[APPROVED] (Fire Emblem) jp -> en names

I personally think a case-by-case selection might be the best thing to do, although it could get messier and require more moderation. Plus shouldn't this be discussed in a new forum topic? I'm saying this because i think this should get more attention, since changing a policy that has existed for years can cause some confusion for older users (Plus it wasn't really my intention to go that far in the first place).

Thank you for your well-researched argument, @Inarticulate.

This jogged my memory regarding one Fates character: Before he was given the localized name "Xander," the fanbase translated his name as "Marx." Then the fanbook came out well after the game's release, which has the official romanization, "Marks."

For JP purists, you now have a conundrum: Do you go with the more popular and familiar fan translations, or do you go with the official romanizations (which are admittedly not very good)?

As much as I dislike the direction Fire Emblem localization is headed, at the very least it's a stable anchor, unlike the JP names which can change depending on fan consensus and official side materials. Therefore, the Fire Emblem series will be an exception to Danbooru policy and use the localized names for titles and characters.

However, that does not mean the BUR is good to go. I already see several glaring errors, such as tiamo_(fire_emblem) (it's just tiamo), fire_emblem:_if (the actual tag, fire_emblem_if, has no colon), and zelgius -> ??? alias (not going to spell it out here, but it's a spoiler). Review is necessary before we can proceed.

Hillside_Moose said:

As much as I dislike the direction Fire Emblem localization is headed, at the very least it's a stable anchor, unlike the JP names which can change depending on fan consensus and official side materials. Therefore, the Fire Emblem series will be an exception to Danbooru policy and use the localized names for titles and characters.

However, that does not mean the BUR is good to go. I already see several glaring errors, such as tiamo_(fire_emblem) (it's just tiamo), fire_emblem:_if (the actual tag, fire_emblem_if, has no colon), and zelgius -> ??? alias (not going to spell it out here, but it's a spoiler). Review is necessary before we can proceed.

Thank you. I've fixed the errors you pointed out, but one thing that was hard to do was searching up Fire Emblem: Echoes characters, since the FE character wiki is outdated (i was planning to update it after this BUR). I'm not sure if other characters are missing from the wiki too, so if anyone could help me out and point out any character that i've missed in the BUR here, that would help me a lot.

Edit: Just realized there are also the cosplay tags...
Do they get updated along with the tag change or do they have to be added to the BUR too?

When this BUR goes through, would it be okay for me to revise that one section of howto:character to something like this?

Character tags should be the same name and name order that are used in the original source material. For example, Kiyama Hiroto, not "Hiroto Kiyama" or "Xavier Foster". If an alternate name, such as a nickname or a name from the English version, is widely used, you may request an alias from that to the original language title.

• Pokemon species and the various creatures from Monster Hunter are exceptions to this rule, and are tagged with their English version names (when known).
• Fire Emblem characters are exceptions to this rule, and are tagged with the names used in the North American localizations (preferably Fire Emblem Heroes), due to a extensive pattern of inconsistency in fan-coined and officially provided spellings of their names in the original Japanese versions of the games (see topic #16149.) This is not to be used as precedent for tagging other copyrights with localized names unless a similar degree of inconsistency exists.

BUR #2044 has been approved by @Hillside_Moose.

Reason: Follow-up BUR - do NOT approve before the other one

Hillside Moose: Modified the BUR to be mass edits instead of aliases, since they're all cosplay tags.

EDIT: The bulk update request #2044 (forum #157705) has been approved by @Hillside_Moose.

@Hillside_Moose I'm done, these should be all the characters. I will have to do a follow-up BUR after this one for the aliased character names (nowi, mia, etc). Tell me if there's anything else to do.

Hey there, I'm late to the party. Not sure if you're looking for people to mention missed characters, but I think my_unit_(fire_emblem:_kakusei) is supposed to be robin_(fire_emblem:_X) to follow the new guidelines.

For clarification, are only the characters being localized, and not the game titles as well? (fates/if, awakening/kakusei) It would seem to me that the rule would be applied to the entire franchise for consistency's sake, which would include game titles.

Per what I looked up for topic #16102 the English equivalent to my_unit would be "avatar", but I have no strong feelings on whether we should use their default name instead of that. I guess it would be more consistent with the games that don't have the My Unit/Avatar system, where the protagonists are just tagged with their name, i.e. marth.

Having tags like "female_robin_(fire_emblem:_X)" also feels odd though.

kdakze said:

Hey there, I'm late to the party. Not sure if you're looking for people to mention missed characters, but I think my_unit_(fire_emblem:_kakusei) is supposed to be robin_(fire_emblem:_X) to follow the new guidelines.

For clarification, are only the characters being localized, and not the game titles as well? (fates/if, awakening/kakusei) It would seem to me that the rule would be applied to the entire franchise for consistency's sake, which would include game titles.

Game titles used will be the english versions.

The use of the entire name of the game just causes more trouble - robin_(fire_emblem) works as well as robin_(fire_emblem:_awakening), if not better, because there aren't any other "Robin"s in Fire Emblem. There are a couple cases where i had to use them though ("Faye" is the japanese name for Effie (Fates) and the english name for the unit in Echoes), to avoid some mishap, but i'm planning to remove them with the follow-up BUR.

robin_(female)_(fire_emblem) and robin_(fire_emblem) might work, similar to what's done with the fate characters? eg nero_claudius_(bride)_(fate) + nero_claudius_(fate)_(all)

And in regards to game titles, I was more referring to when browsing the actual game tag itself, and not just the parenthetical on the character tag.

kdakze said:

robin_(female)_(fire_emblem) and robin_(fire_emblem) might work

Qualifiers usually go after the main tag, so if they were accepted they would probably be robin_(fire_emblem)_(female) and robin_(fire_emblem)_(male).

BUR #2046 has been approved by @Hillside_Moose.

Reason: The OP BUR is still not in a place I would like it to be. I've fixed it somewhat, but I'll have to dedicate some time reviewing it before I can approve it.
I also have no confidence that it'll go off without a hitch, not with so many dealiases and implications thrown into the mix. This has to be done in phases.

This BUR is dedicated to breaking existing aliases before moving to the new ones. I've already moved the ones in the OP over here.

EDIT: The bulk update request #2046 (forum #157788) has been approved by @Hillside_Moose.

Hillside_Moose said:

This BUR is dedicated to breaking existing aliases before moving to the new ones. I've already moved the ones in the OP over here.

Thank you, at the moment i'm busy but in around 6 hours i should be at home. I will check if there's anything else i've missed for the second time.

If it's easier for you, i could split the aliases into various BURs and name what games are contained in them, although i fear that also would cause more confusion.

Edit: in the meanwhile, i had a couple questions:

1) Should i translate the spinoffs too? I honestly don't know much about them (especially #FE), so i wanted to hear others' opinion. English could be used for consistency, but i genuinely don't know if the japanese names are more used (although in that case aliasing solves the problen)

2) Regarding Danved/Devdan, Severa/Selena, Odin/Owain, Inigo/Laslow (and on a smaller scale, Tharja/Rhajat, Cordelia/Caeldori, Gaius/Asugi) - the game hints that they're the same character (and reincarnations in the latter case's) as the ones in Awakening (except Danved/Devdan, which is a Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn thing).

Should they be tagged as the same character? Aliased? Implied?

Mysterious_Uploader said:

1) Should i translate the spinoffs too? I honestly don't know much about them (especially #FE), so i wanted to hear others' opinion. English could be used for consistency, but i genuinely don't know if the japanese names are more used (although in that case aliasing solves the problen)

I'd rather focus on the main series right not, but to answer your question, no.

2) Regarding Danved/Devdan, Severa/Selena, Odin/Owain, Inigo/Laslow (and on a smaller scale, Tharja/Rhajat, Cordelia/Caeldori, Gaius/Asugi) - the game hints that they're the same character (and reincarnations in the latter case's) as the ones in Awakening (except Danved/Devdan, which is a Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn thing).

Should they be tagged as the same character? Aliased? Implied?

Also no. Danved/Devdan is a meme so it doesn't really matter, but the rest are technically spoilers.

AngryZapdos said:

Qualifiers usually go after the main tag, so if they were accepted they would probably be robin_(fire_emblem)_(female) and robin_(fire_emblem)_(male).

I have changed a couple aliases to reflect this.

Alright, this is all i can do i think.

almost every game doesn't even have a wiki, and the character wiki doesn't include all characters. In a franchise with around 300 characters (counting side characters), this makes things hard. Not only that, but the character wiki completely skipped FE Echoes, so especially that game is a grey area. When this BUR will pass i will update the character wiki and add according wikis to every game.

If someone wants to help spot that couple characters that i missed, feel free to do so.

Did some more gardening with the BURs. Appended "_(fire_emblem)" on every unqualifed tag, no matter how unique the name is, for consistency and to preemptively avoid any tagging conflicts with some unknown future IP. Also changed the cosplay BUR to be mass-edits instead of aliases; cosplay aliases are overkill when the main character tags are already aliased.

I'll wait a day or two before pulling the trigger, to wait for any additional changes.

Should i start writing down the follow-up BUR?

I've set three characters as mass-updates because aliasing their japanese names to the western ones would make a mess:
effie_(fire_emblem) -> faye is redundant because elfi's western name is Effie (the tag is effie_(fire_emblem_fates)
same thing with leon and leo, whose danbooru tags were swapped.

This is bothersome. I've always played FE games upon their Japanese release, and when available using fan translations. Thus I refer to them using their original names. What this change means is that their real names are shafted in favour of something that only really non-fans will gain anything from, since real fans of the series will have no issues whatsoever with knowing which name connects to which character. And if you don't, then you might as well learn it. Even if there might be some slight confusion among some, the info page is literally one click away from knowing what the character is called in the localisation.

The only argument in favour of this is the name consistency within fan circles. But in actuality, did anyone ever have an issue with this? Just choose one of Tate and Thite and go with it, just don't go with Thea which is an absurd concoction by the localisation team which has barely any connection at all to her katakana spelling. Everything worked fine up until now. Don't fix it if it isn't broken.