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Topic: titles for non-latin songs (Read 6767 times) previous topic - next topic
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titles for non-latin songs

I'm looking for advice on how to title some Japanese songs. In some cases they are written in Japanese script. I don't read enough to know what it says, and even if I can read it (hiragana, katakana, some kanji) I don't always know what it means.

So I am thinking about titling the songs thusly. From the Cowboy Bebop: CD-Box release, song 8 on disc 3 is titled 遊園地, which reads in romaji as "Yuenchi" and is translated as "Amusement Park". I used Google Translate to get the romaji (or furigana ) and the translation. After using musicbrainz.org to tag it, the filename comes out as (according to my naming scheme):

3.08 - 遊園地.flac

and the title tag is simply 遊園地. Which I can't read unless I am using Google Translate.

I'm thinking of changing the title tag to "遊園地 (Yuenchi - Amusement Park)" so I have all the info, leading to the filename:

3.08 - 遊園地 (Yuenchi - Amusement Park)

This works for me, I think, but it can lead to some really long titles...

Any thoughts or ideas on this issue? Thanks!

titles for non-latin songs

Reply #1 –
If you can't read the kanji, you're better off using romaji for the file names, whether you keep the tags fully japanese or write both is a matter of taste. I used to keep filenames in romaji/tags in Japanese, but converted to full JP names to finally get myself to recognize more kanji

titles for non-latin songs

Reply #2 –
I don't listen to enough JPop to make it a learning experience, if that's even possible! I think I'll keep Japanese script, romaji and translation - I don't have a huge amount of Japanese music.

titles for non-latin songs

Reply #3 –
If you want it to be shorter and still want to preserve all of them, you could use separate tags (Title, Translated Title, Original Title).
In your case, I will pick roman transliterated title ("Yuenchi" in your example) for the primary "title" tag.
I think translation of song title is often difficult, since they tend to use word play (homophonic pun, coined word, etc).
 

titles for non-latin songs

Reply #4 –
You could always go straight with an English translation, like the one at VGMdb.

EDIT: Eh, sorry, I see now that I look closer it only has romaji for the handful of track titles not originally in English. Usually things are done better than that there.