DramaWiki talk:Romanization of Chinese
From DramaWiki
Pinyin names
The romanisation of Chinese listed in this article is incorrect. Hanyu Pinyin places the surname first, and following characters afterward, without a space. Hence, 高圆圆 would be Gao Yuanyuan, not Gao Yuan Yuan, which is nonstandard usage and is unrecognised in China and in Singapore. --Ahbeng 20:47, 23 Jul 2006 (EDT)
- For example, searching "Liu Yi Fei" turns up 134,000 hits, while searching "Liu Yifei" turns up 2 million hits. This is because Pinyin uses the name romanisation format of the latter, not the former. --Ahbeng 00:45, 24 Jul 2006 (EDT)
- What would 唐嫣 be? In Gao Yuanyuan, Yuanyuan is the [first] name while Gao is the surname, so Yuanyuan is altogether. Would 唐嫣 be Tang Yan or Tangyan? --Tangyanzixuan
- Thanks for replying, actually, I intended this line to refer to any romanisation in general, not just Hanyu Pinyin, like Ng Man Tat and Lee Kuan Yew. But if for Hanyu Pinyin, methods romanisation to "Gao Yuanyuan" is much more prevalent, I won't mind having Hanyu Pinyin titled that way, but I think it makes things more complicated. --A10203040 01:21, 24 Jul 2006 (EDT)
- Keep in mind that the most important aspect of DramaWiki is searching. Yes, you can apply the most critical of romanization methods to a given name. However, if many of the fans do not recognize the spelling, searching is not going to work. Also keep in mind that DramaWiki is for the English reader. Regardless of how the East romanizes a name, the romanization used on DramaWiki must be western friendly, where most of the English readers come from. Ahbeng is looking at romanization purely on an academic point-of-view, which may be correct for an encyclopedia like Wikipedia. BUT, DramaWiki is NOT an encyclopedia. Therefore, all names should be entered using the most popular spelling among the fans. Also, DramaWiki encourages readers to use Google and Yahoo! to search DramaWiki, both of which offer better search facilities for pages that have been scraped by these search engines. Once these modified pages become cached on Google, a westerner looking up "Zhang Zi Yi" isn't going to find her on DramaWiki. DramaWiki is not going to take the position of trying to instruct the rest of the Internet world how to properly romanize Chinese. Let Wikipedia deal with that problem. Groink 18:45, 24 Jul 2006 (EDT)
- How about I do the following, if no one replies soon, I'll move the page titles back to the split name format. The conventioned Hanyu Pinyin can be placed in the Name: line instead. I'll add a line on that in the guidelines as well.--A10203040 20:17, 24 Jul 2006 (EDT)
- A10203040, before you do anything major, I would recommend you test several of the more popular names on Google and see what produces more hits. For example, test both "zhang zi yi" and "zhang ziyi" (place both of them in quotations when performing the searches.) Do a good sample size of maybe 20 names or so. With this type of data collected, it'll give you some proof you can stand behind when do you make any changes and policies. I did this with the Japanese artists, and there I've found that the majority of fans use many different methods of romaji (hepburn, wapuro, a combination of both, etc.) This is why my number-1 criteria in the romanization of Japanese is to use the most popular romanized name - regardless of what's academically correct. Simply put, I'm not going to tell the hundreds of thousands of Western people that the spelling of Itoh Misaki is incorrect. That's not the position DramaWiki wants to take. Groink 20:37, 24 Jul 2006 (EDT)
- Ok--A10203040 20:45, 24 Jul 2006 (EDT)
- Yes, I understand that. This page should explicitly state that that actor's personal preference in English name spelling goes before any other conventions. And, many Taiwanese actors do not use Pinyin, so you may want to suggest other systems for these specified people, as you would for Cantonese actors. And searching "Zhang Ziyi" turns up 1,880,000 hits on Google, while "Zhang Zi Yi" only turns up 79,400 hits. Furthermore, as a rule of thumb, all Mainland Chinese actors will use the traditional Pinyin system (e.g. Zhang Ziyi, Huang Xiaoming). It's more ambigious and up for grabs for Singaporeans, who may use Hokkien, Cantonese, or Pinyin in romanizing. It's not about being academically correct--it would be better to call it "Modified Pinyin" or "DramaWiki Pinyin. --Ahbeng 23:01, 24 Jul 2006 (EDT)
- But that's my point in your handling of this whole thing. Your way of thinking is "The country of origin the artist is from sets the standard." And I'm telling you that this is NOT so. On DramaWiki, the standard among English-speaking fans is the standard. That's why I brought up Itoh Misaki. Her official web page says her name is spelled "Ito Misaki". But we're not going to change every article here to reflect that. Despite the fact that every reference of "Itoh" is incorrect, we cannot afford to change it to "Ito" when 95-percent of the English-speaking world will be searching for "Itoh". Can't you comprehend this idea? That is why I brought up the Google test idea. The most popular romanization spelling should become the standard on DramaWiki. Groink 23:12, 24 Jul 2006 (EDT)
- Then why would you tell me this: But we require that you also correct all the wikilinks in ALL the articles that are affected - including artists and drama articles. [...] If you do not make these changes within 24 hours of these moves, I'm going to revert all the moves. It seems as if this was not your initial response. So basically, you want to call people by what they don't call themselves. --Ahbeng 00:29, 25 Jul 2006 (EDT)
- Dude, you just plain mis-read my post. By "all", I meant "all" the articles YOU moved. Apply some logic, man. Why would I make a threat to revert your moves by making you change the hundreds of articles you didn't put your hands on. Did you REALLY interpret my message like that??? Unbelievable... Groink 14:10, 25 Jul 2006 (EDT)
- Ok--A10203040 20:45, 24 Jul 2006 (EDT)
- Thanks for replying, actually, I intended this line to refer to any romanisation in general, not just Hanyu Pinyin, like Ng Man Tat and Lee Kuan Yew. But if for Hanyu Pinyin, methods romanisation to "Gao Yuanyuan" is much more prevalent, I won't mind having Hanyu Pinyin titled that way, but I think it makes things more complicated. --A10203040 01:21, 24 Jul 2006 (EDT)
- What would 唐嫣 be? In Gao Yuanyuan, Yuanyuan is the [first] name while Gao is the surname, so Yuanyuan is altogether. Would 唐嫣 be Tang Yan or Tangyan? --Tangyanzixuan
A site we can use to find out which name yield the most hits.
- It was difficult to tell what tone you were writing in, especially with the unnecessary caps (HOWEVER [...] ALL). --Ahbeng 16:51, 25 Jul 2006 (EDT)
Google Fight
--WaterOB 13:03, 25 Jul 2006 (EDT)
LOL, nice.. I did a small check using some of the pinyin names found on Dramawiki, see below. Some of the results are probably too small to make a decision upon.--A10203040 14:14, 25 Jul 2006 (EDT)
From what I can tell, official mainland sources usually join the name when romanising them, while fan-based sources might do either, some of them even spliting them as a rule. It doesn't follow convention, but it's not strictly wrong either.--A10203040 14:49, 25 Jul 2006 (EDT)
- This pretty much re-affirms my position I made on the Japanese articles; the most popular romanization should prevail. The only time a romanization method is applied is:
- when there is no clear consensus of what the correct spelling is (i.e. too close to call).
- when there is no "official" romanization spelling published by the artist or his/her publicist/agency.
- The romanization for Chinese article says the same thing. I suggest we keep this criteron as-is, and start making the necessary changes on any artist articles that are affected. Remember, this is NOT a directive - this is my personal recommendation. The rest of you editors should put it to vote. Also my opinion - the sooner you start making the changes, the easier it will be to maintain the articles later on. In comparison to the Japanese articles, the Chinese articles are very small in number. Groink 15:34, 25 Jul 2006 (EDT)
- How can you accurately gauge what fans use to spell names? Most fans of Asian dramas do not start websites. Is there some poll to show which method used is more favoured among visitors of this site, to accurately determine which method should be used (especially for more obscure actors)? Think about it. The redirects would useful for fans coming from Mainland China and Taiwan (or those who are use one of two systems)--each country uses its own romanisation, and more than likely would not be aware of the others'. Perhaps, English names should take precedence, and various forms of romanised names within the article so results would show up on the search engine. --Ahbeng 16:51, 25 Jul 2006 (EDT)
- The guidelines already state that whenever possible, use English names: Whenever possible, use the official or most common English name as the article title instead.
Although the method below may not accurately gauge how fans here use it but think about it, all article names created followed this de-facto format before you forced through the changes. Won't that mean it is commonly accepted here?
Personally, I would prefer that the article title goes back to the split name format. It keeps formatting simple, less ambiguous(is Zhangan Zhang'an or Zhan'gan) and less messy(should name be joined or should this name be split). Another, it keeps formatting inline with the rest of the chinese romanisations. The joined name format can still be placed in the Name: line as and when needed. --A10203040 23:11, 25 Jul 2006 (EDT)
- The guidelines already state that whenever possible, use English names: Whenever possible, use the official or most common English name as the article title instead.
- How can you accurately gauge what fans use to spell names? Most fans of Asian dramas do not start websites. Is there some poll to show which method used is more favoured among visitors of this site, to accurately determine which method should be used (especially for more obscure actors)? Think about it. The redirects would useful for fans coming from Mainland China and Taiwan (or those who are use one of two systems)--each country uses its own romanisation, and more than likely would not be aware of the others'. Perhaps, English names should take precedence, and various forms of romanised names within the article so results would show up on the search engine. --Ahbeng 16:51, 25 Jul 2006 (EDT)
I vote for split name format. In the profile itself, we can put other spelling variations of the artist name in the "Also known as" category.
Name: Gao Yuan Yuan
English Name: OfficialEnglishName Gao
Also Known As: Gao Yuanyuan, Xiao Yuan, whatever other names she was known for
But as mentioned before, artist's official English name should come first. --WaterOB 11:52, 26 Jul 2006 (EDT)
- That works too (because all versions would appear on the search engine). --Ahbeng 16:41, 26 Jul 2006 (EDT)
- Ok, so if everyone agrees to this format, we will start moving all titles and links back to the split name format, the convention name can be used in the name or also known as sections.--A10203040 23:32, 26 Jul 2006 (EDT)
Table
Mainland-Chinese articles
| "Zhang Zi Yi" | 79,200 | 1,950,000 | "Zhang Ziyi" |
| "Gao Yuan Yuan" | 9570 | 22,300
| "Gao Yuanyuan" |
| "Chen Dao Ming" | 18,300 | 20,100 | "Chen Daoming" |
| "Zhang Tie Lin" | 840 | 2050 | "Zhang Tielin" |
| "Huang Xiao Ming" | 23,200 | 710 | "Huang Xiaoming" |
| "Li Bing Bing" | 10,100 | 14,500 | "Li Bingbing" |
| "Fan Bing Bing" | 93,100 | 34,400 | "Fan Bingbing" |
| "He Mei Tian" | 379 | 271 | "He Meitian" |
| "Chen Zi Ying" | 20 | 179 | "Chen Ziying" |
| "Ma Ya Shu" | 447 | 16 | "Ma Yashu" |
| "Zhao Wen Zhuo" | 13,800 | 603 | "Zhao Wenzhuo" |
Non-mainland(those without English and officially romanised names)
| "Chen Qiao En" | 10,500 | 338 | "Chen Qiaoen" |
| "Tang Yu Zhe" | 175 | 24 | "Tang Yuzhe" |
| "Lu Ting Wei" | 228 | 10 | "Lu Tingwei" |
| "Zhang Rui Jia" | 75 | 2 | "Zhang Ruijia" |
| "Shi Jing Jing" | 37 | 103 | "Shi Jingjing" |
- I did notice that for Mainland China, it's more common place to have the first name and middle name combined (ie. Gao Yuanyuan). But for Taiwan, it's usually separated (ie. Lu Ting Wei). I suggest that we adopted two systems. For all China/Singapore entries, we used the "Gao Yuanyuan" spelling For Taiwan and other countries, we used "Lu Tin Wei" spelling. Similar to simplified Chinese vs traditional Chinese. --WaterOB 14:53, 25 Jul 2006 (EDT)
Using English translated drama titles
Is it a good idea to even translate to English? I can't speak for the Chinese drama fans since I'm not a fan of the genre. As for Japanese drama fans, most of us mention the show titles by the actual Japanese names. We do this because you can basically ask 10 people to translate, for example, ひとつ屋根の下, and you'll get 10 variations. And then when I speak to another Japanese drama fan and mention "Our House", he would look at me strange and say he doesn't know the show. IMHO, we should not be creating the article titles using English-translated titles simply because the titles are not official. Same feeling towards IMDB which most of you refer to - they too use the romanized text for the titles rather than un-officially translated titles. Korean dramas are different, in that the Korean TV industry makes a huge effort in producing English versions of their drama titles. Food for thought... Groink 19:40, 4 Aug 2007 (CDT)
- bump! So much editing going on nowadays... Hard to catch things like this. Groink 16:42, 5 Aug 2007 (CDT)
- I am not sure about mainland China's drama, since I rarely watch them. But for Hong Kong dramas, I am sure that English titles can most likely be found on the DVD sites, such as Yesasia. Of course, for dramas produce in the 70s and 80s, the English titles are harder to search, but most of the time, Canto-drama should really have an English title somewhere issued by the TV station. Besides, cantonese speakers are not used to romanizing the dialect, which means there are huge discrepancy between each person's romanization method, even if they are raised in the same city. At least for Hong Kong dramas titles, I don't think romanization is a feasible idea .Humbeggar 16:58, 5 Aug 2007 (CDT)
