This is somewhat of a pet peeve for me, but when you’re romanizing Japanese, it should be written in such a way that the target audience can read it as it is written and at least approximate the correct pronunciation. This is especially true in situations where the pronunciation is important, such as karaoke. Now, this is not to say that this is an issue in most situations. Japanese is, by and large, very simple to romanize.
There is, however, one situation which should be simple to deal with, but I am seeing an increasing number of fansubbers handling it incorrectly. This situation has to do with the particle “wa.” This particle is in a unique situation because, though it is pronounced “wa,” it does not use the hiragana for that syllable (わ) and instead uses the hiragana for the syllable “ha” (は). It is not intrinsically wrong to romanize particle “wa” as “ha.” One of the three main romanization systems does use that, but that particular system, Nihon-shiki, was created specifically for use by Japanese speakers romanizing their own language for other Japanese speakers. This is the heart of the issue.
When romanizing or translating, you should always consider your target audience. If, like the majority of those who watch fansubbed shows, your audience does not speak the source language, you should make every effort when romanizing to have the romanized text read phonetically as closely to the source language as possible. People who do not know the source language will not make the mental switches needed to pronounce things the way they were meant to be, they will say whatever is written. So please, fansubbers, when you are romanizing Japanese, think of your audience and write “wa.”
TLDR: If you write the particle は as “ha,” people who do not know Japanese will read it as “ha,” so if your audience is not Japanese, please write it as “wa.”
It would be remiss of me to post and not mention anything regarding our projects so…
Pani Poni v17 is coming out on November 25th and is currently slated to be the final volume.
I have been quite busy recently so I haven’t had much time to devote to translating, but things should calm down for me soon, so I’ll get back to that!
