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Romanization walkthrough

[This is a draft and is incomplete]

Part I - Introduction

This guide is an in-depth supplement to the romanization guideline [fix link] for romanizing Japanese song and album titles. This guide will not focus on Artist names, as names have slightly different properties[wd].

This guide walks through how to romanize a sample of song titles in VocaDB. The goal of this guide is to improve the accuracy of romanization in VocaDB by helping editors understand some of the often disregarded*/forgotten[wd] rules of the Japanese language.

This guide assumes the reader is sufficiently comfortable with mechanical aspects of editing VocaDB Song entries, and has a good understanding of the Japanese language. It also assumes the reader is familiar with VocaDB's Japanese romanization rules.

The purpose of romanizing title is to help non-Japanese speakers read and pronounce the title. [expand]

Part II - Basic romanization

A large number of songs have very easy to read titles. These are just as simple as turning kana into romaji.

[put them in links later]


http://vocadb.net/S/1746
  • ホシノウタ -> Hoshi no Uta

http://vocadb.net/S/67877

  • まとい -> Matoi


Song titles which are direct loan words are also easy to romanize (recall that VocaDB uses the original language for loanwods):

http://vocadb.net/S/31847

  • パラレルワールド -> Parallel World


Titles with common kanji are romanized as one would expect: http://vocadb.net/S/57151
  • タイヨウの子 -> Taiyou no Ko

http://vocadb.net/S/10536

  • 月と風船 -> Tsuki to Fuusen

It is expected that every editor who edits romaji be able to easily output the same romaji for the above song titles. For readers who had trouble, it is recommended they do not attempt to provide their own romanizations on VocaDB.

Part II - Kanji Readings

Part III - Portmanteau and Puns

Part IV - Forced readings/made up readings (need a proper term)

Part V - Okurigana (maybe)

Part VII - Reader exercise

[Put a few song titles here; readers can try to romanize and test their understanding. They can also choose not to 'answer' some of them, meaning they would not edit those entries if they were on VocaDB. It is important to know one's skill level and avoid making mistakes.]

notes

濁点化

ヒをいと読むとき http://vocadb.net/S/60075, http://vocadb.net/S/73366

Uploader specified readings

を、は、へ、等

Indeterminable but correct readings http://vocadb.net/S/598 「ゆく」か「いく」

Titles with puns (a couple deco27 songs,) http://vocadb.net/S/78014,

Part VI


Other tactics for find readings:

@mikuwiki

dictionary

nico description

watching the PV

looking at official page album and song urls, filenames, etc. (sometimes they are romanized)

listening to the audio if the lyrics contain the title

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