Posted under General
Both words that make up this tag are incorrect.
The artist himself spells it as "Hisasi" not "Hisashi," as seen on posts 1325942, 1336402, 1309556, 1086132, 1154749, and many more.
Additionally, while I can understand the addition of a circle name to differentiate with something like "soba vs soba_(saz)," hisasi is not a proper word in and of itself.
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Actually, I can't find his named written in hiragana (ひさし) anywhere, even though the artist entry claims so. He always writes it as "Hisasi" in roman letters. Unless I'm missing something and that really is how it's written, I think it should be hisasi_(nekoman). And the ひさし should be removed from the artist entry.
It's on his profile page on his website: http://nekoman9.x.fc2.com/pf.html
P.N ： Hisasi （ひさし）
So one minor pronunciation note on his homepage outweighs his pixiv handle, the way he signs every doujin, manga in magazines, posters and dakimakura?
And if nothing else, the _(nekoman) should be dropped. Nekoman is an abbreviation of the circle name, not the artist name. In addition, there's no need to have it there as there are no other tags to differentiate it from (to my knowledge). I mean, takeda_hiromitsu isn't tagged as takeda_hiromitsu_(shinjugai).
goldoa said:
I mean, takeda_hiromitsu isn't tagged as takeda_hiromitsu_(shinjugai).
Yeah, but the difference there is that takeda_hiromitsu isn't that ambiguous. Long and multi-part names are generally accepted without qualifiers unless a conflict comes up. "Hisashi" is a single commonly-used given name.
While Hisasi is not a commonly used name, because Japanese doesn't have a "si" sound in their alphabet.
Changing it to Hisasi would also ensure a lack of confusion, as the vast majority of people looking for Hisasi's work on this site will know him by this name. Search Google images for "hisashi hentai" and maybe one in ten will actually be Hisasi. Search "hisasi" or "hisasi hentai" and all but a sparse few will show his work.
Let's review:
-Whether it's an accurate translation is questionable (at best), as the artist calls himself Hisasi in 99.999999% of print and online media.
-hisashi_(Nekoman) is used to disambiguate a tag of questionable veracity from a common first name that currently has no tagged pictures of this name alone on this site.
-The overwhelming majority of the internet knows this artist by the name Hisasi.
Need I go on?
Neither romanization is more accurate than the other. Both are accurate to the systems used to romanize them. The difference here is that hisashi has nothing to consider beyond himself, while Danbooru is attempting to maintain consistency with its entire database. That's just how standardization works. He's hardly the first artist whose own romanization is different than ours, and he won't be the last.
Similarly there's no tagged pictures on hisashi because every artist it would apply to is properly qualified or tagged with their full name, as is covered by the wiki for it.
Hisasi IS more accurate though. It's what the artist calls himself! And romanization is one thing if you're translating something from another language, but to refer to something by a name that is contrary to what is accepted by not only the person who thought up the name in the first place and the name by which the vast majority of people know the name, seems rather backward.
And for as many differing romanizations as I'm sure you can point to, there are probably just as many that are the same.
Glycyrrhizae is not spelt 'Gurishiruhizae', Dagasi is not 'Dagashi', Undercover_Brothers isn't tagged 'undacaba_burazasu', and Aquarion_Evol isn't 'akuwarion_eboru' because each of these tags are accurate to the way the people who originated the words intended for them to be printed.
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goldoa said:
Dagasi is not 'Dagashi',
Actually, that one should be Dagashi for the same reasons as Hisashi. Dagashi's twitter page lists his name as 駄菓子 (だがし/dagashi).
Toks said:
Actually, that one should be Dagashi for the same reasons as Hisashi. Dagashi's twitter page lists his name as 駄菓子 (だがし/dagashi).
Their twitter is already romanized as DAGASI, as is their pixiv page.
And the howto:romanize page states that "For non-Japanese or outright made-up proper names, use their official spellings where possible."
The lack of "h" in both Hisasi and Dagasi indicate that these are ways the artists wish them to be read, meaning that any romanization on our part would be erroneous as Hisasi and Dagasi are nonsense words in English, and the official romanizations that have been pointed out are for helping Japanese understand how to pronounce the words IN JAPANESE (not as the artist intended) because the "si" sound would be unfamiliar for them.
goldoa said:
The lack of "h" in both Hisasi and Dagasi indicate that these are ways the artists wish them to be read, meaning that any romanization on our part would be erroneous as Hisasi and Dagasi are nonsense words in English, and the official romanizations that have been pointed out are for helping Japanese understand how to pronounce the words IN JAPANESE (not as the artist intended) because the "si" sound would be unfamiliar for them.
No, it's still the same sound. It's just a different system of romanization called Kunrei-shiki. If someone comes across the name of an unfamiliar character or artist in Japanese, it's a lot easier for them to find them if we're sticking to the same romanization system, rather than making them guess what the official romanization is for that particular character or artist.
goldoa said:
And the howto:romanize page states that "For non-Japanese or outright made-up proper names, use their official spellings where possible."
Except that ひさし and 駄菓子 are Japanese names.
I agree that it's confusing in these cases, since those spellings are used less often than "Hisasi" and "DAGASI" by the artists. But aliasing the artist's official spelling to the Danbooru spelling will still allow people to find the artist by searching for the former, so it's not really a problem.
I guess I'm just continually scratching my head at this romanizing system because every wikia (and most image boards) I've been active on that do romanization treat the mangaka's romanization as word of God.
For us to treat a phonetic pronunciation as superior over the actual label by which the overwhelming majority of people recognize it is endlessly puzzling to me. It'd be like tagging one_piece as 'wan_pisu', or bleach as 'burichi'.
I hardly even use Danbooru, and this sort of overly complex rule system is one reason why. I wouldn't even care what it's called here, except that other image boards often do mass dumps of Danbooru's images, including tags, and no other board that I've visited has such stringent policies. Many don't have aliases either, making things more difficult for people looking for Hisasi, instead of "Hisashi_(Nekoman)".
This isn't just me trying to get my way no matter what. I'm only trying to help people looking for Hisasi's work, on this site and others, find what they're looking for.
EB said: I do think the ひさし should be removed from his artist wiki at least, because it looks like it's only meant as a reading and not an actual alternative name. I don't think furigana is usually added as aliases.
What we put in the alias field is a bit of a mishmash at the moment. I think their main purpose is simply to offer more ways to find the artist when searching the artist list, thus we can err on the side of including things rather than excluding them.
jxh2154 said:
I think their main purpose is simply to offer more ways to find the artist when searching the artist list, thus we can err on the side of including things rather than excluding them.
Oh, I definitely agree. It's a good idea to put anything the artist might be credited as in there. Doing that has been tremendously helpful when I see some obscure artist has done an anime endcard and I come to look and see if they're here (since the name in use for the tag on Danbooru will not always be reflective of their "official" name)
I was just thinking furigana was of limited usefulness as an artist wiki alias because people will generally enter the reading romanized (it can already by searched that way), and not including it would be helpful in narrowing things down in the hypothetical situation where other artist(s) who actually signs their name ひさし appear. I usually make use of the regular wiki to copy-and-paste the artist's official reading.
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EB said: I was just thinking furigana was of limited usefulness as an artist wiki alias because people will generally enter the reading romanized (it can already by searched that way), and not including it would be helpful in narrowing things down in the hypothetical situation where other artist(s) who actually signs their name ひさし appear. I usually make use of the regular wiki to copy-and-paste the artist's official reading.
I guess it depends how many artists are coming back in a typical search. I just kinda assumed most searches return limited results.
