I don't think an Irish-language book should represent Japanese words in Hepburn, which is not just a romanization system but an anglicization system. Yes, all literate adult hibernophones in the 21st century can read English, while few read Japanese, so representing シ as "shi" rather than "si", and - ThreadSky

satorukun0530.bsky.social • 51 days ago

I don't think an Irish-language book should represent Japanese words in Hepburn, which is not just a romanization system but an anglicization system. Yes, all literate adult hibernophones in the 21st century can read English, while few read Japanese, so representing シ as "shi" rather than "si", and

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satorukun0530.bsky.social•51 days ago

シャ as "sha" rather than "sea", キョウト as "Kyōto" rather than "Cióto", etc., makes a degree of sense. But Irish really should, like Hungarian and Polish, have its own, non-Béarlachas, way of rendering Japanese proper nouns.

komavary.bsky.social•51 days ago

Thank you for this perspective. Here in Hungary it is an eternal struggle: while we have "official" transliteratioon rules, more and more publishers opt for Hepburn. The excuses are endless:

komavary.bsky.social•51 days ago

It is the author 's request - they don't want to diminis their "brand", Hebpurn is easier to search online, the publisher is translating from English, and, of course, there is the anime-army, raised on fansubs/scanlations based on English fansubs/scanlations.

satorukun0530.bsky.social•51 days ago

Fascinating!
I can definitely see ST authors in a contemporary literature (etc.) context wanting their own names to be written in English on the cover, but I wonder if the same applies to random personal and place names inside the book?

In the "Sayonara" case, the book does include a short essay by

satorukun0530.bsky.social•51 days ago

Koizumi Bon (Hearn's great-grandson), but apart from his name, the vast majority of Japanese proper names belong to people who have been dead (and places that have been formally dismantled) for well over 100 years.

satorukun0530.bsky.social•38 days ago

Two typos here, one quite serious. "Leaving off the 'h'," was what he said🤦🏻‍♂️

olibei.bsky.social•51 days ago

The issue i see is that Hepburn doesn't stop people who don't know japanese phonetics from utterly butchering words to the point of incomprehensibility. So in works targeted to the public, these romanization rules are a bit useless. But maybe the romanization that is used in hungarian is better.

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