[mb-users] Artist sort names for non latin scripts

[Kuno Woudt]

On Tue, Sep 11, 2007 at 10:51:20PM +0800, Philip Jägenstedt wrote:
> The issue is this: most editors use the "English" names of japanese
> artists as the sort name. From a sorting perspective, this isn't all
> bad, because most of the time the surname doesn't change ("Chou, Jie
> Lun" is "Chou, Jay"). The style guidelines
> (http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/SortNameStyle) however state that the
> name should be transliterated into latin script. Should real
> transliterations be used as sort names it would make searching for
> artists by the string of latin characters which they are actually know
> very hard, as only the original name and the sort name show in search
> results. Would anyone who doesn't know Chinese know that 周杰倫/Chou Jie
> Lun is actually Jay Chou? So, proper sortnames make it more difficult
> for international users.

Usually, the english name is a transliteration.  obviously some artists
will take some liberty when doing the transliteration to make their
english name sound better, or more english, or.. etc..

I think using 'Chou, Jay' as the sortname in this case is according to
the guideline.

Anyway, I agree with everything Lauri already said.  Perhaps the
SortNameStyle page could be clarified a bit.

-- kuno.