Fansubbers

[Megabyte117]

Originally Posted by MMM

Lots of people learn how to sing the songs from the romaji transfer on fan-subs. It's for people that don't read Japanese.

I suppose the people I know who do the above are weeaboos?

[iPhantom]

Originally Posted by xyzone

Ok, but it just sounds like excuses for mediocrity to me. I'm not buying it, but that's just me. And ASS is fine; if it's not, people need to drop buggy players. I mean, this is the same kind of thinking that thinks it should cater to archaic AVI and WMP, which of course go with archaic mp3. I mean, people can rip whatever they want, but I'd be willing to bet most people who are looking for opening song videos and the like are not going to prefer hardsubbed romaji, but in fact the opposite. And the insistence on how easy raws are is just silly and unfounded. I mean, not everyone has anime pirate sites as their homepage. Besides that it doesn't keep the hardsub floods from getting in the way.

Excuses? Are you serious? I already gave valid reasons and those are good points. Whether you want o believe them it's not my problem.

RAWs are damn easy to find if you know how to use Google.

And who are you to decide for other people? People that aren't tech-savy have no idea which players is the best so hardsubs help them a lot. Now, we won't sacrifice millions of users just because someone is bitching about hardsubs.

[SHAD0W]

Originally Posted by xyzone

I'm just wondering why do fansubbers insist on using romanji to paste song lyrics in anime?

So they can watch one episode and go tell all their kaweeaboo friends (and everybody else) that they can speak Japanese.

I've seen this happen.

A lot.

[Nagoyankee]

Originally Posted by SHAD0W

So they can watch one episode and go tell all their kaweeaboo friends (and everybody else) that they can speak Japanese.

I've seen this happen.

A lot.

So have I, right here on JF. I loathe them friggin' romaji-users.

[Koir]

Originally Posted by Nagoyankee

So have I, right here on JF. I loathe them friggin' romaji-users.

Just a question: if romaji is such a horrible, horrible, world-destroying blight on existence, why does it still exist? As a whipping post for advanced Japanese-speaking students?

Bear in mind this is coming from a person who can't read Japanese at all anyway, so that snide castoff response won't work.

[SHAD0W]

Originally Posted by Koir

Just a question: if romaji is such a horrible, horrible, world-destroying blight on existence, why does it still exist? As a whipping post for advanced Japanese-speaking students?

Bear in mind this is coming from a person who can't read Japanese at all anyway, so that snide castoff response won't work.

It exists to enable English (and I'm guessing other languages) can have Japanese loan-words like Karate, Sushi etc.

It should not be used as a medium to learn a language such as Japanese that does not use Roman characters as the pronounciation and spellings of words will only confuse others when they come to more advanced levels.

Take the word Tokyo, as a fine example. Romaji users will see it in their Japanese text books as Tokyo ni ikimasu. (actually cringed when writing that) but the kana for it is toukiyou.. See where I'm coming from? A person then going to learn kana will try to write ときょ　(tokyo) thinking they've written the city when its really just gibberish.

Equally, they will come to read toukiyou in kana (とうきょう) and think "WTF is that?".

I've also seen Ro-maji text books use English phonetics to make Japanese words (Japanese for Dummies is a good one for this)
"Tokyo nee ee-kee-ma-soo"

Nuff said.

な～さん、　いい署名だな～　

[xyzone]

Yeah, he's right. What an unofficial instructor told me once is that the alphabet doesn't exactly represent the sounds of the kana and the language, it's just aproximation.

Anyways, I don't want to be hater, I'm all about the love (well not really but it sounds nice). So just suffice to say I don't like anime being defaced by romaji hardsubs. And about the ASS subtitles talk earlier, I've been playing around with it, and I see nothing wrong with those softsubs nor the playback, assuming that the player actually supports it. Generally, it either does or doesn't. If it plays mkv, it usually does. (We see very little fansubs in avi these days, if any. What's the excuse?) I give you this example テスト.mkv I remember when I first got a CDR, I burned this for a portable cd and listened to it all the time.

btw, if anyone can play that who knows their stuff, let me know if there's any mistakes.

[Koir]

Originally Posted by SHAD0W

It exists to enable English (and I'm guessing other languages) can have Japanese loan-words like Karate, Sushi etc.

It should not be used as a medium to learn a language such as Japanese that does not use Roman characters as the pronounciation and spellings of words will only confuse others when they come to more advanced levels.

Take the word Tokyo, as a fine example. Romaji users will see it in their Japanese text books as Tokyo ni ikimasu. (actually cringed when writing that) but the kana for it is toukiyou.. See where I'm coming from? A person then going to learn kana will try to write ときょ　(tokyo) thinking they've written the city when its really just gibberish.

Equally, they will come to read toukiyou in kana (とうきょう) and think "WTF is that?".

I've also seen Ro-maji text books use English phonetics to make Japanese words (Japanese for Dummies is a good one for this)
"Tokyo nee ee-kee-ma-soo"

I see. It's a bridge between Japanese and non-Japanese languages meant to give understandable words for Japanese nouns and concepts?

I'm probably wrong, but that's how I see it at the moment...

Nuff said.

な～さん、　いい署名だな～　

Translation? Remember, non-Japanese ignoramus here...

[Nagoyankee]

Originally Posted by Koir

Just a question: if romaji is such a horrible, horrible, world-destroying blight on existence, why does it still exist? As a whipping post for advanced Japanese-speaking students?

Bear in mind this is coming from a person who can't read Japanese at all anyway, so that snide castoff response won't work.

First off, I'm not an advanced Japanese-speaking student. I'm a native speaker of that language. You wouldn't know it because you aren't interested in learning Japanese; therefore, you wouldn't read my rather numerous posts in the language section. If you are judging me only from my post above, you are being incredibly unfair and unreasonable. Ask anyone who posts frequently in the Japanese Help section (if you know who they are). Unfortunately, members like yourself won't ever get to know how much I've done for JF.

Why does romaji still exist? How in the world would this man from a non-alphabet language and cultural background know the answer? Romaji is you guys' creation, not ours. If I were to guess, however, it would be because some people are simply too lazy to learn the real Japanese writing systems even after having decided to try their hand at learning the language.

Just imagine what you would think of me if I were writing all this using Japanese letters and if I still called it "English". I would be receiving all kinds of negative comments, wouldn't I? That is exactly how I feel about romaji. It's writing Language A using the writing system of Language B. It isn't pretty in my eyes if not in yours. Study Japanese using romaji and you won't be able to read anything important. No websites, no newspapers, no magazines, no restaurant menus, no anything. There's not a single reason I should be promoting romaji. I studied my butt off to learn English. Why shouldn't I expect the Japanese-learners to do the same instead of cheating themselves with romaji? Had I studied English using Japanese letters, I wouldn't even be on JF.

[Koir]

It's remarkable how a simple statement meant only to head off an unhelpful sort of response was not only taken the wrong way, but apparently as a very personal attack on you, Nagoyankee.

Nowhere in my response was a personal attack on you or any of your considerably worthwhile effort to inform members of Japan Forum. On the contrary, I consider you one of the best providers of information not only of the Japanese language, but the culture and daily living in the country itself.

I know there are many temporary and remaining members of this forum who have mistaken or flat-out erroneous views on the very subjects that you are an expert at, as you live in the country of Japan yourself. I, however, am not a member of that group.

My question was solely based on a oft-observed opinion about romaji and its usefulness in helping non-Japanese speakers learn the language in some form. As Shadow has illustrated in response, it is not much of a help at all in that fashion. His response was informative and well-spoken, and increased my understanding sufficiently.