Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Japan-related articles/Archive 29
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Double quotation marks/brackets for book titles (Reviving)
As I erroneously edited an Archive page, moving it here:
Should Japanese book titles, etc. be enclosed in double quotation marks/brackets (『...』) within the text of an article or in a citation?
For example:
Yoshimoto, Banana (November 2010). Donguri Shimai 『どんぐり姉妹』 [The Acorn Sisters] (in Japanese) (1st ed.). Tokyo, Japan: Shinchosha. ISBN 978-4-10-383409-0.
As opposed to:
Yoshimoto, Banana (November 2010). Donguri Shimai どんぐり姉妹 [The Acorn Sisters] (in Japanese) (1st ed.). Tokyo, Japan: Shinchosha. ISBN 978-4-10-383409-0.
It seems logical to me, seeing as how we italicize book titles in English, and the double brackets are basically the Japanese equivalent of italics. However, I wasn't able to find anything about brackets in the Manual of Style, and the "cite book" template example doesn't use brackets for Japanese titles, either. – KuroMina (talk) 11:10, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
- It does not seem "logical" to me. WP:en is in English, and should quote foreign text using the conventions of English to indicate the quotion. Imaginatorium (talk) 08:25, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
- Please look at the above example carefully. The brackets are there as a part of Japanese text, making it clearer that it is the title of the book (exactly as Italic does in English) for the reader of the part of the line that is Japanese. Yiba (talk | contribs) 11:51, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
- I looked very carefully. (This is the example of the Donguri Sisters, right?) The Japanese title is not there for readers of Japanese, since WP:ja is for that purpose. The title is given in two versions, romanised and original, for the benefit of the person reading in English who wants to know exactly what the title is. And the (original) title is... どんぐり姉妹. In Japanese running text, this may be enclosed within kagi-kakko 『 』 because this is a convention of Japanese running text. In Japanese outside running text such brackets are not required, so they are plainly not part of the title. Imaginatorium (talk) 14:00, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
- Thanks. Yes, we're on the same page as to the example(s). I said "reader of the part of the line that is Japanese", meaning in this case, you, who reads どんぐり姉妹. And that part of the line is in Japanese language, agree? May be it is simpler and easier to understand by stating: "どんぐり姉妹 is equivalent to acorn sisters, 『どんぐり姉妹』is equivalent to The Acorn Sisters." (⇐ if I ended this line instead with ". then some picky person might say "this writer doesn't respect English writing convention" outside of en:wikipedia:P)
- I looked up and found examples from other versions of Wikipedia on a book title:
- Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen (britischer Originaltitel: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone) -German
- 『ハリー・ポッターと賢者の石』（ハリー・ポッターとけんじゃのいし、原題: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone）-Japanese
- Harry Potter i Kamień Filozoficzny (tytuł oryginalny: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone) -Polish
- Please note the English part of the lines are Italyzed, because it is proper in English language for book titles to do so. (Unlike French, which does Italize book titles, the German and Japanese languages do not.)
- There are Italyzed fonts in Japanese, but it is the convention to use『』for book titles, and it is important that this is not the regular kagi-kakko「」for quotes. While your point is well taken en.wikipedia does not need to respect the conventions of foreign language (as long as they are spelled correctly), there is intrinsic value to return the courtesy/respect extended by de., jp., pl. and other wikipedia to the English language conventions, in addition to making the handling of a foreign language "more proper" at very small cost. Am I sounding logical enough yet? Yiba (talk | contribs) 02:50, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
- No, you do not sound logical at all. English can respect anything, while quoting it, but the "quoting operation" is in English, and uses a consistent scheme. As do other WP versions, as you point out. ("Italyzed" is not a word; you mean "italicise") Anyway, you need to get a lot more support for your idiosyncratic proposal before it is worth discussing further. Imaginatorium (talk) 05:58, 25 February 2023 (UTC)
- I looked very carefully. (This is the example of the Donguri Sisters, right?) The Japanese title is not there for readers of Japanese, since WP:ja is for that purpose. The title is given in two versions, romanised and original, for the benefit of the person reading in English who wants to know exactly what the title is. And the (original) title is... どんぐり姉妹. In Japanese running text, this may be enclosed within kagi-kakko 『 』 because this is a convention of Japanese running text. In Japanese outside running text such brackets are not required, so they are plainly not part of the title. Imaginatorium (talk) 14:00, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
- Please look at the above example carefully. The brackets are there as a part of Japanese text, making it clearer that it is the title of the book (exactly as Italic does in English) for the reader of the part of the line that is Japanese. Yiba (talk | contribs) 11:51, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
Spacing of romanization
Neither the Hepburn romanization article nor Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Japan-related articles mention how to space romanizations, other than specific rules on words ending in 絵 (e) and 画 (ga) and certain kinds of place names. This contrasts with the detailed rules in the Pinyin article.
The absence of rules has led to inconsistency on, to use a simple example, whether 私達 is romanized as watashitachi, watashi-tachi, or watashi tachi. Let alone where to place spaces and hyphens in romanizations of long strings of kanji.
I think it's easier to appropriate someone else's rules, even if one needs to make exceptions to them, than to create one's own rules from scratch.
Therefore, I suggest making the detailed rules covering almost any possibility in the ALA–LC romanization table the default, with the exceptions of the previously mentioned existing rules, plus those in the general guidelines concerning numbers (romanizations should always indicate how they're pronounced and should never contain digits) and title caps (all words except particles and pre-/suffixes attached by hyphens should start with a capital letter).
Making these exceptions would mean there'd be no change to existing policy, while adopting the ALA–LC rules in every other regard would resolve differences in personal taste in many other aspects by having rules to refer to. Tempjrds (talk) 14:38, 25 February 2023 (UTC)
- Who or what is "ALA-LC"? Imaginatorium (talk) 15:19, 25 February 2023 (UTC)
- I assume ALA is American Library Association and LC is Library of Congress, both reliable organizations. However, in at least one place in the linked document (about loan words), they write "Some loan words are divided into separate words in a straightforward way. In other cases, the boundary between words may not be so clear. Use your best judgement and add variants as necessary." In other words, they provide guidance but there are always judgment calls involved. For the example given above, clearly "watashi tachi" is substandard (because "tachi" can't exist as an independent word in this form), leading us to choose between "watashitachi" and "watashi-tachi". But I think the choice at that point is a judgment call. (I admit that I am befuddled by using the title Kinkaku-ji over Kinkakuji, but it's always been that way, so when necessary we could choose to apply WP:RETAIN.) Dekimasuよ! 08:27, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
Yes, there are circumstances in which the ALA–LC table can't provide an objective solution and can leaves it to personal judgment. But I don't see why that would be a reason to dismiss it as not being useful, if that's what you mean.
In the case of the example I gave, I believe it comes under the instruction on side 17 to write "compounds formed by the addition of a suffixed single element" as single words. If you search the document for "達", there are examples of it being attached directly to the word it modifies without a hyphen, unless the word is a proper noun or a foreign word that was written in katakana.
We know the watashi tachi option just doesn't make sense, but to someone less used to romanizing Japanese, the ALA–LC table provides guidance on this.
At the least, I think it would be useful for the MOS page to link to the ALA–LC table and recommend it for guidance on how to space and punctuate Hepburn romanization and for resolving disputes in opinion, though the MOS's own rules take precedent when they differ (it would be useful at this point to list how they differ, so people don't have to search the page to find the specific rules in different sections) and the guidance shouldn't be applied hard and fast but with informed judgment as to what makes sense in the situation (as the table itself repeatedly emphasizes).
By the way, I don't think adopting the ALA–LC rules would make a great deal of difference to article titles: these should, as they do now, follow established/common usage when there is any in Latin script. It's primarily the romanizations in parentheses within articles that I think they'd be useful for helping to make more consistent (and especially complex things like long titles of artistic works). Tempjrds (talk) 17:25, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
Taisha and Jingu are not done justice with "Shrine"
I prefer calling them Taisha or Jingu in article titles, but if we decide against that I believe we should call them "Grand Shrines" in article titles. We should make it so anyone seeing the title can grasp that it is not just a normal shrine. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (talk to the cutest Wikipedian) 17:37, 19 May 2023 (UTC)