Danbooru

Street Fighter names, JP style or EN style?

Posted under General

Vega(jp) vs. M_Bison(en)

There are several reasons to prefer the Japanese name. Most importantly, the original name is Vega which also makes a lot more sense. The reason to change it was exceptionally stupid, even by Capcom standards. Additionally, our rule/tradition is to use JP names (for example vampire_(game)). Finally, note that avid Streetfighter fans call Vega/M.Bison "the dictator", so it's not like the English name is used universally. So why are we using the obviously inferior English names?

Other characters with "different" English names:
JP vs. EN
M.Bison vs. Balrog
Balrog vs. Vega
Gouki vs. Akuma

Can't think of any others that stand out to me.

Updated by jxh2154

So why are we using the obviously inferior English names?

Probably because it's not a simple change to a name that "sound more English," rather a shuffling of 3 names to different characters depending on game region. Add in the fact that these names are rather established in the scene, it becomes more complicated than your average Team Rocket henchman name. As for gouki/akuma, I'm guessing the other three set a precedent for the convention used for the SF franchise.

With all the above in mind, I see only confusion as a result of a change to the JP names.

We had this discussion before. Personally I like the JP names better, but I can't remember why it was decided to keep the ENG ones.

スラッシュ said:
Additionally, our rule/tradition is to use JP names (for example vampire_(game)). ... So why are we using the obviously inferior English names?

On the other hand, we actually set precedent before for video games with simultaneous English and Japanese releases by using the English names in those cases. See castlevania, the_legend_of_zelda, and pokemon (at least the pokemon names which were switched to Japanese and then reverted to "English" again).

Shinjidude said:
See castlevania

While we do use the English game titles (should LoZ have more game-specific tags (what about the Oracles?!)), we do use "Belmondo" over "Belmont" (though the Trevor<->Ralph thing hasn't received aliases).

Also, if we were to go the JP names for SF, wouldn't it me mike_bison over m_bison (or michael_bison, if that's the case)?

You could refer to them as the name neutral words that the SF community uses.

Boxer
Dictator
Claw

But that's a little silly.

Ugh no, qualifiers are horrible the last thing we need is characters with english/japanese names as qualifiers.

I'm for just going with the JP names, if only because I have always disagreed with Capcom USA's decision to rename Gouki as "Akuma".

sgcdonmai said:
I'm for just going with the JP names, if only because I have always disagreed with Capcom USA's decision to rename Gouki as "Akuma".

Yeah that one is amazingly retarded, but honestly so are the other renames. I'm not sure about qualifiers, I don't really have a principal problem with them if the "clean" names are aliased to them. If they are to be used I think the (dictator) etc. ones make a lot more sense, since they clarify the tag. I guess before we do that alias we'd have to do a couple of mass edits, but since these tags aren't THAT heavily populated it's not too bad.

They actually flat out shifted character names around? Seriously? God damn I hate the "logic" of localization so very much.

Urgh, I see no good solutions. I'm obviously for the Japanese names but not yet sure about the qualifier solution.

English names. We can't alias these and people will almost certainly mistag new posts if we suddenly start using the Japanese names.

I think that's why aliasing to vega_(dictator) might be a good idea. You'll immediately see that you used the wrong name. Additionally, the amount of people uploading these images is so miniscule, and the people who do upload them should be big enough fans that they at least know of this situation. I don't really think that argument goes at all.

Hell, I can personally monitor each of these four tags and send messages to people using the wrong one.

Seconding above post.

evazion said:
people will almost certainly mistag new posts if we suddenly start using the Japanese names

I discovered the Japanese Pokemon names with danbooru. I'd expected an English-speaking site would use English names for familarity/majority reasons (heck they even have different names in each countries it was translated), but I assume Japanese is used since they're the original names.

It's less confusing for everyone if the site consistently apply the same rule imho.
Sure you're lost the first time, like I was with Pokemon, but you quickly get used to it anyway.

We don't use the English names for Pokemon? We actually started with the English names, went JP for a while due to our regular rule, then discussed it and reverted to EN. If we are using JP again, it'd be a surprise.

Also I haven't noticed if we did. I guess I stopped paying close attention attention to Pokemon names after red/blue or gold/silver.

Pokemon themselves are english because a large majority have super-conflicty names like yellow and (I think) lightning so we used english names for them, but the rest of the cast is japanese.

The fact is that if we tried to change the Street Fighter names, the vast majority of users would still use the Eng ones.

And unlike usual when choosing between eng and jp names, we can't just use an alias, because the names are shuffled around rather than just being changed to something new -- we can alias the pokemon main characters and then it won't matter what people use, because it'll automatically be corrected. But we can't do that here.

Regarding Street Fighter names, it was brought to my attention that Ryu's romanization isn't in line with our policies, so obviously it needs to be Ryuu. But while we're at it... shouldn't it be qualified with _(street_fighter)? At 168 posts it's decently populated, but talk about a ridiculously common name. At least they had the decency to give us a full name for Ken Masters.

Yeah, a qualifier for Ryu (or Ryuu) is a good idea.

The fact is that if we tried to change the Street Fighter names, the vast majority of users would still use the Eng ones.

What, a vast majority out of the 6 people who upload images in these tags? Besides, they'll learn. Also, personally I don't really care what the vast majority does, I'd rather have it correct.

Xabid said:
we can alias the pokemon main characters and then it won't matter what people use, because it'll automatically be corrected. But we can't do that here.

Actually, we can theoretically if we use qualifiers (m_bison -> vega_(dictator), vega -> balrog_(claw), etc.). Although that would be kinda stupid, since it would mean if you used their real, original names without a qualifier, you'd get the wrong result.

I think a mass edit and keeping an eye on it for a little while should do the trick easily. Again, it's only a couple people using these tags, and I have no doubt that they'll figure it out (with a friendly PM reminder if necessary).

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