For “Romaji” Users Out There

I realize that I always have ideas that never come to fruition because of laziness and such, but this is something that I do in my spare time anyway. I had downloaded that Kana ~Imouto~ Special Sound Album from HF-Network a while ago, and after extracting the RAR, I found out that all the MP3’z were still in raw kana/kanji – written Japanese, for you romaji users out there (romaji users meaning people who can only read Japanese if it’s in romaji ^_^). Being the organized person that I am (and lacking the Japanese version of WinXP as well as a true international version of Winamp), I decided to rename all the filenames and ID3 tags to romaji. It would make it easier to share with fellow users, that’s for sure! ^_^

So… hmm… there’s absolutely NOTHING on this album… *frustration*… well, I guess it’s time to do it the long way – translate it myself! ^_^

Once I was done (I’m still not 100% sure of my translations), I thought to myself, ‘Hmm, I really should do this for my website’. I mean, I’ve translated tons of stuff for myself, just to rename and retag my MP3’s. I buy a lot of CD’s and I rename/retag them as I’m ripping them, so since I’ve already done the work, I might as well share it too!

I’m not 100% sure of my romaji translations. Heck, I still can’t read kanji without help, but I can read raw kana with little struggle. I’m also pretty good at picking up nuances of languages, which helps when translating. I’m sure I’ll get better with time, especially since I’m studying Japanese. So, here’s the catch. A huge project like this may or may not be successful due to help from others who are very good at translations. So, I would appreciate some feedback on this. I’ll probably post everything into my forum, which will make it easier for commenting and such. Is that an awesome idea or what??? I just have to go through all my albums and stuff to do this… eventually, I will be able to get this done. My first plan is just to get the romaji posted. I will also post additional information such as track times, track numbers, artists, release dates, and publishing information, to help catalogue things better. English translations will be done later, since I am far from being able to translate to English properly.

I will be following certain formatting rules. All tags will be using ID3v2 format. If you use an ID3 editor like Tag&Rename, then it will be easier to deploy these formatting rules. The release date will be in the Comments field. If there are any English title translations, they will be in the same field, underneath the release date. If the song is a theme for a movie, drama, or anime, it will be noted as such above the release date (this just makes cataloguing of downloaded songs easier). You’ll notice that if quotation marks are used, since Windows cannot use this special character in filenames, I replace each instance of it with two single apostrophes. If you use a sans-serif font like Tahoma or Arial, then this will look like a quotation mark. I capitalize every new word, be it in English or Japanese. However, in some Japanese songs, they use different cases, so I preserve this (eg. Dream a dream as opposed to Dream A Dream) – the same goes for certain artists like hitomi (instead of Hitomi). If there are loan words written in katakana, then I translate them directly to English (like “version” as opposed to “baazhon”), unless they are just Japanese words being stressed, or made-up loan words (like orgel – what the heck IS that??? O_o). I translate Japanese artist names to true Japanese format – eg. Amuro Namie instead of Namie Amuro. There are many many other smaller rules (such as special character exceptions), but they are really uncommon, and you’ll notice them right away because I will add comments to things like that. So, that wraps that up.

For example’s sake, here is the idea for the format, using Kana ~Imouto~ Special Sound Album, which I just translated a few minutes ago:

Album: Kana ~Imouto~ Special Sound Album
Artist: see tracks.
Year: 2001
Genre: Game
Release Date: 2001.09.27
Copyright: KNS Entertainment AKCI-26000 (avex distribution)
Track 01: Shiroi Kisetsu (Remix Ver.)
Artist: KANA
Track 02: Kaze Ni Norutte
Artist: Kitou Rie
Track 03: Dream a dream
Artist: Futami Naoko
Track 04: Believe ~Tsubura Na Hitomi~ (Remix Ver.)
Artist: KANA
Track 05: Snowflake ~Omoi De No Hate, Yuki Wa Kudaru~
Artist: Futami Naoko
Track 06: Hajimari No Sayonara
Artist: Kitou Rie
Track 07: Anata Ni Deaete Yokatta
Artist: KANA
Track 08: Anata E (Remix Ver.)
Artist: KANA
Bonus Track 09: Anata E ~Kikai Shiki Orgel Version (From Project ”KANA ORGEL”)
Artist: Project ”KANA ORGEL”

Everybody, keep checking back. I will also be posting to the LJ group, for those who don’t know me or read my LJ. Send everybody you know who listens to J-Pop or Anime soundtracks (and are organized somewhat) there!

Current Anime: Hikari To Mizu No Daphne – 3 to 4 [Lunar], Bottle Fairy – 1 to 2 [HnK]