New Reference Book

[Janine Hansen]

Hi,

I'd like to comment on one issue of your post right here on the list for
I suppose there are more people like me who did not find it
"excruciatingly dull"! Though I must admit that -- as someone who spent
two years of her precious life on the compilation of a reference book as
well -- I certainly am a little biased.

> 3. Romaji Title
> 
> Long vowels are indicated with a European "hat" above the vowel.  I'm only 
> capitalising the first word, except in the case of proper knowns: 
> "Sazae-san", "Nihon", etc.  Again there are enormous issues of hyphenation, 
> and the best you can hope for is consistency.  Often films with two sections 
> (often released a week apart) are marked "Zenpen" and "Kohen" respectively.  
> (A simple example.)  I've opted to mark them simply as "I" and "II".  But 
> sometime, the "-hen" is a little more ambitious with, for example, 
> "ren'ai-hen" and "kekkon-hen" in "Ren'ai to kekkon no sho" to take an 
> example from Abe Yutaka's filmography on the sample page.  Or "onna no maki" 
> and "yuko no maki" in the case of Abe's "Onna to iu shiro".  Again, I'm 
> thinking of simplifying to a "I" and "II" ("III", etc) here, rather than 
> phonetic representation.  Is this a terrible idea?

Why amputate part of the title for your readers who don't know kanji?
I'd rather give titles as they are. And forgive me for being even more
pedantic but "zenpen" and "kohen" is not quite the same as I and II
because a III may naturally follow I, II but a third -hen after "kohen"
is not intended from the literal meaning of the word.

> There's also the difficult issue of how to resolve phonetic approximations 
> of English, usually given in katakana.  Given that the kanji (hiragana, 
> whatever) is also given, I opt to "correct" the approximation.  So 
> "Suwaroteiru" becomes "Swallowtail".  (In this email I'm ignoring long 
> vowels for legibility.)  But what about more difficult approximations: 
> "apaato" and "depaato" (as in "apartment" and "department store") become 
> "apt." and "dept." in this book.  (Aaron is smiling his UNcheesy grin now.)  
> And what about Agata Morio's 1994 "Otobai Shojo" which presumably refers to 
> "Auto-Bike" or "Motorbike".  (At this point Aaron is falling off his seat in 
> laughter...)  For a while I opted for "Auto-Bai" (!) but I'm now making the 
> exception with "Otobai".  (I know of lost any respect I've had on the list 
> at this point, when you realise that I don't have a life.)

So, how about "Shall we dansu"? The film's title here in Germany was
"Shall We Dance" (all in romaji, of course), in Japan it was "Shall We
(in romaji) dansu (in katakana)", if I remember this correctly. You may
judge a title like this as purely stylistic but as the writer of a
reference book you don't have to judge or interpret. As your potential
reader I'd rather expect you to transliterate titles as accurately as
possible.

Also, I want to add something about your correcting the katakana
approximation of foreign words. The word "Otobai" is a very good example
because it's not an English word anymore. Otobai, wapuro, famikon, baito
-- these and many more are naturalized Japanese words. Many foreign
words take on a very different meaning in their Japanized forms, too.
Right know I can't think of any film title where this poses a problem
but this doesn't mean there aren't any yet or will be in the future.

"Shall We dansu" reminds us that there are two ways of representing
foreign words: in romaji or in katakana. You can regard the use of
katakana as a way to turn a word or phrase into Japanese and not as an
approximation of a foreign word. Surely it is a very conscious decision
on the part of the filmmaker / production company to give their film a
certain title and as such part of the artistic freedom (or the sales
strategy, all right).

After all, what's so bad about a literal transcription? (I know you'll
hate me for a comment like this just before most of your work is
done...)
:-)

Anyway, I probably didn't sound like it but I'm definitely looking
forward to your book!

Best wishes,
Janine