Talk:Th12/Reimu A's Scenario/en

Vaiśravaṇa vs Bishamonten (and other inconsistencies).
Note that this can have potentially far reaching consequences on the English translation of terms. It has come to my attention that the process in which we translate terms that do not originate from Japan is inconsistent. Currently, we used the original transcription for the translation e.g. Yama instead of Enma, Jiang Shi instead of Kyonshii, and so on. However, the term Bishamonten has as of now become widely adopted despite its original Sanskrit name being Vaiśravaṇa. Until the recent edit, this was also used on the translation. However, Touhou Wiki and many other places still use the term Bishamonten which may cause confusion. Using Bishamonten however, might be inconsistent to how we handled these terms that do not originate in Japan for other scenarios. I think we can go about it in the following ways. On four, it can be argued that the Japanese concept of Vaiśravaṇa differs from its peers, like that of the Theravāda tradition, thus making the Japanese Bishamonten "different" from its counterparts, thus making the term Bishamonten take precedence. Anyways, hopefully there will be some sort of consensus on this.
 * 1) Use the original term's transcription for everything and gradually promote that transcription (and also changing Touhou Wiki).
 * 2) Use the Japanese transcription for everything and gradually promote that transcription (not recommended as this would change a lot).
 * 3) Use the most popular transcription for everything (I personally don't like this as it is arbitrary).
 * 4) Argue that Bishamonten is unique and a special case so that the Japanese transcription takes precedence.
 * 5) Decide that this is a small matter and to not worry about it :D
 * Ah, I saw Camilo's edit on the Touhou Wiki then . I thought that the discussion made sense to use Sanskrit for these translations, hence why I changed it to 'Vaiśravaṇa'. However, after looking at Wikipedia's entry, there does seem to be a difference between the Theravāda tradition and Japanese folklore. Personally, I don't mind whether we use Vaiśravaṇa or Bishamonten (since both look like cool names lol). 01:27, 19 September 2015 (UTC)