work here best... Keep It Simple Stupid... it works I think (for most of life's problems to).--Cueil-sama (talk) 08:01, December 18, 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think just because people are to lazy to copy/paste or click the letters at the bottom of the page (on the conveniently located template at the bottom of every editing page that has special characters listed). Also, you shouldn't be writing Chōji that many times in a single paragraph or even page that it becomes bothersome to the point of saying forget it. Also every so often we could run a bot over the pages to fix the macrons that people couldn't figure out. Finally, an Encyclopedia should be using proper translations of the original source, while still noting other translations. Simant (talk) 19:10, December 18, 2009 (UTC)
 * That's not quite a straightforward thing. An encyclopedia doesn't normally research things on it's own, it cites existing research and aggregates that information. Translation is a tricky game, the same thing can be translated in many ways. Translating something yourself when there is an official source of translations in some ways can be considered original research. Wikipedia after all is using Viz translations. The idea of using the original source and only noting official translations comes from the Fan world, NOT the Encyclopedia world. ~ NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) Dec 18, 2009 @ 21:56 (UTC)
 * The thing is though, official is subjective in anything not related to marketing. Like I said, we are not employees of Viz Media, therefore what they determined as right and what we determined as right are two different things. Viz's goal is to bring something into English and sell it to the masses, our goal is to take what we know and distribute it over the internet. And based on my understanding, Wikipedia only recently started using Viz translations, for the longest they used direct English as it showed no group bias.--TheUltimate3 (talk) 02:45, December 19, 2009 (UTC)
 * I just wanted to clarify, in cause it came out weird above: Viz does not have to translate to be accurate. They have to translate to sell. As a wiki we should strive to be accurate.--TheUltimate3 (talk) 02:59, December 19, 2009 (UTC)

Choji's name shouldn't be changed to Chōji because the hifine line above the o stands for double meaning Choji's name is now Chooji. For example, a name like Gaara can have the hifine thing above the a but I recommend that you shouldn't do that for Gaara because it isn't right. So it's only useful for names that really need that hifine because of their double letter.
 * The line above the o is a Macron. It is part of a pronunciation guide because in Japanese Choji (in romaji Chōji [Hepburn] or Chouji [Wapuro]) is pronounced with a long-O, "oo" is wrong for pronunciation.
 * However this does trigger a question. I trust ShounenSuki's Japanese experience, and his understanding of translation, and transcribing Japanese in the latin alphabet. However these our our English texts macrons are being pushed into. I don't know about his English literary experience. And after researching information on Wikipedia about English and the latin alphabet, I see no matching use of macrons in the English language. So since we are not using the Japanese names (otherwise Choji would be at Akimichi Chōji and Rock Lee would be at Rokku Rī) we are using English names, Macrons don't appear to apply in English, and Wikipedia with all it's English literary experience does not use macrons I question the validity and professionalism of using macrons in our English text. I also question the massive change that has made us incompatible with Wikipedia in terms of naming, which is something we have valued for a long time. ~ NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) Dec 26, 2009 @ 08:37 (UTC)
 * I have more than a decade of experience with English literature, both fiction and non-fiction. I am also following a university-level course in English Translation and have a lot of experience with texts covering Japanese subjects. The macron is not native to the English language, that much is true. However, scientific texts covering Japanese subjects have always used some way to indicate the long vowels. In fact, the lack of this indication in non-scientific texts like newspapers seems to be a fairly recent trend, originating in the US, propagated mostly by laziness or a fear that the intended audience would not understand the diacritical marks or odd spellings.


 * No author that is actually familiar with the Japanese language and who believes their audience is mature enough to handle unfamiliar words ignores the long vowel indication. The only way one can justify not using macrons is by using a source that also doesn't use them. In other words, writing Choji instead of Chōji (or Chouji or Chôji, depending on the romanisation system used) is per definition wrong, unless one is quoting a source that already wrote it like this. Wikipedia uses the Viz translation, which doesn't use a long vowel indicator. Therefore they do not use macrons. There are plenty of articles on Wikipedia that do use macrons, though.


 * Saying that macrons do not appear to apply in English is somewhat ridiculous. The modern English language has no native diacritical marks at all. However, they do appear in foreign loanwords, which is what the Japanese words we use are, basically. It is still fiancée or piñata and not fiancee and pinata.


 * My point in this discussion was to use the original Japanese manga (and anime) as our primary source, since it was already used as a de facto primary source for most of the wiki. This would mean we have no English source to tell us not to use long vowel indicators, which would mean we should be using macrons.


 * As for your Rock Lee question: There is a clear difference between "true" Japanese names and "foreign" names in the manga. Rock Lee and Might Guy are clearly meant to be foreign names, while Neji Hyūga and Chōji Akimichi are clearly true Japanese names. They should be treated as such and the Databooks can give us their proper translations if it is not clear what that should be.


 * I hope this answers any questions --ShounenSuki (talk 19:30, December 26, 2009 (UTC)

Adding my voice to say that, for me, the change contributes to (the admittedly very dubious kind of ;-) ) immersion the wiki sometimes bestows. Since the articles are written mostly in in-canon style, "Chūnin" seems far more appropriate than "Chunin". I really like the change. - Ayjona (talk) 19:53, December 30, 2009 (UTC)