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

[Philip Jägenstedt]

Wow, do many answers!

I don't believe that "Chou, Jay" is a proper sort name according to
the style guideline because it only says transliteration. I believe it
should be however, so I have written the proposed changed near the
bottom of http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/SortNameStyleDiscussion, copied
here for you convenience:

1. All ArtistSortNames should be in Latin script. Other scripts such
as Greek, Hebrew and Han (Chinese/Japanese) should use a sort name as
per below.
 * An official transliteration/translation, e.g. as it appears on album covers.
 * A widely known transliteration/translation, e.g. as known in the
press or by fans.
 * A transliteration using the standard transliteration system used in
the region where the artist is active.

This is more or less a codification of what Lauri Watts wrote.

Any thoughts on this? How do changes to the style guide go about? Do
you just edit the wikipage or does it go through some democratic
processes first?

Philip

On 9/12/07, Kuno Woudt <kuno at frob.nl> wrote:
> 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.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> MusicBrainz-users mailing list
> MusicBrainz-users at lists.musicbrainz.org
> http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-users
>