This is mostly a rant by an unranked authority-less member, so you’re free to tell me to shut the hell up. Incidentally, if things were done the way I would like them to in an ideal world, this would probably increase Albert’s workload some serious bit.
I think full standardization one way or another can prove less than ideal, as is seen from the whole pokemon alias mess. I don’t really think an absolute policy is really a good idea if the goal is to facilitate understanding rather than information storage.
While making a definite reading of what is mainstream on the internet is far beyond ridiculous, I’d just like to point a few cases where sometimes either the original Japanese or the English could turn out to be preferable:
Situation 1: Detective Conan/Case Closed
Released in a lot of regions as Case Closed, that name and whatever was done with the characters have some considerable fame. On the other hand, if you know at least a bit of the series, looked it up on the net or, most remarkably, watch the subs and read the scanlated version (Which is probably the case with anyone still paying attention to it), all of which are very likely if you use Danbooru, you should immediately recognize “Detective Conan”, “Shinichi Kudo” and “Conan Edogawa”. These names are well known outside of Japan to anyone interested in the series and aren’t even fully known to the all the western audience. I’ve read every single chapter of the manga and I have no idea what the characters are called in the dub. I realize I’m an individual case, but I don’t really think I’m a rare one.
Situation 2: Pokemon’s Anime protagonist.
While the Pokemon translators have not exactly been remarkable, everyone recognizes Ash, Misty, Brock, Prof. Oak, etc. However, though I may be over-generalizing, anyone present in this site most likely does have a certain degree of useless general knowledge pertaining to anime. In fact some may even watch the anime’s subbed chapters while clinging to some vague desperate hope that something interesting may actually happen once every couple seasons. So yeah, I think we can all tell what Satoshi or Kasumi mean. They may not hold the absolute majority in usage, but they are readily recognizable names.
Situation 3: Random FF names.
Now for the other side of the coin: Lingering partially justified dislike for Ted Woosley aside, can everyone here really recognize Mash and Cayenne without looking them up? These names aren’t like the FFT cases that were fixed in translation, the updated, much brushed-up version kept them as such. For that matter, do you people recognize Balflear? These are no longer crackpot 4kids style translations, they are fairly well done with a lot of work put into them for localization, hence why the western names are practically universally recognized among fans. Unlike many of 4kids/Saban translations of certain anime (Say, Shaman King), you don’t really see people go and look up the Japanese versions for better understanding or a less crippled script. There’s really no actual incentive for anyone to know those names other than simply to know how they were called in the Japanese versions. Which leads me to the following case:
Situation 3.1: Etrian Odyssey/Sekaiju no Meikyuu (or however the hell many “U’s” this thing has).
I believe I read in a previous post that Albert’s rationale for going with the JP version was that they were more commonly used. Now, why would that be? A Situation 1 case is right out for obvious reasons. A Situation 2 case is possible, but kinda odd. The solution would be a snowball effect: Someone either started posting images before the localization was made, logically using the original names, or simply started posting the images with the original names for arbitrary reasons. Later, more people posting these images saw that there were existing tags for those characters and used them over the English versions without actually trying to submit the alias. I think many will remember that the Etrian_Odyssey alias wasn’t approved until sometime near the second’s game release, which suggests quite a lot of time available for a hectic organization to exist.
In any case, at the time Albert looked up the situation, the Japanese names were predominant. I don’t have solid proof, but I’m willing to bet money on this.
Now, isn’t this kind of backwards? There’s nothing glaringly bad about the localization even if there are some aesthetic changes. Unless you played the game in Japanese, nobody really has any real reason for knowing the original class names at all.
Stretch this issue to the extreme and you have the whole pokemon monster names alias issue.
I guess I should get to the point already: While in some case the JP>EN rationale has basis, a complete iron-set policy seems a bit wasteful. Many of these cases honestly seem to me are only there to “be more Japanese” rather than to make the organization neater and even seem counterproductive to the goal of making everything clearly understandable. Why do you people know that the original for Etrian’s Ronin was Bushido and Landsknecht’s was Swordsman? I mean, c'mon, "Akumajo Dracula"? Did the person who submitted that use to watch "GoLion" and "Mach GoGoGo" as a kid?
This would be the part where I’d suggest a more efficient method for naming… except I don’t have one. I have my own criteria of course, but that’s a personal one. It’s up to Albert to decide, and obviously making a one-way standardization makes everything easier when each case doesn’t have to be singularly considered. This is just something I thought I’d point out to see if it’s worthy of consideration.
Updated by albert