Re: Romaji variations and annoying name mismatches

Phillip Thorne wrote:
Most people watching subtitled anime are probably not interested in
learning Japanese (or at least, aren't willing to expend the effort).
But in their reading of subtitles and the web, they might notice that
names are spelled in multiple ways, and get confused and annoyed.

There are three major systems for romanizing the Japanese language,
i.e., orthography in the Roman alphabet, i.e., /romaji/, and multiple
variations thereon. Anybody have any preferences? Any gripes about
the rules *not* being used consistently?

I bring this up because I have finally watched the "Tenchi Muyo" third
OAV, 13 years after seeing the first at college, and I've noticed that
the spellings of character names differ, as subtitled by Funimation
and by whichever-fansubber-it-was.

J(y)urai, A(y)eka, Yo(u)sho(u), Washu(u), So(u)j(y)a (Kagato's ship),
etc.

Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romaji> clears up my confusion
by explaining that the modern systems are Modified Hepburn,
Nihon-shiki, and Kunrei-shiki. The examples imply the following:


Actually, I believe that it's AnimEigo that pretty much made revised Hepburn the de-facto standard. Others just followed suit. Which makes me happy. The "official" spellings are often ugly.

* Funimation uses Hepburn, minus any symbol to indicate long vowels,
and possibly with the common "ye for e" mistake. This explains
"Yosho" and "Ayeka" -- in the same way, you sometimes see "Inou(y)e."

Blame Pioneer for that one. They had the title long before Funimation existed.


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