I use HanCinema too. I've tried to get my (admittedly much smaller number of) Korean films linked locally. Like yourself, I find that it's more of a personal thing, and that contribution is unlikely in most cases.

Quoting synner_man:

Quote:
use of phonetic titles on Korean films (despite an English title present on the cover)

That annoys me too when it happens. Let's use something that, let's be honest, has probably been looked up on a third-party site as the title, rather than what is on the cover. It doesn't make sense! Even if I can recall what a movie's phonetic name is, majority of the time I'm going to remember the English name. Unfortunately, despite being the logical approach, it's one I've decided to keep local.

I really wish that Ken would sit down with people, like synner_man, who have extensive experience with Asian DVDs.  Together they might, at the very least, come up with a standard that will make contributions consistent.

Quoting Unicus69:

Quote:
I really wish that Ken would sit down with people, like synner_man, who have extensive experience with Asian DVDs.  Together they might, at the very least, come up with a standard that will make contributions consistent.

I have said this before... As long as Skip doesn't understand the problem and the target it is not useful to have such discussions, as there will always be posts disrupting the flow of discussion. This is already the second example just this year.

Quoting Unicus69:

Quote:
Quoting ya_shin:

Quote:

I have said this before... As long as Skip doesn't understand the problem and the target it is not useful to have such discussions, as there will always be posts disrupting the flow of discussion. This is already the second example just this year.

Just so we are clear, I meant a private sit down.  PM, IM, email...it really doesn't matter.  Just as long as the people who deal with these things on a regular basis, and will be affected the most...I think synner_man mentioned 1500 or so Asian titles owned...could give Ken the benefit of their knowledge.

Quoting northbloke:

Quote:
Do any of these systems mentioned have an online translation facility, or does anyone know of a reliable translation facility?
It would be of great help to those many of us who don't understand the Japanese language (no offence taken here!) if we could type in the original characters as best we can and get Romanized text back which we can then submit.
I personally only have a handful of Japanese titles but would like to help with their contribution. Hell, if anyone knows of one for Thai too - I have a few of them! 

As for the discussion at hand, I am in no way qualified to have any preference, but anything that helps us thickos to contribute kanji would be much appreciated.

Unfortunately, an automated translation (or should I say, romanisation) tool or software for Japanese names is not feasible.

The problem is that for quite a few names, the exact same kanji combination can have different pronunciations, even up to more than ten for the same name. Such a program would be able to list all pronunciations associated to that name, but would be unable to differentiate and tell you which of the various readings applies to the person you refer to.

Long answer short, such things are best done by people who are bilingual (or at least to some extent bilingual) and have some knowledge in the actors/crew department ... or know how access reliable Japanese sources that state the reading of the names.

What I do is go to wikipedia Japan (I know, it's Wikipedia but unlike the English variant, it's a very reliable source for such matters) and look up the name by typing in the kanji. It's then just a matter of matching that name with the movie he/she is connected to, in order to find the right person.

For the DVD Profiler community, it might be interesting to create small groups of 'administrators' per language, like Japanese, Chinese, Korean, etc. These people would then be responsible for maintaining and updating anything that has to do with the languag they specialised in. It would also give other users a single point of contact when they have questions regarding a movie from that locality. Perhaps it's difficult to accomplish but would certainly help keep the database clean.


I also agree that a little sit-down with Ken and a few people who have problems inputting their language (Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and many others) is definitely desirable. I think adding Unicode support and an extra field (translated name or something like that) would already go a long way to solving the technical problems we are confronted with.

Then you must hate the movies, surfeur, since all we do is copy the credits.   How many times mist you be told this not about France and their sensibilities or the germans or anyone else, it is about the film credits. so in that sense I am absolutely OPPOSED to such a concept. I have told you before, Yves, we do not to duplicate the inaccuracies inherent in IMDb they already exist and you are free to use them.

There you go, AGAIN!!!

Skip

Quoting Dr Pavlov:

Quote:
Then you must hate the movies, surfeur, since all we do is copy the credits.   How many times mist you be told this not about France and their sensibilities or the germans or anyone else, it is about the film credits. so in that sense I am absolutely OPPOSED to such a concept. I have told you before, Yves, we do not to duplicate the inaccuracies inherent in IMDb they already exist and you are free to use them.

There you go, AGAIN!!!

Skip

The problem is that we don't just copy the credits. We also have to find out what parts of the name to put into these boxes: First Name, Last Name, Middle Name. To me this is mostly impossible with 3 word chineese names. Then, or should I say first, I need to see what is the common name for this name, which is hard enough when we don't have any local reliable source for this. So I find IMDB to be one of the best I can find. If I find a common name, I can then run it trough the CLT together with all different combination of the 3 letter credited name.

Try this with a 30 lines long credit or longer.

Eommen, look here: a random example 

If the credits say Francois, the this is the way it should be written.