desirecampbell wrote:The whole point behind changing the name from 'Ba-dokku' to 'Ba-dakku' would be to make the character's name different from 'Burdock'.
That makes the
pronunciation different, yes, but was that supposed to make the
alphabet spelling different as well? Maybe, but we can't be 100% sure. Ultimately, it's up to the author. If he decides that his character's name is "Burdock" pronounced "ba-dakku" rather than "ba-dokku", it's his choice.
Granted, that's all speculation, but so is what you're doing ("he changed the kana spelling, so that should change the alphabet one as well", "he changed
that part of the kana spelling, so that should change
that part of the alphabet spelling in
that way").
In the end, we don't really know for sure. We
can't really know for sure, unless we ask Toriyama. And that's... kinda out of the question.
The way I see it, we have two choices:
1) We don't extrapolate at all.
We use the few known alphabet spellings (i.e. the ones that are in the manga itself... granted they're consistent, naturally), and we stick to the standard romanization for the rest of the names.
Pros: Characters will only have one possible name. Little room for debate. Good for clarity.
Cons: "Who's Furiiza?"
2) We extrapolate.
Pros: "Oh, you meant
Freeza!"
Cons: Lots of subjectivity and personal preference. Lots of different methods. Lots of possible spellings. Lots of debates. Lots of arguments.
The way I put it, I guess it looks like I'm in favor of 1)... Well, I'm not really. If anything, I'd be in favor of 2), myself. I'd extrapolate based on the alphabet spellings found on Japanese merchandise. I'd try to keep the extrapolation to a minimum (unknown or inconsistent spellings), but it would still be there.
But that's
me. If
I were to make my own page about "Dragon Ball", that's what I'd do.
Here, we are talking about a
Wiki. And while that doesn't necessarily mean option 2) is out of the question, it certainly makes things quite a bit tricky, in my opinion. I believe the Wikipedia debacle pretty much demonstrated that.
if the character's name is one kana off from 'Burdock' then the romanization of the name should reflect that.
If we establish that as a "rule", we'll run into quite a few problems...
For example, should it really be spelled "Vegeta" when the kana spelling is "beji-ta" (with a long "ji" sound), and the English word "vegetable" is "bejitaburu" (with a
short "ji" sound)? Shouldn't the alphabet spelling reflect that change?
And of course, there's the "Bulma" thing I mentioned in another topic. Now, that's an alphabet spelling that turned out to be quite different from the English word its pun was based on ("bloomers") despite the fact the kana spelling is pretty close ("buruma" / "buruma-"). According to our "rule", if the kana spelling is almost identical, the alphabet spelling should reflect that, right?
I understand that you're trying to come up with an alphabet spelling that would "make sense"... but it's still extrapolation. We don't really know. We're assuming. It's subjective, and a bit abitrary.
From this information, I believe the character's name should probably be "Burdack".
So you changed your mind from "Burduck" to "Burdack", huh? ^^
Like I said above, if we don't keep the raw romanization, I'm afraid we'll end up extrapolating anyway (you chose "dack" out of personal preference, for example). That's what makes the whole thing tricky, in my opinion.
