Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Japan-related articles/Macrons

message: I apologize for breaking in here. This conversation has become very long and complex, and as a person that occasionally touches manga articles it is of interest to me that I understand the consensus (if any) on the issues so I don't add errors into the articles that I write or edit. Unfortunately, the key points of the conversation are a bit lost in the torrent, so please allow me to restate them for clarity:
* Viz (and other manga "translators") practices "Englishification" instead of "Romajization", and they do so inconsistently-- including in a way that looks and smells wrong to a speaker of Japanese. (But, of course, English readers don't know that.) This Englishification extends even to the real names of Japanese people that probably are known wider than through just their manga/anime.
* To follow an inconsistent standard, we would be forced to adopt an inconsistent standard to Wikipedia. This is not acceptable in a work that should aim higher. In addition, the lack of an external standard means that in a few years we may be gifted with new editions that use different "standards", rendering our work moot and dated.
* Regardless of the shoddy quality of the translated named in the manga, we are nonetheless faced with a quandry as the translated manga are generally the only textual reference point for a English-translation of a series. (Anime subtitles are significantly worse at consistency.) The Wikipedia, a textual medium, is naturally inclined to lean towards the artist's textual medium which should provide fewer inconsistencies in spelling, etc. than we would otherwise have. (Of course, with point #1, we see that fewer inconsistencies does not mean "none".) When spellings between the manga and anime have differed, we have generally perferred the manga one.
* The names in some popular import series have English "brand/logo" names that don't match up to what the proper spelling would be, but has so permeated the English-language anime subculture that they have become English words, though how widely those words might be recognized as English outside that subculture can be called into question. As series, such as Dragon Ball and Yu-Gi-Oh, enter more mainstream culture; this line is blurred even farther. 
* Faux-foreign and decorative text in English is not the result of a translation and we are not obliged to follow those conventions even when we can. However, a discussion of this is outside the scope of this conversation.
Approaching this is difficult. The title of the article is an easy case, because title words are more inclined to be English adoption or brand words than otherwise and, because EN.Wikipedia isn't usually accessed by people with enough shift keys on their keyboards, it needs to be available (at least through a redirect) to a version that doesn't contain non-English characters. In many of the manga articles (though not most-- there sadly aren't enough folks able to research and enter this), the original Japanese and proper romajization are included in the headers of the articles, immediately after the english title.
Proper names are also easy. Real people's names should be in the system in proper Hepburn-- unless the person himself has a preference, and that should be stated-- and with redirects from the myriad of non-conventional spellings that other sources happen to use. I'm sure this is already in the style guide, I think I read it there.
The trick, and this is where I most see WTM's quandry, is that internal words and less established words don't have an established reference point for spelling. We all don't have the luxury and gift of speaking Japanese and using names which are completely unknown to the English-language reader in the bodies of articles intended for that audience isn't optimal. The primary reference point that we have, the Viz manga, is in itself full of inconsistencies. The problem only arises when the reference spelling is wrong and looks poor to the other portion of the audience, the ones that actually know Japanese. (And that audience is also important, because Japanese speakers should be considered a reasonable audience for Japan-related articles.)  The easy case here is if a reference source regularly offers multiple spellings for a name, then the spelling of the name adopted for Wikipedia should be the more correct one, rather than the one used more frequently. (With some level of judgement involved.) (And if someone wants to pepper the world with redirects from the wrong spellings, so be it. Even list them in the articles, if it's helpful.) With Shonen Jump, if it is determined from people that know more than I do that "Son Gokū" is more correct than "Son Gokû" and both are provided by the reference text (I think they are.) then we should pick the one that is more correct.
But outside of those cases, I am at a loss as to what to do-- do you follow the incorrect reference spelling (the position that WTM advances), a "corrected" (Hepburn-ified or modernized) spelling, an "English" spelling without diacritic marks, or something else entirely? I would suggest "common sense" come into play someplace: if it looks wrong to English or Japanese readers, care should be taken to use a written form in the body which is least offensive to both-- even if that means using an alternate name for the character or object which avoids the problem, provided that alternate name is introduced earlier in the article. (To use yet another Dragon Ball reference, if no one can agree on the spelling of Nyoibo and it really upsets people in every form, then just call the darn thing a Power Pole and have done with.) JRP 13:55, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Arbitrary division 7