August 20th, 2023
Why I'm not a fan of romaji titles
Many international anime, manga and webnovel communities use romaji titles for Japanese content. (Japanese transformed from 仮名と漢字 into Latin characters to be easy to pronounce/write by foreigners)
I couldn't read any Japanese until I started learning the language last year in 2022, but my feelings about this topic are still the same today as when I started watching anime many years ago. Not properly translating titles is a bad practice. English titles (alternatively the language the content is translated to) are much better.
This is just my personal experience. I'm just a casual anime enjoyer with no connections to fan translation communities at all. Nobody should need my approvement to use whatever names they like.
Titles don't have any meaning if you don't know what they say:
Titles have a function. They are supposed to give an impression about the content, so that people know what to expect and can decide if it's worth picking up.
The problem with romaji Japanese titles for a non-Japanese audience is that people don't understand them. Even if you like Japanese sounding names, romaji titles are just gibberish. They don't tell you anything about the anime/manga/etc. They're also much harder to memorize compared to titles in your own language, because your mind can't make any connections between the words.
Romaji makes me think of fan translations, not officially published productions:
When I look back, titles like "Shingeki no Kyojin" or "Toaru Kagaku no Railgun" were always from some shady sites where you wondered how long these sources would be available before they were shut down because of copyright infringement.
Of course, fan translations are made long before any official translations exist and many Japanese productions will never get anything else but a fan translation. But even in case of simultcast anime, some sites still use these fan titles.
I just don't get why fan communities glorify Japanese titles so much. Is it because people can't agree on a single translation, so they have to use the lowest common denominator? Why not use official translation where it's available? Are the Japanese fan translators the issue, because they're already too attached to the original names?
It a very common practice for publishers from overseas to change up the original names because their audience doesn't speak Japanese. People have always localized the titles. I hate it when some romaji names become part of the official translations because they've already been popular in fan communities before they were published internationally (for example "Mushoku Tensei" or "Oshi no Ko"). It's the worst when we only get the abreviated variation of the name (like "Konosuba" or "Hana-Kimi") where the title is degraded to just gibberish even if you know Japanese.
I couldn't read any Japanese until I started learning the language last year in 2022, but my feelings about this topic are still the same today as when I started watching anime many years ago. Not properly translating titles is a bad practice. English titles (alternatively the language the content is translated to) are much better.
This is just my personal experience. I'm just a casual anime enjoyer with no connections to fan translation communities at all. Nobody should need my approvement to use whatever names they like.
Titles don't have any meaning if you don't know what they say:
Titles have a function. They are supposed to give an impression about the content, so that people know what to expect and can decide if it's worth picking up.
The problem with romaji Japanese titles for a non-Japanese audience is that people don't understand them. Even if you like Japanese sounding names, romaji titles are just gibberish. They don't tell you anything about the anime/manga/etc. They're also much harder to memorize compared to titles in your own language, because your mind can't make any connections between the words.
Romaji makes me think of fan translations, not officially published productions:
When I look back, titles like "Shingeki no Kyojin" or "Toaru Kagaku no Railgun" were always from some shady sites where you wondered how long these sources would be available before they were shut down because of copyright infringement.
Of course, fan translations are made long before any official translations exist and many Japanese productions will never get anything else but a fan translation. But even in case of simultcast anime, some sites still use these fan titles.
I just don't get why fan communities glorify Japanese titles so much. Is it because people can't agree on a single translation, so they have to use the lowest common denominator? Why not use official translation where it's available? Are the Japanese fan translators the issue, because they're already too attached to the original names?
It a very common practice for publishers from overseas to change up the original names because their audience doesn't speak Japanese. People have always localized the titles. I hate it when some romaji names become part of the official translations because they've already been popular in fan communities before they were published internationally (for example "Mushoku Tensei" or "Oshi no Ko"). It's the worst when we only get the abreviated variation of the name (like "Konosuba" or "Hana-Kimi") where the title is degraded to just gibberish even if you know Japanese.
Posted by Vaturna | Aug 20, 2023 10:40 AM | 0 comments