File talk:lang en-th15-title-title logo.png

Should we translate the entire titles ?

I open this debate here because I just saw the last edit on this image :
"The Touhou games already have an English subtitle to refer to them with, there's no need to make their titles longer without a good reason for it."
I had a long debate with the French translation team yesterday about translating some things or not, so I think I have to give my opinion here about that.

There is only one argument for translating the Japanese part of the title, but I think this argument worth any trouble it can cause : comprehension. We translate these games so that non-Japanese people can understand them. Why should we keep them from understanding the title ?
We're not here to make things easier, we're here to make them understandable. The same thing goes for the musics. And here, the Japanese part is always translated, even when there's already a shorter English part.
Moreover, look at the image. The kanjis are huge, the Roman letters are way smaller. And in the title bar, "東方紺珠伝" is before "Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom". So "Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom" is obviously only a subtitle, and the true title is "Eastern Legend of the Ultramarine Orb". If we really want to make the title shorter, we should translate the Japanese part, and remove the English part. We would be closer to the name the Japanese people see. But we can't see exactly what the Japanese people see without translating the entire title.
--Brliron (talk) 10:53, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Oops, I didn't see there's already a debate here : File_talk:lang_en-th07-data-title-title02.png
--Brliron (talk) 11:19, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for adding to the debate, let's just keep the discussion going here.
Originally I made the title logos for the German patch, and decided to add a translation to the JP titles because I wanted to know what they say without going to an external source. Out of stylistic reasons, I kept the English titles as they are (and because they sound terrible in German). Also I didn't want to mess with the logo design and kept it as subtle as possible.
And since I already had the German PSDs, it was easy enough to create logos for the English patch as well.

Now we have several arguments that speak for and against English logos.
"The fans will get confused about the two English titles": Now many fans do you think have been confused about the unreadable moon runes until now?
"We already have the English title to address the games for, no need to add another": This almost sounds like "use the damn English title you weeb, the Kanji doesn't matter!" and like we're trying to dictate the fans to only use the English titles in the Western fandom. That is not our decision to make, we're only here to add comprehension, like Brliron said.

It just so happens that the two-title format has always been an integral part of the Touhou series, except that only Japanese people are able to understand fully understand them. So I think we should do our best to get the point across and make it comprehensible for western fans. Or at the very least offer a separate patch.

Now how we go about it can be further discussed, because we have several options:

• No change to the logos.
• Add English subtitle for the Kanji (like my versions).
• Add Romaji subtitle to the Kanji (this will make them readable, but not fully understandable)
• Add English and Romaji subtitle to the Kanji (I've already tried that, looks pretty ugly and cluttered).
• Replace the Kanji altogether in place of a bigger English main title. (Like said, I don't want to mess with the title design)
• Remove the English title and only translate the Kanji. (No, I'm definitely against that. We shouldn't change the two-title format)

That said, even with or without changed logos, I think most fans will skip them anyway and continue to use either the EN title or simply th##. So is there really a need to overthink possible complications that may or may not come with them? --Splashman (blub) (talk) 18:10, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

I understand that we are translating these games so that foreign (non-Japanese) audiences are able to fully enjoy them, but, again, we're not telling the tale of Souldream Esteemedcompanion as she stood against the might of God'schild of the Wealthy Intelligent Ears, right? Yes, we translate the titles of the songs, as well as of some of places ("Misty Lake" instead of "Kiri no Mizuumi"... and I think something needs to be done about the places that remain untranslated (like Hakugyoukuro), but that's a different topic), but I consider the names of the characters, as well as the game, to be too important (for lack of a better term) to be translated, especially when they do just fine staying as they are. I know I'm being completely arbitrary here, but these are my honest feelings regarding this situation. Not to mention, it'd end up being pretty weird the way we call them Touhou games when they wouldn't even have that in their titles (Although to be fair on this point, the series is officially called "東方Project" yet that never shows up in any of the titles).

Well, we don't call them Souldream Esteemedcompanion because that's a character name, and names are an entirely different beast than titles... unless we're talking about the Mysteryland Project :P

Anyway, let's leave them in the original format for now, and once the new GUI rolls around (whenever that will be), everyone can click on their preferred titles/spell card/BGM translation for their personal liking. That way everyone will be happy.--Splashman (blub) (talk) 00:48, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Needless to say, I'm still fully against translating the kanji in the titles, at least for the English patch (if you guys want to translate the kanji for the German or French or etc patches, then you can just ignore me). However, if we were to do what Splashman said and keep it into a separate patch, then I wouldn't have a problem with it. Maybe even make it so that it gets automatically added to the patch list when someone picks lang_en in the configuration tool (in the same way lang_es gets added when someone picks lang_es-419). That way, the default would be to have translated titles, but the people who don't want them (like me) would be able to leave them out easily. --Goldenhog (talk) 01:42, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

I concur with Goldenhog's suggestion, as I too don't want to see translated kanji TBH. ― Tony ^(Talk/Con.) 01:57, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

"I consider [...] the game to be too important [...] to be translated". That's the point I don't understand. And if they're that important, why should we hide their meaning behind unreadable kanjis or random-looking romajis ? BTW, when I began to play to Touhou games, I could not find "Touhou" in the title. I was just able to see 東方, which had absolutely no meaning for me.

But I had a really huge debate with the French team about this, so I'm tired of this debate. I'll stop answering here. You have my point of view, do whatever you want with it for the English patches. --Brliron (talk) 08:56, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

As of now, I say that we should have the Japanese titles translated by default. Besides arbitrary reason, I don't see a point in leaving the Japanese titles untranslated. There's some talk about the importance of Japanese titles here and it is for those reasons that we should really have the Japanese titles translated as the default. Of course, we also want to make sure that the translation is non-intrusive as well to not obscure the graphic, but that shouldn't stop us from translating an essential part of the game so that people will understand the meaning. It is for those reasons why I say we should implement those translations on this site as the default. --DTM (talk) 20:13, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

If no one has anything else to say about this topic, I plan to re-implement the translated titles in about a week. --DTM (talk) 23:23, 9 August 2015 (UTC)