Richard Lawson wrote:

I acquired the Ranma 1/2 Memorial Book at A-kon.  It's mostly in
Japanese, of course, but there are a few parts in English.

Do you know how it spells Ukyo?  "Ukyo."

Do you know how it spells Ryoga?  "Ryoga."

Do you know how it spells Tendo?  "Tendo."

Does this make those spellings (instead of "Ukyou", "Ryouga", and
"Tendou") the Official Romanization of those names?

-Richard
-who's glad he got it right.  :)

Actually, I don't see why there would be a need for an "official"
romanization from the Japanese, since they write muche better in
their own language. Romanization, IMHO, serves the purpose of
giving a foreigner a hint on how the word is pronounced, knowing
very well it's a moot point because the consonnants usually do not
transpose. Accordingly, it should vary with the receiving language.

It all depends what you want with romanization. If approximating the
pronounciation, then go for Ukyo, if translating the kana equivalent,
then you want Ukyou, if trying to encode the pronounciation, then
go for Uky�, except it should be a straight bar over the o, not
supported by Latin-1. Note that #1 tries to approximate Japanese
sounds in English ones, and that #3 just pairs letters with Japanese
sounds, as is the case in all languages using an alphabet.

This is much more evident with Chinese, where there is no solution
#2, three solutions #1 (Wade, EFEO and Lessing) and one #3 (Pinyin)
with the #1 more adapted to their intended public (resp English,
French and German) whereas #3 just confuses the hell out of everyone
who hasn't learned the correspondences first. If you're writing
for a French audience with no knowledge of Chinese, it's better to
use EFEO... I guess it also applies to anime, and the general
public for anime does not know Japanese.

So, coming back to Japanese, I personally prefer to read about
Ukyo, and Ryoga, but that's because I'm French, and reading Ukyou
just confuses me, since I'm supposed to pronounce "ou" as the
Japanese "u". I guess it goes the same with English speakers who
do not know about the little rule about spelling long "o"s with
kana.

That's why I like what the French publisher has done: Uky�, Ry�ga,
Tend� and Akan�. (That's for the manga only, the anime has Frenchified
names)

Oh...

You were trolling, weren't you?

*sigh* Too late


A++

J