Revised request: Japanese transliteration variants

[Frank Bennett]

On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 6:52 AM, Mark Davis ⌛<mark at macchiato.com> wrote:
> But that means that the description for the subtag 'hepburn' needs to be not
> "Revised Hepburn romanization", but just "Hepburn romanization". Successive
> variant tags can be used to specialize if and when it is necessary to do so.

That's fair, yes.  I should make that change.

>
> Mark
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 14:45, Frank Bennett <biercenator at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 2:14 AM, CE Whitehead<cewcathar at hotmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > Hi.
>> >
>> > Here is the description field from Frank's current hepburn subtag
>> > request:
>> >
>> >
>> >     > Description: Revised Hepburn romanization.
>> >
>> > Kent Karlsson is right; Frank Bennett's request does seem only to cover
>> > the
>> > "Revised Hepburn romanization."
>>
>> Yes, that is the intention.  For our purposes this will be sufficient;
>> other academics that I have spoken with are not aware of the fine
>> distinctions between the various forms, or of their precise official
>> or quasi-official name.  Guidance from a publisher would likely to be
>> in the form, "Use Hepburn to translterate Japanese names and terms",
>> or "Use macrons on long vowels when transliterating Japanese terms",
>> with case-by-case guidance on the details.
>>
>> All of the variants of Hepburn can safely be described as "hepburn".
>> If it becomes necessary to distinguish them, sub-variants could be
>> added in the future.  But as any of the variants can (I believe) be
>> automatically generated from the others, there might not be a demand
>> for that, so long as the content to which the tag applies is amenable
>> to mangling.
>>
>> >
>> > Kent Karlsson kent.karlsson14 at comhem.se
>> > Wed Sep 2 10:37:28 CEST 2009
>> >
>> >> I support "Frank's third revised proposal" (to be split into three
>> >> submissions...).
>> >
>> >> Note that it covers only Revised Hepburn (not too keen on the word
>> >> "romanization", but that is very minor). Contrary to Doug's messages,
>> >> it does not cover other variants of Hepburn
>> >> transcription/transliteration.
>> >> That may need a bit more discussion (IMHO), esp. since the Wikipedia
>> >> article says "In Japan itself, there are three variants officially
>> >> mandated for various uses...".
>> > Thanks for noting that the different variants are mandated for various
>> > uses
>> > in Japan.  I am not the expert on Japanese on this list,
>> >
>> > but it seems from the information in the Wikipedia article you cite that
>> > revised Hepburn may be the
>> >
>> > Japanese "Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport standard"???
>> > (I'm inferring this from the handling of the 'n':
>> >
>> > ". . . the rendering of syllabic n as m before certain
>> > consonants is not used"
>> >
>> > in either Revised Hepburn or in the variety used by the Ministry of
>> > Land,
>> > Infrastruture, and Transport),
>> > as well as the orthography used by the Library of Congress??
>> > I don't have that much of a problem with [hepburn]'s referring to this
>> > one
>> > variety--it's first come, first serve here, but Kent Karlsson does bring
>> > up
>> > some important issues.
>>
>> There is some variation in practice on the use of n versus m in, say
>> "Gunma" (a prefecture north of Tokyo).  The most well-defined standard
>> that I have been able to find in English is in the ALA-LC tables and
>> supporting comments.  The genesis of the others is less clear, at
>> least from documents available on the Net.  It's not a happy
>> situation, as this page makes painfully clear (listing 169 variants
>> for the romanization of the given name of former Prime Minister
>> Koizumi).
>>
>> http://www.kanji.org/cjk/samples/jnamevar.htm
>>
>> At this point it's probably safest to simply point at "hepburn" as
>> distinct from "kunrei", and to include "nihon" for Nihon-shiki,
>> because an organization has gone to the effort to have it appended to
>> ISO-3602.  These three romanization systems are commonly recognized as
>> being distinct from one another.
>>
>> >
>> >> It also detaches nihon-shiki as not being a variant of kunrei-shiki.
>> >> (An earlier proposal had the subtag "kunrei" covering both kunrei-shiki
>> >> and nihon-shiki, which maybe was not intended.)
>> > ???
>>
>> Yes, as I wrote earlier in putting forward the third revised proposal,
>> Nihon-shiki has an independent history in its own right.  I suggested
>> handling it as "ja-Latn-kunrei-strict", to shorten the tag name, and
>> to reflect the ISO registration.  On second thought, it occurred to me
>> that the ISO registration is not carved in stone, and that treating
>> "nihon" as a separate subtag can be justified on the basis of
>> unchanging historical factors.
>>
>>
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Here is the earlier proposal I think Kent is referring to:
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >     > Type: variant
>> >     > Subtag: kunrei
>> >     > Description: Kunrei-shiki romanization.
>> >     > Prefix: ja-Latn
>> >
>> >     > Type: variant
>> >     > Subtag: nihonshiki
>> >     > Description: Nihon-shiki romanization, as defined in ISO-3602
>> > Strict.
>> >     > Prefix: ja-Latn
>> > It looks to me like the subtag name has now been changed???  (from
>> > [nihonshiki] to [nihon]??)
>>
>> Yes, Addison pointed out that the first tag was too long, it has just
>> been shortened.
>> - Hide quoted text -
>>
>> >
>> > Best,
>> > --C. E. Whitehead
>> >
>> > cewcathar at hotmail.com
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >>    /kent k
>> >
>> >
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