Forum:Romanization of Technique Names

Okay, as most of you probably know, technique names in One Piece that are in English or any language besides Japanese tend to have a note about the "literal meaning". This is because in addition to the kana that tells you how it's phonetically read, the technique names usually have Kanji that may or may not mean the same thing. For example:


 * Black Hole (闇穴道（ブラック･ホール）)

Here the kanji (闇穴道) literally means "Dark Hole Path" but the katakana (ブラック･ホール) tells it's supposed to be read as "Burakku Hōru"; Black Hole. In the actual manga the katakana would be laid on top of the Kanji. I guess this is so that the Japanese who may not know the meaning of the English word still get an idea of what it's about. Though sometimes the meaning of the Kanji might be vastly different from the name of the attack.

Now, here's the problem: Recently, Xilinoc and I had disagreement on how technique names should be romanized. Xil thinks that the reading of the Kanji shouldn't be included in the Nihongo template, whereas I think it should. There's some inconsistency on how it's done on the wiki, so I thought it'd just make a forum so we can resolve this once and for all. This is what it looks like without the Kanji reading:


 * Black Hole (闇穴道（ブラック･ホール）)

Now, since most here can't read Kanji, I think that the reading should be included on the template. Personally I find them interesting to see. 15:53, February 20, 2015 (UTC)

Discussion
I agree. Including the reading is helpful since most readers can't read kanji. Having it doesn't hurt anything anyway. 16:58, February 20, 2015 (UTC)

To be honest, I have nothing against including these underlying kanji readings for the sake of user convenience. My only gripe with it is that in order to list the reading for the kanji, you have to assume/guess what readings would be used: most, if not all, kanji have multiple readings, and while some are more common than others, mangaka authors freely switch between them for easy identification of whatever technique/object it applies to, or simply for making it sound better/cooler (for example, I've seen the kanji for moon, 月, be read as "getsu" and "tsuki"). While I can understand the idea of simply using the most common reading for any kanji present, it simply seems like too much assumption and guessing for my liking. However, that's really the only problem I've got with it, and if that sort of guesswork falls within the wiki's allowed guesswork on articles (such as bringing up possible weaknesses for a Devil Fruit on its article) then I'm fine with it.--Xilinoc (talk) 17:48, February 20, 2015 (UTC)