pink haze wrote:mirkosp wrote:Search is in no way the issue here, imho, since it'd work fine regardless.
Ah, so even if "English Only" were chosen, running a search for "Kumo no Mukou" would work regardless? That would be a convenient improvement.
(Correct me if I'm misunderstanding you; I'm not sure if we're talking about the same things.)
That's what should already happen. The point is that we have been getting drama over when to use the English name and when the Japanese name due to dubious licenses status and whatnot. I'd personally prefer sticking with the Japanese name, since that's very likely always available for non-grey-area sources, and if even if you search the English name you still get the result.
But apparently, some of the American users still want the English names to be used, so the parenthesys option would be a viable way to make everybody happy: those that want a reliable and not confusing catalogue and those that want English name despite doubtful official translation or licensing status.
Yes I know, this comes off very biased towards the Japanese option. That's because I analized pros and cons of the two points and it was obvious that the title in the original language makes more sense than the american title.
This is what I basically what I was able to get out of it:
- Original language (mainly Japanese)
- Pros:
- We have a sure title right off the bat
- Title will always remain the same
- Can be considered a fair neutral midground for a worldwide userbase since it's the original title
- Cons:
- Not everybody knows the original title of some (mainly older) animes
- Some users might lament the way some titles were romanized
- American licensed title (mainly English)
- Pros:
- American users might recognize the title more easily
- English is the language used on the site and forum
- Cons:
- Some shows are in licensing limbo so we don't know if we should adopt the Japanese or English title
- Some animes don't have a clear, unique, official title
- Licensing rights wear off, so we'd have to revert to Japanese titles when this happens, but we have no way to consistently keep track of licensing status of everything
- Some users might lament the usage of unofficial English titles beforehand
- International users might not be able to recognize the English title of licenses
The recognizing title issues on both sides can be solved by googling the title ─ or possibly looking it up on AniDB if we do stick with that.
We can also keep more or less ignoring the users that lament the usage of English titles over Japanese ones in some specific cases, as we could ignore the ones that would lament romanization.
So we're left with American users wanting the catalogue to be American users oriented on a worldwide website. So what if the Russians or French take over the site? Should we change the titles to Russian or French because that's the language of the majority of the active users? Should we quit using English on the site since that's not what most of the people speak as first language anymore? To me the key word for the org is neutrality. English isn't used on this site because that's the language used in America, but because it's used for international communication and because it would safely put people from most countries at ease with a language that, even if not perfectly known, can be somewhat safely winged more easily than others. But for a matter as title listing, using the English title wouldn't be a neutral worldwide choice to put everybody at ease, but rather a way to make some of the American users at ease at the expense of the rest of the world, imho.
So well, since long titles would be daunting, using a single language would be better, you say. But using both would make both sides happy, even if perhaps not pretty-looking. And since I also really like the whole neutrality reasoning my final answer was Japanese (English) exactly for these motivations. I'm sorry if I'm making it sound so SRSBSNS, but to me it's an important matter and that is why it's being discussed.
