To put it bluntly: Hepburn romaji transliteration is most common. It's almost exclusive outside Japan. In japan there are some similar ones (made out of opposition a while ago e.g. 1800's to the growing western influence), but hepburn is most common for Japanese. It's also useful because quite often people reading translated manga works also have an interest in Japanese culture and thus Nihongo (TN: la Japana lingvo japane ). And it's a great reference point for learners to have a sort of middleman script, especially when learning hiragana. If this was Korean we were talking about, then I'd definately use EO transliteration extensively - the english based transliteration systems conflict too much to make sense to me .

And romaji is the easiest script anyway (liberal use of superlatives are my forté). An esperantist would have no trouble figuring it out, the only things I can imagine causing problems are j (gx/jx) and y. For those familiar with pinyin, it's no where near as hard or uncorresponsive (e.g. tian sound like tien, shi sounding like sher, etc).

@jchthys: Shakugan no shana is probably spelt like that because of either the JP transliteration of it or the English fan sub of the anime which likely came before any other language group got to it .

Erinja:A skilled translator is able to capture the meaning of a text, even when the same grammatical forms aren't available. Inevitably something will be lost in the translation, but if you translate with skill, the losses will be very minor.

Vi pravas (however many would argue that a manga translation and a skilled translation are two different things ha ha).

Honorifics are easy to learn. After you learning san, everythings easy. It comes naturally And if you watch anime you already know them subconciously by the time you see it written coz you hear it all the time

@ Pharaoh:
I think you're misunderstanding the situation here a bit.
Firstly, surely you've heard of Yamaha, Toshiba, Suzuki, Subaru, Mitsubishi and Toyota? They are all extremely large, international companies (remembering that the Japanese economy is 2nd in the world). Anyone who has heard of Esperanto has most likely heard of them first (except those who have parents who speak it etc). And people tend not to have trouble pronouncing those names in their own language, so there shouldn't be a problem in Esperanto.

After all, as Oŝo-Jabe points out, these names are not written using our alphabet in Japanese. Just because everyone here happens to be an English speaker, doesn't mean this is the only potential audience for these translations. I'm sure I don't see anyone suggesting here that English subtitles for Japanese anime should represent the names using hirigana.

In Japanese they often use Hiragana, Katakana or Kanji to write the names. Romaji however is pretty much picked up along the way though, given that many company names are in romaji, many anime and manga covers are in romaji, and many products have romaji name.

And this isn't being suggested because everyone here is an English speaker. It's more because a. romaji transliteration is the defacto standard for romanising japanese outside the govt. (that's politics though), b. transliteration outside that system might confuse those who read a manga before learning eo. And I've never seen 'jaruji' instead of 'Haruhi' in Spanish, I've never seen 'Kengi' instead of 'Kenji' in italian and I've never seen Judo in German as 'Tscudo' or 'Djudo'

So basically to try and kill this debate in a way that would break any honourable samurai's heart and force him to commit seppuku, whether you leave romaji or honorifics as if or whether you eo-ise them, it doesn't really matter. either way you're making one group of people learn something new or different to the norm for them, but I doubt it will cause stress for anyone . Except for us debating this topic ha ha ha!

(and for those who still think it will be hard for people to learn these romaji/honorific thingamadoozits, a lot of people like me learnt them without any effort at all. In fact I learnt half the hiragana and about 30 kanji from reading fan translated manga and anime in addition to just romaji.)

Oŝo-Jabe:

Zafur:I thought shortening the name was needed? Probably mistook a guideline as a rule.

Well... It is a rule. I justify Haruhinjo, as a shortening of Haruhio, from which the accusative Haruhion is derived (even if the actual text will only use Haruhi, Haruhion, and Haruhinjo.) Names that end in "o" originally, are the only place where my justification might not work. If someone was named Masako, and you wanted their "nickname" to be Masakonjo, then the accusative would have to be Masakoon.

The PMEG does make mention of affixing -in to female names, and -ul to male names and then attaching -ĉjo or -njo, as a way to make nicknames sound better. So, we could conceivably use Masako, Masakinjo (from Masakino), Masakon.

Interesting, always wondered how that works.

I would like to add here that the romaji transliteration is a lot less sensible for non-english speakers. In Dutch, ŝ is written as sj, ĉ is written as tsj, anyway a lot different than English.

It's noteworthy too that the Dutch were one of the first to make a system due to their trading with Japan.

Sorry, is it too late interveni?
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First I would like to express my position.

I firmly believe that we should translate it all or not at all. So leaving out some small parts (like honorifics) seems just a bit evasive (sorry if this offends.). And second, is it not the goal of Esperanto to become the bridge between nations? If so, translators Esperantists should bear that goal in mind and start to make it possible for someone completely ignorant about Japanese culture to understand Japanese manga (if not enjoy it).

So let's move on to the details.

1. Transskribado
A Chinese myself, I have always envied Japanese for having so few phonemes that can be expressed unambiguously in Esperanto alphabet, and now someone is calling that unpractical?
Judge, now I would like to present the evidence#001:Japanese transliteration system! Please observe the table (and examples) below, and you will see, it is possible for Esperanto alphabet to express with no difficulty whatsoever all Japanese "kanas". So why not apply?

2. Propraj nomoj (japanaj)
Currently no rule exists yet, but my suggestion is:
a.Personal name: transliterate, add -o to its end (optional). (Ekz. Taro, Haruhi, ktp
(That "optional" is there provisionally because, as it seems, even Europeans can't agree upon the -o ending for proper name. So for now I don't want to dwell on that.)
b.Geographical name: trasliterate, add -o to its end. (Ekz. Jokohamao, Tokio, Osakao, ktp
c.names for things UNIQULY Japanese, te, found only in Japan and no where else: Esperantigi, te, make it natural in Esperanto and prepare to call for its inclusion in the next edition of PIV. (Ekz. gejŝo, tatamo, karateo, ktp)

Readers may judge whether these suggestions are prudent.

(to be continued)

ceigered:Honorifics are easy to learn. After you learning san, everythings easy. It comes naturally And if you watch anime you already know them subconciously by the time you see it written coz you hear it all the time

The only honorific which is truly a problem is the "null honorific", or not using an honorific with someone's name. In Japanese it's offensive to do with strangers in a way that not saying "S-ro" or "S-ino" before someone's name is not.

ceigered:And this isn't being suggested because everyone here is an English speaker. It's more because a. romaji transliteration is the defacto standard for romanising japanese outside the govt. (that's politics though), b. transliteration outside that system might confuse those who read a manga before learning eo. And I've never seen 'jaruji' instead of 'Haruhi' in Spanish, I've never seen 'Kengi' instead of 'Kenji' in italian and I've never seen Judo in German as 'Tscudo' or 'Djudo'

Esperanto doesn't treat Japanese words the same way as those languages. In most European languages "geisha" is written "geisha", but in Esperanto it's written "gejŝo" (interestingly Czech uses "gejša.") "Judo" is "ĵudo."

Names are different, with some Japanese esperantists using the Hepburn romanization of their names (Yui Chunoshin), and others esperantizing their name (Fujisawa Chikao->Fuĵisaŭa Ĉikao.)

3. Honorifics system (Respekteca sistemo?)
(A very detailed list of honorifics is found on Japanese wiki.)

I will now tackle only those that take the form of suffixes. (I use Hepburn in the following, not because I like it, but because we haven't agreed upon the adoption of the system mentioned above.)

-kun, -chan, -tan (netlang): Used to junior or intimate person, or to show cuteness.
It seems we have a consent about these intimate, namely -kun/-chan/-tan=-ĉjo/-njo. Good start.

-san: "The most ordinary honorific in a conversation. Can be dropped. Used when the relationship is not yet certain." (wiki)
The tough one with many possible equivalence.
My suggestion will be, to ask oneself, what will this character say in Esperanto when addressing to this person in this kind of occasion. Therefore, if this character is really addressing to someone superior I will suggest add "Sinjoro" or other title; if he/she is just being polite I will suggest drop the honorific completely.

-sama: In writing or in speech, to show respect. Always added for royal family.
-dono: (formal)mainly in writing, to show difference in status, usually after job title (ekz. Officer).
For the use in speech, "sinjor(in)o" may suffice. But when addressing someone in charge or royal, "moŝto" may be neccessary.

-kyou, -kou: Very rarely seen, probably only in history drama, addressing to courtiers or nobles.
Again, I suggest "via ... moŝto".

-jou: not married woman. =fraŭlino
-fujin: married woman. =sinjorino

-shi: used only when introducing someone, male with social status.
joshi: used only when introducing someone, female with social status.
I suggest "Estimata Sinjoro" / "Estimata Sinjorino"

-toji: to show respect to senior female.
I suggest "dojena sinjorino"

-onchyu: addressing an organization.
I suggest "Estimata..."

-son: (buddhism)figure of worship.
I don't know, "Sankta..."?
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If everybody agree, then we have shown that honorifics are possible to render in Esperanto, and are thus not neccessary to be left out.

4. "Joshigo", aŭ Ina parolo
I reserve the space for this topic but don't yet want to come to this one, as this is going to be another bloody battle.

Oŝo-Jabe:The only honorific which is truly a problem is the "null honorific", or not using an honorific with someone's name. In Japanese it's offensive to do with strangers in a way that not saying "S-ro" or "S-ino" before someone's name is not.

Good point. How can we express this difference?

Since I still don't acknowledge the existence of "-san" in Esperanto manga, I am thinking whether there is something Esperantist should never do when addressing a stranger...
1. abuse of "ci"?
2. abuse of informal "ulo/ino"?
3. informal speech like "sal"?
...

The worst case will be the translator will have to put a little box indicating that a character is being impolite. XD
But I would really like to see an example of Null Honorific to see what's the best solution.

mmm, I like your system there LyzTyphone. Either way though I tend to err on the side of using Japanese terminology more often than not, but I'm starting to see where Esperantisation might be handy (e.g. concerning san, sama or dono).

For me though, transliterating Japanese using an EO-based system just feels.. IDK, so wrong... The same as if I spelt English with EO letters... I mean, it is true that Japanese has a limited amount of phonemes that make it easy to use EO style transliteration but still... .

BTW does 'mi sentis ke mi povus funkciigi ĝin' mean 'I felt that I could make it work'?
For non-proper names though I can force myself to esperantigi them e.g. I feel ok writing Katana as katanao. Bokutou causes some problems (bokutooo? bokutoo? bokto? boktoŭo?) but I still can't do that certain words, especially 'y' words.

I guess on further thinking this reason I may be like this is due to my exposure to anime where I am used to hearing Japanese audio and an English translation. Therefore for me it's natural to have many proper-nouns in Japanese in my head.

Speaking of which, how do we then distinguish things like character quirks? E.g. Wilhemina from Shana having 'de arimasu' at the end of every sentence?

On related news I've translated ONE WHOLE PAGE ( ) of 090-Eko to Issho using a decent English fan translation as a base. Problem was that the translation is too good in some ways that it can be hard to translate to EO (say we start with: 'they (mobiles) take over your life' - 'ili prenas vian vivon' - 'ili mortigas vin' , I just used 'ili prenas vian tempon', no use making it sound like life-taking mobiles are on the loose).

I'll post a link once I either get a whole lot done or a whole chapter. It's effictively a story about a boy who orders a posxtelefono and gets one in the form of a 15ish yr old human girl. Hilarity and destruction of cockroaches in Astro-boy fashion ensues.

I am glad you find it "likable", ceigered! ^^
And, yeah, sometimes our habits make it strange to do something or another. Just speaking of Eo, I was once kind of uncomfortable with "mal-". From logic I know it is completely right; sometimes it is just the habits I have developed by using natural languages for so long.

Character of quirks can take thousand of forms... Joshigo, Osaka-accent, strange ending, you name it. So I think it will be more pragmatic to stick to cases. Too bad I didn't read Shakugan no Shana...

Case#001: Wilhelmina's "~de Arimasu"
In Japanese, "~de Arimasu" is basically a formal version of "~desu". So what is the formal way of saying something in Eo?

(I found this one quite tough. Anybody some insight?)

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PS. I am really looking forward to see your result! Very glad to help whenever I can!