Danbooru

Chinese games

Posted under General

Seeing as there are an increasing number of popular Chinese games and related images on pixiv/DB, should the tags use their English names as it is with Girls Frontline?

Games like Noah Fantasy (nuoya_huanxiang) and Azur Lane (bilan_hangxian) currently use their romanised Hanzi names, the former a new game (I think) and the latter a game of increasing popularity. There's also Gun Girlz/Honkai Impact (benghuai_xueyuan) and Girls' Coffee Gun (shaonyu_cofee_gun), off the top of my head.

Edit: Made the suggestion clearer.

Updated

I'm leaning toward that we should use the romanized names for the games. That opinion isn't strong though.

If we choose to use the Chinese names, I do think we should at least have the romanized name aliased to the Chinese one. I feel that would make searches easier for people.

NWF_Renim said:

If we choose to use the Chinese names, I do think we should at least have the romanized name aliased to the Chinese one. I feel that would make searches easier for people.

This, and put the original Chinese name and romanized name in the wiki.

kiyah123 said:

I don't think I'm following correctly. What is meant by 'Chinese name'? Is it the actual hanzi, english translation or romanisation?

Hm, I guess I worded that badly. We currently use the romanisation of the Chinese hanzi for most Chinese games, which can make searching more difficult. I proposed we go the route of Girls Frontline and use the English names of said games, as a first time searcher won't be able to find the romanised-hanzi name easily. The first time I tried to find the tag for Azur Lane, I had to do general tag searches to find one of its popular characters, which then lead me to the tag name. Imo that's very roundabout.

NWF's suggestion is also an option, aliasing the english name to the current tags. Though, in that case, should we rename Girls Frontline to be in line with the other games, and use their romanised Chinese name?

CodeKyuubi said:

Hm, I guess I worded that badly. We currently use the romanisation of the Chinese hanzi for most Chinese games, which can make searching more difficult. I proposed we go the route of Girls Frontline and use the English names of said games, as a first time searcher won't be able to find the romanised-hanzi name easily. The first time I tried to find the tag for Azur Lane, I had to do general tag searches to find one of its popular characters, which then lead me to the tag name. Imo that's very roundabout.

NWF's suggestion is also an option, aliasing the english name to the current tags. Though, in that case, should we rename Girls Frontline to be in line with the other games, and use their romanised Chinese name?

Over all else, I prefer the localized name to be used rather than the hanzi name, but I chose to make the tag for Noah Fantasy (nuoya huanxiang) out of consistency with the other Chinese smartphone games. Girls Frontline is definitely the exception though, and probably the foremost example of why we should make English names the norm. I imagine forever 7th capital's Chinese romanization would look especially ugly if it were to be used, even if it is correct (yongyuan_de_7_ri_zhi_dou or something like that).

On the other side of the argument though, not every Chinese mobile game has an English name -- take jidong zhandui for example. But then, if they ever came to localize it, we should probably set up an alias to the new name.

For now, I think we should do a BUR with these, and work off from there.

The same arguments apply equally well against Japanese titles. Even so, we prefer romanized Japanese names, even in cases where they're much less well known than the localized English name. Why should we reverse position for Chinese titles? For an average user, Japanese names can be just as hard to recognize as Chinese names.

create alias nuoya_huanxiang -> noah_fantasy
create alias bilan_hangxian -> azur_lane

Link to request

Making it short for now -- my current criteria for these is that if the copyright publisher heavily features the English name in their logo/publications, then an alias belongs.

I've currently left out these aliases:

  • zhan_jian_shao_nyu -> warship_girls -- the alias currently works the other way around, and I think this is fine. Hanzi name is currently way more recognizable, even in pinyin.
  • yongyuan_de_7_ri_zhi_dou -> forever_7th_capital -- not sure about this copyright to begin with, actually. But forever 7th capital seems to be the accepted translation given going by a google search (although I couldn't find it anywhere on the official site). If someone can find a logo with that included, then it'd be appreciated.
  • shaonyu_cofee_gun -> girl_cafe_gun -- Again, could not find it on the official site, but seems to be an accepted translation by other users (although I've also seen "girls' coffee gun").
  • benghuai_xueyuan -> guns girlz -- Antecedent name sees a lot more usage, even though the English title is legitimate. Alias points the other way, which should be right.
  • shaonu_qianxian -> girls_frontline -- Honestly, Mica Team and DigitalSky push the English name so hard that I don't really think any alias is required (it appears in almost every logo, no matter if it's Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Korean, or Japanese)
  • shoujo_zensen -> girls_frontline -- ibid
  • sonyeojeonseon -> girls_frontline -- ibid

EDIT: Additional note, but the alias from bilan hangxian to azur lane will require extensive renaming of characters and wiki pages. I think it will be worth it in the end though.

The bulk update request #1249 has been approved.

Updated by DanbooruBot

evazion said:

The same arguments apply equally well against Japanese titles. Even so, we prefer romanized Japanese names, even in cases where they're much less well known than the localized English name. Why should we reverse position for Chinese titles? For an average user, Japanese names can be just as hard to recognize as Chinese names.

This is true, though personally, I'd argue that Chinese is phonetically much more difficult to recognize, and not only that there are all the accented characters that show up when trying to google translate Chinese which muddle the waters further. It's just much harder to find something starting from Chinese than it is Japanese, imo.

evazion said:

The same arguments apply equally well against Japanese titles. Even so, we prefer romanized Japanese names, even in cases where they're much less well known than the localized English name. Why should we reverse position for Chinese titles? For an average user, Japanese names can be just as hard to recognize as Chinese names.

CodeKyuubi said:

This is true, though personally, I'd argue that Chinese is phonetically much more difficult to recognize, and not only that there are all the accented characters that show up when trying to google translate Chinese which muddle the waters further. It's just much harder to find something starting from Chinese than it is Japanese, imo.

I think there are always exceptions to the rule, personally. Whenever an English name is heavily prominent in a copyright's logo, then we should use it since it will most likely stay ubiquitous (as the publisher has committed to that name). But when it isn't, that's when an alias from English -> Chinese name is probably deserved.

The recognition on a game's title is more dependent on how the publishers and developers push the English name, more than anything. That's why we don't need aliases for "shaonu qianxian" or "shoujo zensen", even though they might be deserved to some extent. And, as CK said above, going from Hanzi -> Pinyin can really depend based on what tool you're using (what accents are present, how the same character might be pronounced differently, where phonetic 'breaks' are present). Japanese has the same problem, but nowhere near the extent of the Chinese writing system, at least in my experience.

evazion said:

I'm actually in favor of using English names. But to play devil's advocate, tags like doubutsu no mori or shin sangoku musou or sen to chihiro no kamikakushi are just as unrecognizable as shaonu qianxian, but we stick with them regardless. If we're going to use localized names on the basis of the original Chinese name being less well known, then great, but the same logic should be applicable to Japanese titles too.

Speaking of which, what is Danbooru's standard on Korean titles? I could've sworn I came across one or two here and there.

evazion said:

I'm actually in favor of using English names. But to play devil's advocate, tags like doubutsu no mori or shin sangoku musou or sen to chihiro no kamikakushi are just as unrecognizable as shaonu qianxian, but we stick with them regardless. If we're going to use localized names on the basis of the original Chinese name being less well known, then great, but the same logic should be applicable to Japanese titles too.

I'd prefer that, actually. Perhaps another BUR/discussion could help put weight behind that movement?

In response to forum #134401, I'd say the same, but I think we could elaborate on the howto:copyright page, to clear this up and to refer to in the future.

Discussion bump. We might have to create a list of such copyrights where it'd be preferable to use the English name because it's commonly used (and perhaps more than the copyright name in its native language).

CodeKyuubi said:

This is true, though personally, I'd argue that Chinese is phonetically much more difficult to recognize, and not only that there are all the accented characters that show up when trying to google translate Chinese which muddle the waters further. It's just much harder to find something starting from Chinese than it is Japanese, imo.

Agree with this.

And just to make sure, what we are discussing here is a policy/approach to Chinese copyrights specifically, not a general policy for all copyrights, right?

I'm arguing it shouldn't be specific to Chinese copyrights. There are exceptions to the rule even for Japanese copyrights, which is why we still have things like Neon Genesis Evangelion (Shinseiki Evangelion) and Spice and Wolf (Ookami to Koushinryou) and Fullmetal Alchemist (Hagane no Renkinjutsushi).

In my view it's not about the language, it's about whether the original names policy should always be followed as a hard rule. I think over time it's become one, which is what has led us to this extreme of using Chinese names that few people recognize. I think the policy should be relaxed overall. I don't think this is the only case where using original names poses more problems than it solves.

  • shaonu_qianxian -> girls_frontline -- Honestly, Mica Team and DigitalSky push the English name so hard that I don't really think any alias is required (it appears in almost every logo, no matter if it's Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and even in the soon-to-be-released English version)

Huh? English Version of GF? Really?

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