Talk:Ugetsu Monogatari

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Requested move[edit]

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was no consensus, after eight weeks of listing. --BDD (talk) 17:58, 30 January 2013 (UTC) (non-admin closure)[reply]

Tales of Moonlight and Rain → Ugetsu Monogatari – The work appears to be known primarily by its Japanese name even in reliable English sources. Several sources cited in this article, including Washburn and Takata, clearly prefer Ugetsu. Google Scholar search indicates 556 hits for "Ugetsu Monogatari" and only 126 for "Tales of Moonlight and Rain". Google Books search was less lopsided, with "Tales of Moonlight and Rain" coming out on top (20,100>12,700). This indicates that while Tales of Moonlight and Rain is the most common English translation of the title as used in non-academic literature (i.e., translations for the general public), scholarly sources generally prefer to leave the title untranslated. I can speculate that this is because Ugetsu can be translated several ways, and while in recent years "Moonlight and Rain" has become favoured, it is not the only possible translation. UNESCO have used the more literal Tales of the Moon and the Rain, and other translations exist[1][2][3]. Because the title does not literally/directly refer to the content of the stories, it has been interpreted several ways, and so the Wikipedia article's title choosing to support one translation may violate NPOV. Relisted. BDD (talk) 09:32, 5 January 2013 (UTC) elvenscout742 (talk) 06:55, 5 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Provisional weak support - Given that there isn't agreement on the English title, and that this is a 1776 text, prepared to go against 2:1 in print sources. But if there is a convincing argument against from anyone may change view. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:36, 6 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Change to full support - on closer examination Ugetsu Monogatari gets around 4:1 over "Tales of Moonlight and Rain" on Google Scholar, plus ngram provided by Cuchullain below, plus too much variation in English names. In ictu oculi (talk) 11:49, 5 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Those links seem to be in error, I get different books from the ones you stated. Chambers is here. JoshuSasori (talk) 01:30, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. The book sales are interesting and I think relevant data, and easily interpretted. There's no POV issue. Andrewa (talk) 17:12, 13 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Reply Wikipedia article-titles are not based on Amazon book sales, and where possible they should be based on reliable academic sources. Donald Keene's History of Japanese Literature is one such source that gives the more literal/accurate translation "Tales of Rain and the Moonthe Moon and the Rain". I listed another couple above. No one is suggesting we give only romanized Japanese (which isn't called "rōmaji", by the way, let alone "romanji") and no translation. I am merely saying we should not give undue weight to one particular interpretation of the title. I say the title of the article should be the only possible title that is generally accepted, and within the body of the article we can make reference to the various ways in which said title has been interpreted/translated into English. The fact is that the Google Scholar results I cited above indicate a complete lack of consensus in the academic community as to this work being called "Tales of Moonlight and Rain" -- well over 75% of the hits for "Ugetsu Monogatari" do not make any reference to the interpretation "Moonlight and Rain". Neither of the above comments address this issue, and appear to come from users who do not speak Japanese, and therefore cannot necessarily appreciate that ugetsu (雨月) means "the moon and the rain", and "moonlight" is only one interpretation apparently supported by a small minority of specialists. The POV issue arises thereof. elvenscout742 (talk) 15:35, 15 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Addendum Not that I accept Amazon rankings as remotely appropriate for this discussion anyway, but: how could an old translation from the early 1970s be expected to have a higher sales than a 2006 translation on Amazon.com? Additionally, Kauffner above cites Britannica, but when I checked the link the latter appeared to give prominence to Ugetsu Monogatari and give the English title only in parentheses. Am I missing something? Because this seems to support my point that the article should be renamed ... elvenscout742 (talk) 15:43, 15 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I hardly think the term "POV" is appropriate for minor variations in translation. Such variations are not a reason to use Japanese. If the sources were calling this work Ugetsu without translating it, then this could be considered the common name. The practical value of a title depends on it being recognizable to as many readers as possible. The current best-selling translation is likely to be more representative of common usage than specialist scholarship. I get 2,480 post-2000 English-language GBook hits for "Ugetsu Monogatari" -llc, 3,400 for "Tales of Moonlight and Rain" -llc. Kauffner (talk) 04:46, 16 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Plenty of sources call this work "Ugetsu Monogatari", including Encyclopedia Britannica. I also found that the close-second best-selling translation of the work into English (on Amazon alone) is the 1989 Tuttle edition of Zolbrod's Ugetsu Monogatari: Tales of Moonlight and Rain.[4] This despite its publication greatly predating the founding of Amazon as a company. Your attempt to take this out of context by posting a link to the 40-year-old, $120 edition and claiming it as a "distant third" has been noted. The fact is that the majority of scholarly sources do not favour "Moonlight and Rain", and a significant number of sources that even provide "Moonlight and Rain" as a gloss still give preference to "Ugetsu Monogatari". This indicates that we are not arguing over "using Japanese", but over the use of the most prominent English name of the work, which just happens to be romanized Japanese. You have claimed several times that "the current best-selling translation" is a good indication of what English-speaking readers would recognize, but the fact is that Chambers is not exactly a New York Times bestseller -- it just happens to rank slightly higher on the sales ranks of a single, online bookstore than the older, apparently better-established translation that has been printed by two separate publishers. And again, Wikipedia should be using well-researched academic sources like Keene, etc. for articles like this. elvenscout742 (talk) 05:51, 16 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see how you can interpret Britannica as supporting your position. Their page on the book is entitled "Tales of Moonlight and Rain". "Ugetsu monogatari" is a page about the 1953 movie. (This is not exactly right, since the English-language name of the film is just Ugetsu, as the text acknowledges.) Britannica`s text gives both Japanese and English, so we of course use English, per WP:UE. I am not proposing to remove Japanese from the article text, you know. Kauffner (talk) 06:06, 17 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
And I am not suggesting we move a reference to the Zolbrod/Chambers translation of the title either. But since there are numerous reliable sources that give different translations of the title, which are generally closer in meaning to the Japanese title, and most of the sources for this article give preference to the Japanese title, we should probably do the same. Ugetsu isn't like The Tale of the Heike or The Tale of Genji, which have been translated into English numerous times, always under the same literal title, and are widely discussed in English academic writing under those English titles. Ugetsu literally means "rain and the moon", and readers of Keene, etc. who decide to look up the work on English Wikipedia would be just as surprised to see this title as readers of Chambers would be to see the page named Tales of Rain and the Moon. I know this because I am one of the former group. elvenscout742 (talk) 07:27, 17 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How long do these usually take? No evidence has been presented that contradicts my initial argument that the academic community has no consensus on what to call this work in English. In fact the only opposing argument was based on Amazon sales figures, which when examined more closely support this page being moved (one high-selling translation calls it Tales of Moonlight and Rain[5][6], and the other calls it Ugetsu Monogatari[7][8]). There was also a strawman argument based around the accusation that I was in favour of only giving the Japanese name with no English translation; this is a misrepresentation, as I am in favour of mentioning all of the ways the work has been referred to in English in reliable sources. The current title of the article is a free translation of the work's title (which literally means Tales of Rain and the Moon[9][10][11][12]), and is not supported by the academic community.[13][14] I think what needs to be done here should be quite obvious. elvenscout742 (talk) 04:42, 20 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support. I was prepared to close this as no consensus, but a closer inspection suggests the Japanese title has been more common in the sources in recent decades. While "Tales of Moonlight and Rain" is far and away the most common translation (the others get only a few hits each), this ngram shows a preference for "Ugetsu Monogatari" in books published since 1950. In contrast, the English translation of the better known "Tale of Genji" appears to be substantially more common than the Japanese Genji monogatari[15]. There also appears to be a clear preference for the Japanese in scholarly literature on the subject, and it appears under "Ugetsu monotagari" in the common tertiary source The Japan Encyclopedia. While "Tales of Moonlight and Rain" isn't a bad title for this article, it appears Ugetsu monogatari is somewhat more common in modern sources.--Cúchullain t/c 15:02, 2 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This 'support' vote is based on extremely dubious evidence. The film ugetsu is more famous than the original book, and when the film is discussed the title will be stated to come from ugetsu monogatari. There is also a jazz album with this title. JoshuSasori (talk) 01:30, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
And how exactly is that different or more "dubious" than the raw Google searches used by the "oppose" vote? In fact, it's a better measure as it's a direct comparison, rather than just contrasting questionably determined hit counts. Moreover, if you actually look at the relevant sources for the topic rather than just a raw google search, you'll see they tend to favor the Japanese title. Just from what's available at my university library, we have Saunders' translation Ugetsu Monogatari or Tales of Moonlight and Rain, Zolbrod's translation Ugetsu monogatari : Tales of Moonlight and Rain, Dennis Washburn's "Ghostwriters and Literary Haunts. Subordinating Ethics to Art in Ugetsu Monogatari", James T. Araki's "A Critical Approach to the Ugetsu Monogatari", Wilfrid Whitehouse's translation Ugetsu Monogatari: Tales of a Clouded Moon, Lawrence Marceau's "Tales of the supernatural in early modern Japan: Kaidan, Adinari, Ugetsu Monogatari", Blake M. Young's "'Hankai': A Tale from the Harusame monogatari by Ueda Akinari", etc. And those are just the ones that use them in the title. There are plenty more that discuss the work and do so under the title Ugetsu monogatari.--Cúchullain t/c 13:55, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • If you compare here and here, it looks like over 30 percent of the GBook hits refer to the movie, which was of course released internationally with an untranslated title. Every book translation includes a translated version of the title. We translate a title "if this can be done without loss of accuracy and with greater understanding for the English-speaking reader," per WP:UE. Slight variations in how a title can be translated is no reason to use a non-English title. Kauffner (talk) 11:23, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That's a total misinterpretation of what UE says. We actually go with the common name in English language sources. Here it appears to be Ugetsu monogatari.--Cúchullain t/c 13:55, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If we always went with the more common form, there would be no provision in the guideline regarding translated titles. There are more GBook hits for Tales of Moonlight and Rain than for Ugetsu Monogatari anyway. For Tales..., every result on the first page is relevant. But for Ugetsu... only six of the results on the first page refer to the book -- the other four refer to the movie. Many authors refer to the book by a translated name, but use the Japanese name for the movie. See, for example, this review in The Guardian. Saunders and Zolbrod give the book's title both ways, which, if anything, is a recognition of the need to translate. Chambers doesn't bother with Japanese at all. The idea is that the title should be recognizable to as many readers as possible. Kauffner (talk) 16:26, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Response Missed this one. Chambers does bother with Japanese A LOT[16]. Anyone who has actually read his translation would at least be aware of the Japanese name of the work, and would likely be not at all surprised that Wikipedia uses this name. One of Chambers' notes (on p. 228) also cites yet another potential translation of the title. elvenscout742 (talk) 03:47, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The provisions are for subjects that don't have common names in English sources. That's obviously not the case here, as two names have been in common use for decades. To that, as I showed above, raw Google searches notwithstanding, the Japanese form seems to be more common in the reliable, English-language sources on the subject. In fact, other than the translations, I didn't find any sources on the work that include "Tales of Moonlight and Rain" in the title. Many of them include it in the text, but usually just as a translation, after which they resume calling it Ugetsu monogatari.--Cúchullain t/c 17:15, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If the title of the book is given in the form "Ugetsu Monogatari (Tales of Moonlight and Rain)", as Britannica gives it, this implies that Ugetsu... is the Japanese name and that Tales... is the English-language name. As has been pointed out repeatedly now, even sources that refer to the movie by the Japanese name may refer to the book by a translated title. This suggests that 30 to 40 percent the GBook/ngram results for Ugetsu Monogatari are not references to the book. Kauffner (talk) 00:58, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That's some nice wishful thinking, but all that implies is that "tales of..." is prominent, not that it's the most prominent. And once again, regardless of the film and how you happen to parse the ngram, English sources on the book appear to prefer the Japanese name.Cúchullain t/c 01:14, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • These guidelines looked relevant to me:
    • "If the original language [of a book] does not use the Latin alphabet, the title is normally translated." (WP:NCB)
    • "If a name is used in translating or explaining the official name, especially in texts addressed to an English-speaking audience, it is probably widely accepted," per WP:PLACE. Kauffner (talk) 01:41, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You're cherry-picking lines from the guidelines. The WP:NCB quote refers to subjects that don't have common names in English sources, which obviously isn't the case here. It also says, "However, in some cases, when a transcription or transliteration of a title originally not in Latin alphabet, is better known, and/or less ambiguous, that version of the title can be used..." That's what's happening here.Cúchullain t/c 20:31, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - as Kauffner points out, by default the English name should be used. The English name for this work is certainly widespread as Kauffner demonstrated. The case for renaming to Ugetsu Monogatari is a remarkably unconvincing one, based on skewed and speculative analyses of some search engine results. The proposer of the move has even supplied links with the text "other translations exist" which turn up lots of examples, not of people retranslating the book title into English, but of people who have retranslated the title of a film with the Japanese title Ugetsu Monogatari and added explanatory text to the name of the film. For example, it is easy to locate two different books on Kenji Mizoguchi, and three separate books on horror films, and a book on film director Fellini. JoshuSasori (talk) 06:38, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Then how do you explain the various English sources on the book - not the film - that I brought up that use Ugetsu monogatari? If you look beyond your Google results at sources actually on the book, they overwhelmingly appear to use the Japanese.--Cúchullain t/c 15:05, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I cannot confirm this. Google book search for "ugetsu monogatari" - mizoguchi -film -1953 gives 6290 results, whereas Google book search for "tales of moonlight and rain" -mizoguchi -film -1953 gives 18900 results. You need to present very much stronger evidence that "ugetsu monogatari" is "overwhelmingly" more common. JoshuSasori (talk) 00:43, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Except that that excludes any source that mentions there was a film adaptation in 1953 (or anything to do with 1953, or any source on the film that discusses what it's adapted from in great detail). What I'm talking about is looking at the sources that actually discuss the work, as I did above, rather than just raw Google hits, which everyone is seeing differently (or at least parsing differently). As I've said three times now, at my university library, almost every source about this work that I could find uses Ugetsu monogatari. The only ones that use the "Tales..." in their title are the translations, which use it as a title or, more commonly, a subtitle. Most people who encounter this work in English do so with the Japanese title. I'll start a section below with this evidence, which is far more compelling than Google searches.--Cúchullain t/c 16:18, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The evidence was very far from compelling. I don't think there is a clear case for moving this page. JoshuSasori (talk) 03:52, 10 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Unless you've located a swath of sources that use "Tales..." that I've somehow missed, the evidence is quite compelling that "Ugetsu..." is much more commonly used in English sources on the subject.Cúchullain t/c 04:15, 10 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
JoshuSasori's interpretation of the links I provided is clearly flawed. Only one of the three links I provided[17][18][19] lists translations related to the film version. I was aware of this when I posted it, but what I meant was that reliable English sources exist that give the title of the book under a different translation. (That the reliable sources mainly discuss the film version is irrelevant, since they choose to translate the title of the original book as well.) I meant to indicate that while Tales of Moonlight and Rain is a popular translation, UNESCO and Keene give different ones, and countless others exist. And clearly most of the hits for "Ugetsu Monogatari" are not about the film version, since searching for the title in pages that do not mention the film's director by name does not change the results all that much.[20][21] Additionally, the argument that the film is "more famous" than the book is a red herring and quite ridiculous: the book is a classic of Japanese literature and has had museum exhibits[22] devoted to it and its author. I have seen the movie three times and I quite enjoy it; but in order to watch it in the Republic of Ireland I had to import the DVD from Hong Kong, while the book was available in my local bookshop. elvenscout742 (talk) 06:30, 10 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Why do you put a link to a Japanese museum exhibit in your response? This is a requested move in the English-language wikipedia. Whether the book is more famous in Japan or the film is more famous in Japan has nothing to do with this requested move. From the context it should have been obvious that the discussion is about which one is famous in the English-speaking world. Why you would have to get a DVD from Hong Kong which is readily-available at Amazon.com and its subsidiaries, I do not know, but your personal purchasing frustrations have absolutely nothing to do with this discussion. The film Ugetsu was on the Sight & Sound top ten list of "the greatest films ever made" in both 1962 and 1972, and its release in the west in 1953 at the Venice Film Festival predates all of the English-language translations of the book which have been discussed here. JoshuSasori (talk) 08:10, 10 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Neither the film nor the book are "famous" (known by almost everyone) in the English-speaking world. No one who watched the film is unaware of the book's existence, but the opposite is clearly not so. The book is clearly more notable than the film. Both have been translated and published numerous times in English-speaking countries. From my perspective (a year ago, when I lived in Ireland, an English-speaking country), the book was more accessible and probably more "famous". And all of this is entirely irrelevant, though. I have thoroughly disproven your argument that most of the source I referred to were about the film - why would a webpage about the film give a translation of the book's title, and not mention the name of the film's director? elvenscout742 (talk) 08:41, 10 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This is turning into one of these humorous discussions. Since you've seen the film three times, why do you think that no-one who watched it is unaware of the book's existence? The book is not mentioned in the film. I dare you: watch it a fourth time, and confirm. So it is quite possible to watch the film without being aware of the book's existence. You claim to have thoroughly disproven my argument that most of the sources you refer to were about the film. However, neither have you disproven this, nor, even more amusingly, have I made the argument. This discussion is completely farcical. JoshuSasori (talk) 08:49, 10 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Nope. The third item in the opening credits of the film, after the title card and the producer's credit, clearly states Based on Ugetsu Monogatari by Ueda Akinari (上田秋成「雨月物語」より, Ueda Akinari "Ugetsu Monogatari" yori). elvenscout742 (talk) 02:10, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. It's time to get back on track and wait for some additional input. To summarize my position, I think the Google results are probably inconclusive and have been parsed differently by different editors. A raw search will show "Tales of Moonlight and Rain" as more common than "Ugetsu monogatari" 20,100 vs. 12,700), though ngram shows "Ugetsu monogatari" to be more common in books published since 1950. One editor, Joshu, believes the Google results are flawed. At any rate, the below list of sources on the topic from a university library shows an obvious preference for "Ugetsu monogatari". In fact, all secondary sources on the work that I surveyed preferred it, as did the various standard reference works. Of the five translations, two were called Ugetsu monogatari with Tales of Moonlight and Rain as a subtitle, one used Ugetsu... with a different English subtitle, and two used just Tales of Moonlight and Rain. It appears that most English readers who encounter this work will do so under the name Ugetsu monogatari.Cúchullain t/c 14:08, 10 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sources[edit]

Here is a collection of sources for this work available in the University of North Florida library, part of the linked State University System of Florida Libraries. For now, this is restricted to sources that use the title of the work in their own title, or are otherwise largely about the book.

Sources using Ugetsu monogatari
  • "Ghostwriters and Literary Haunts. Subordinating Ethics to Art in Ugetsu Monogatari", Dennis Washburn, 1990
  • "A Critical Approach to the Ugetsu Monogatari", James T. Araki, 1967
  • "Tales of the supernatural in early modern Japan: Kaidan, Adinari, Ugetsu Monogatari", Lawrence Marceau, 2004
  • "Ghostwriters and Literary Haunts: Subordinating Ethics to Art in Ugetsu Monogatari", Dennis Washburn, 1990
  • "'A Garden Inclosed:' Fuentes' Aura, Hawthorne's and Paz's 'Rappaccini's Daughter,' and Uyeda's Ugetsu Monogatari, Lois Parkinson Zamora, 1984
Sources using Tales of Moonlight and Rain
  • Tales of Moonlight and Rain (translation), Anthony H. Chambers, 2007
  • Tales of moonlight and rain; Japanese Gothic tales (translation), Kengi Hamada, 1972
Sources that use both in the title
  • Ugetsu monogatari : Tales of Moonlight and Rain : a complete English version of the eighteenth-century Japanese collection of tales of the supernatural (translation), Leon M. Zolbrod, 1974.
  • Ugetsu Monogatari or Tales of Moonlight and Rain (translation), Dale Sauders, 1966
  • Then there's also Ugetsu Monogatari: Tales of a Clouded Moon (translation), Wilfred Whitehouse, 1941. This uses an English translation as a subtitle, but not this English translation.

A search of the larger University of Florida library shows a similar trend: 1,127 hits for "Ugetsu monogatari", vs. 209 for "Tales of Moonlight and Rain". While part of the "Ugetsu..." hits may actually be about the film, the vast majority of the "Tales..." hits are just copies of the above translations and reviews of the same.
The sources above are only those that use the work's title in their own title. A brief review of common sources like The Japan Encyclopedia, World Within Walls: Japanese Literature of the Pre-Modern Era, 1600--1867, "The Appeal of Kaiden: Tales of the Strange" by Noriko T. Reider, The Pleasures of Japanese Literature by Donald Keene also show a preference for the Japanese title.--Cúchullain t/c 16:18, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding the University of Florida library searches, those books are clearly not library holdings but merely a catalogue of book titles. The majority of them are actually books which are written in Japanese, with their titles romanized. So, that evidence is utterly worthless on the matter of what the book is called in English. JoshuSasori (talk) 23:45, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It hardly matters if they're holdings or book titles, and they're no more "utterly worthless" than your Google results. At any rate it's the least of the evidence; the North Florida results are all things that I accessed myself, either on the web on in person.Cúchullain t/c 02:44, 10 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
These are the titles of books in Japanese, romanized. That there are 1,000 books in Japanese which use titles containing "ugetsu monogatari" has no bearing on the discussion. JoshuSasori (talk) 03:48, 10 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
What are you talking about? I can assure you that the sources from the UNF library, as well as the standard reference works I named, are all in English.Cúchullain t/c 04:11, 10 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
On the first fifty of these results which you posted, thirty of them, the majority, are in Japanese, three are in French, one is in German, three are about the film, and of the remaining 13, eight of them also use "Tales of Moonlight and Rain", one of them is "Tales of Rain and Moonlight" and one more is "Ueda Akinari's Tales of a rain'd moon". JoshuSasori (talk) 04:34, 10 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
And, once again, the books whose titles I listed out in detail above, and verified myself, are clearly in English and are directly relevant, and suggest a preference for the Japanese name in the sources.Cúchullain t/c 04:46, 10 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding the University of Florida library searches. JoshuSasori (talk) 05:08, 10 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, you keep fixating that rather than addressing the real argument. The English secondary sources suggest an obvious preference for "Ugetsu monogatari".--Cúchullain t/c 13:38, 10 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I can see, no one has ever actually argued that Tales of Moonlight and Rain is not the most common translated title. The problem is that only a small minority of reliable English sources use it, and numerous English-language sources on this work in particular and early-modern Japanese literature in general prefer either another translation, or the untranslated romanized title. elvenscout742 (talk) 05:50, 10 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Our guidelines, which I cite above, say to use English and to translate stuff that is not in English. To justify a title like "Ugetsu monogatari", you need to show that this phrase is common or self-explanatory enough that it can given untranslated in English. The major translations are a better guide to common usage than scholarly articles, and they all translate this phrase. The standard translation gets fewer hits on GScholar because the scholars are partial to their own original variations. There are at least as many GBook hits for "Tales of Moonlight and Rain" as there are for "Ugetsu monongatari," and many of the results for the transliterated title refer to the film rather than the book. On Highbeam, "Ugetsu monongatari" gets 36 results, but only two of these refer to the book. The others refer to the 1953 film. In both of the cases where it refers to the book, the phrase is immediately translated, once as "Tales of a Pale and Mysterious Moon After the Rain", and in other case as "Tales of Moonlight and Rain". Kauffner (talk) 03:39, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Kauffner, you keep repeating the same straw man argument that myself, In ictu oculi and Cuchullain are trying to completely remove the English translated titles from this article. The fact is that you have just above admitted that yet another potential translation of the book's title exists in English, and the sources Cuchullain has cited indicate that Ugetsu Monogatari is more commonly used anyway. Therefore, the title of the article should be the one that is universally accepted as correct, and is most commonly used anyway, and the translated titles can be referred to in the body of the article. The argument that few sources (I refuse to accept your assertion that there are none) give the Japanese title with no translation is irrelevant, because the translations these sources provide vary. Additionally, both you and JoshuSasori have stated numerous times, without giving any evidence whatsoever, that most of the results for the un-translated title are about the film, but this is patently not true. "Ugetsu Monogatari" gets 12,900 hits on Google Books, and "Ugetsu Monogatari" -Mizoguchi gets 9,130 -- how can most of the books be about the film, when 3/4 of them do not mention the name of the director? elvenscout742 (talk) 13:35, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Kauffner, as I explained, the guidelines for translating titles are for when there's no common name. It's irrelevant here, as there are, in fact, common names. The task is to find the most common one. The translations certainly don't supercede all other sources on the topic - and only two of the five use "Tales of..." anyway. The three others use "Ugetsu...". Two of those include "Tales of Moonlight and Rain" as a subtitle, while the fifth uses a different English subtitle.Cúchullain t/c 14:34, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If it means anything at this point, I noticed that several of the GBooks results for "Tales of Moonlight and Rain"[23] seem to actually give preference to "Ugetsu Monogatari" and provide the English title only in parentheses. I then searched for "Tales of Moonlight and Rain" without "Ugetsu Monogatari" and the results dropped by half[24], well below the number of hits for "Ugetsu Monogatari" that are not about the film[25]. Additionally, one of the books I found[26] points out that Zolbrod's (oldest and apparently most widely-read) translation is "under the name [''Ugetsu Monogatari'']". We know that he gave "Moonlight and Rain" as a subtitle, but this still seems relevant. elvenscout742 (talk) 04:05, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, I do not think that a majority of the GBook hits for Ugetsu Monogatari refer to the film. But if a quarter of them do, that is more then enough to refute the claim that the book is most commonly referred to by this title. Moreover, this is almost certainly an underestimate since elvenscout742's search is not restricted to English, and includes results in Japanese and other languages. As I have explained before, when a title is given in a format such as "Foo-jin (The Man from Foo)", it does not follow that Foo-jin is the common English-language name. Rather, it suggests that Foo-jin is the Japanese title, and that "The Man from Foo" is a translation. "If a name is used in translating or explaining the official name...it is probably widely accepted," per NCGN. Kauffner (talk) 01:50, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well I went into search settings and limited my search to English. If a couple of non-English sources snuck through, this might be because the sources are primarily in another language but include English. Or perhaps my browser is broken and it just didn't work the first time. Adding "&hl=en" to the end of the url for all of the links I provided above doesn't seem to change the results much, though.[27][28][29]. As an aside, your Foo-jin example is flawed because in this case the original English translator of Foo-jin chose to use "The Man from Foo" as a subtitle, and one later translator picked up on The Man from Foo and used it as his main title. And this while Foo-jin is considered a classic work of fiction in its native land but is almost unheard of in the west, except among specialists, leading to scholarly works on Fooish literature (with higher sales figures than any of the translations) being published in English, and all of them either referring to the work exclusively as Foo-jin or giving other more accurate (and less sexist ;) ) translations such as "Fooish People" or "The People of Foo". elvenscout742 (talk) 06:27, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note I just noticed that while WP:UE has been brought up in this debate, User:Kauffner seems to have misunderstood that policy point. WP:UE states that if there is a general lack of English-language reliable sources, or that agreement on an "English name" is not established, "Use English" doesn't apply. The multiple variant translations given in reliable sources are evidence that either there is "no consensus" on what to call the work in English, or that the work should be called Ugetsu Monogatari in English. elvenscout742 (talk) 03:27, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Change in the description of the stories[edit]

I just suppressed the word "homosexual" of the summary of the Blue Hood section. It gave the impression that the priest's soul had to be saved because of his homosexuality, which is at best a huge misinterpretation of the actual story. It is irrelevant, I think, to project our Western moral readings in a tale that was written in a civilisation so distant to ours : the word "homosexual" means nothing in 18th century Japan. Relations between men were regarded very differently there and then, and if you look a little bit further into that subject, you'll realize there is no way Akinari could have been implying that the priest turned into a monster out of his love for boys. Sorry if I made a few mistakes, English is not my mother tongue.

I appreciate your edit, and I think you may well have a point. I have, however, had to revert your edit, since it altered a quotation that had a clear citation. I do not own a copy of the book from which the quotation was taken, so I can't vouch for its reliability, but we can't simply remove the quotation marks and take out one word, as this would be plagiarism. I think the plot summaries in general need to be expanded and better-sourced; merely giving short quotations is not good enough. I might work on it a bit later, but if you like you can do this now, if only for the Aozukin story. However, removing a statement that has a citation and replacing it with original prose is also not a good idea, so it would be nice if you had another external source. elvenscout742 (talk) 07:14, 17 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

etymology[edit]

Tales of Moonlight and Rain (雨月物語 Ugetsu Monogatari) ...

I'd like to make this something like

Tales of Moonlight and Rain (雨月物語 Ugetsu Monogatari, literally 'Rain-moon Stories') ...

but prefer not to break the macro. —Tamfang (talk) 05:45, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but that's not for the opening sentence of the article. I don't expect you to read the lengthy discussion above before editing the article, but I have already given a more literal translation that makes grammatical sense in English and is cited to a reliable source: Tales of Rain and the Moon. Linguistic discussion of the etymology of the word ugetsu would be helpful in a Title section of the article, perhaps. In fact, whether or not the above move request goes through, a section like that would be required to balance the article anyway. I'm still not sure how so many people have come up with so many different translations of what looks like simply the Japanese word for "rain and the moon". And none of them have successfully incorporated these meaning of the word into their interpretations! I propose we include the possible translations "Tales of Being Unable to See the Harvest Moon because of the Rain", "Tales of May" and "Tales of June"!!! (The last two sentences are a joke.) elvenscout742 (talk) 05:59, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 2[edit]

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved after examining both the January request above and this request; both titles appear to be used in reliable English sources, and the UM title appears to be more common than the ToMaR title. -- JHunterJ (talk) 02:32, 21 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Tales of Moonlight and Rain → Ugetsu Monogatari – A clean slate should sort this out. The above very long RM on the same was the result of one user opposing a clear consensus among the rest of us. (The other user apparently came here to undermine me, and has since been indefinitely blocked for WP:HARASSMENT.) This work is not a modern novel whose official English title is "Tales of Moonlight and Rain". The only official title that is agreed upon is Ugetsu Monogatari. The majority of reliable sources refer to it by this name. Donald Keene's definitive history of Japanese literature in English calls it "Tales of Rain and the Moon". The current title is anachronistic, and it has led other articles to say, for instance, that "Ugetsu is based on Ueda Akinari's Tales of Moonlight and Rain", despite the title "Tales of Moonlight and Rain" post-dating the film by more than 20 years. elvenscout742 (talk) 02:38, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support - under normal circumstances wouldn't want to see a 2nd RM by the same nom, but the atmosphere in the above was so acrid largely (not totally) because of the now blocked user that this might be an exception. Most relevant comment in above wall of text was this one:

"Unless you've located a swath of sources that use "Tales..." that I've somehow missed, the evidence is quite compelling that "Ugetsu..." is much more commonly used in English sources on the subject. Cúchullain t/c 04:15, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

And that's how the WP:RS read to me also. In ictu oculi (talk) 03:36, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It's unlikely that anyone will find that swath of sources, since (as I somehow forgot to mention anywhere on the wall) "Tales..." is only the title of a 2006 English translation of the text, not the original, and so referring to the original text by this title is basically anachronistic. elvenscout742 (talk) 04:12, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Collapsing discussion from sock of indef blocked editor
* Oppose - As Kauffner said above, it was translated into English by Anthony H. Chambers as Tales of Moonlight and Rain in 2006.
In addition, Tales of Moonlight and Rain is much more widely accepted name than Ugetsu Monogatari as per the Google Books Search.
"Tales of Moonlight and Rain" Ueda Akinari -Ugetsu -Monogatari: 4450
"Ugetsu Monogatari" Ueda Akinari -Tales -Moonlight -Rain: 2580
123.225.49.155 (talk) 10:57, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - To contest a close, the Move review process is designed to evaluate a contested close of a move discussion to determine if the close was reasonable, or whether it was inconsistent with the spirit and intent of Wikipedia common practice, policies, or guidelines. (WP:REQMOVE)
Please do not use Requested moves to contest a move request close. 123.225.49.155 (talk) 11:17, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This is testing patience beyond reasonable limits. I have never seen an IP page protection request for a Talk page, but any more WP:SPA input and there will be such a request. (Elvenscout you do not need to comment on this. The less said.) In ictu oculi (talk) 11:23, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Oh, I see. The close was JoshuSasori's fault. And I'm sure mine as well. This is rich. But I won't dwell on procedure. I don't have anything new to say, but let me summarize the argument for those who don't want to wade through the rather large discussion above.
1. The relevant guidelines are as follows:
  • "translate it if this can be done without loss of accuracy and with greater understanding for the English-speaking reader," (UE).
  • "If the original language [of a book] does not use the Latin alphabet, the title is normally translated." (NCB)
2. The GBook and ngram numbers for "Ugetsu Monogatari" cannot be taken at face value, but must be discounted for the fact that this phrase often refers the 1953 film, which has a separate article on Wiki.
3. The top-selling translation on Amazon is Chambers' Tales of Moonlight and Rain. No 2 is Zolbrod's Ugetsu Monogatari or Tales of Moonlight and Rain. These books are aimed at a mass market, so they are a better indication of common usage than GScholar hits.
4. If a non-English form and an English-language form are commonly given together, as they are in Zolbrod's title as well as in Britannica, our guidelines stipulate that the English-language form is the "widely accepted name," per WP:WIAN.
5. The nom has repeatedly claimed that the existence of translation variants means that we must use Japanese. As pretty much anything can be translated in more than one way, this argument stands the "use English" principle on its head. Kauffner (talk) 14:30, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the close was JoshuSasori's fault. Without him showing up to oppose me just for the sake of opposing me, it would have been three users with valid arguments about reliable sources, versus you and some Amazon sales figures.
1. There is a loss of accuracy. Please see Donald Keene and the other academic works for the various more accurate English translations.
2. If the film is usually referred to in English as "Ugetsu Monogatari", then why didn't you allow me to put that fact in the opening of the article for the film?[30][31]
3. The work itself is not aimed at the mass market. Neither of the translations you cite are New York Times bestsellers. The work is known in the English-speaking world primarily through academic literature.
4. Nope. It's not a widely accepted name if the most-widely read critical work on the history of Japanese literature in English rejects it entirely and gives a different English translation.
5. Yes, but in this case we have a non-literal and unintuitive translation, and other translations that are actually used in the academic literature that discusses the work. Please stop trying to argue Japanese-language semantics with me (and IIO, various members of WPJ, etc.) when you clearly don't even speak Japanese.
elvenscout742 (talk) 16:58, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note I also noticed that on "What Links Here", most of the pages linking directly to this article were inappropriately using piped links, where the actual text of the articles (naturally) used "Ugetsu Monogatari". A few more, such as the article on the author, anachronistically used the modern English title where the Japanese would be better. I fixed all those pages, and now ... well ... every single link to this page elsewhere on Wikipedia links to the current redirect "Ugetsu Monogatari". The only exception is the article on the film version Ugetsu, which has a disambig notice that for obvious reasons has to mention the current title of this article. elvenscout742 (talk) 06:16, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Here is yet another GBook rundown: I get 1,520 post-1980 English-language results for Tales-of-Moonlight-and-Rain Ueda-Akinari -Ugetsu-Monogatari -llc, 122 for Ugetsu-Monogatari Ueda-Akinari -Tales-of-Moonlight-and-Rain -llc. Looking through the results, I'd say there are about 16 pages of relevant hits for Tales of Moonlight and Rain, perhaps six for Ugetsu Monogatari. Kauffner (talk) 15:19, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There must be something wrong with your search parameters. I checked every single item on the first page of results for "1,520 post-1980 English-language results for Tales-of-Moonlight-and-Rain Ueda-Akinari -Ugetsu-Monogatari -llc", and with the exception of "Rabbits, Crabs, Etc: Stories by Japanese Women" and the "Encyclopedia of Gothic Literature", all of them use the phrase Ugetsu Monogatari somewhere in their text.[32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41] I also wonder how in-depth the coverage of the work in the two that don't give the Japanese title is, especially since the "Encyclopedia" seems to be under the impression that the work contains "Japanese legends", rather than Akinari's fictitious adaptations of older Chinese ghost stories (which as far as I know also weren't "legends" as they were created by known authors at a particular historical date).[42][43] One of the other results, in fact, appears to be yet another translation of the work itself, which uses "Ugetsu Monogatari" but doesn't use "Tales of Moonlight and Rain" at all.[44] Therefore, your newest GBooks search does not indicate that "Ugetsu Monogatari" is an obscure title that general Wikipedia readers would not recognize. Additionally, I agree with CC's comments below. This debate has become far too heated, and I admit I am partly responsible. I apologize for my assumption of bad faith on your part. As a matter of fact, if memory serves my first interaction with CC was in a similarly negative vein, but now we can collaborate constructively on ... what is unfortunately a rather grim, murky affair. But still! :) elvenscout742 (talk) 01:59, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • CommentSupport Though I support the move, I must say I'm not happy about the prospect of another identical discussion immediately after the last one closed. I'm even less happy about the sock puppetry; hopefully that has been sorted.
As for supporting evidence, all I can do is repeat my comments from the previous discussion. Per WP:COMMONNAME, we go with the title that's most common in English-language sources. In this case the evidence supports Ugetsu monogatari. Different editors have parsed the Google results differently, but this ngram shows Ugetsu monogatari is more common in books published since 1950. A trip to my university library backed this up, and then some. Collecting the sources with the name of the book in the title at the University of North Florida library reveals the following:
These sources use Ugetsu monogatari:
  • "Ghostwriters and Literary Haunts. Subordinating Ethics to Art in Ugetsu Monogatari", Dennis Washburn, 1990
  • "A Critical Approach to the Ugetsu Monogatari", James T. Araki, 1967
  • "Tales of the supernatural in early modern Japan: Kaidan, Adinari, Ugetsu Monogatari", Lawrence Marceau, 2004
  • "Ghostwriters and Literary Haunts: Subordinating Ethics to Art in Ugetsu Monogatari", Dennis Washburn, 1990
  • "'A Garden Inclosed:' Fuentes' Aura, Hawthorne's and Paz's 'Rappaccini's Daughter,' and Uyeda's Ugetsu Monogatari", Lois Parkinson Zamora, 1984
These sources use Ugetsu monogatari with Tales of Moonlight and Rain as a subtitle:
  • Ugetsu monogatari : Tales of Moonlight and Rain : a complete English version of the eighteenth-century Japanese collection of tales of the supernatural (translation), Leon M. Zolbrod, 1974. (This is the standard translation).
  • Ugetsu Monogatari or Tales of Moonlight and Rain (translation), Dale Sauders, 1966
These sources use Ugetsu monogatari with a different English subtitle:
  • Ugetsu Monogatari: Tales of a Clouded Moon (translation), Wilfred Whitehouse, 1938.
  • Ugetsu Monogatari: Tales of a Clouded Moon (translation), Wilfred Whitehouse, 1941.
These sources use "Tales of Moonlight and Rain":
  • Tales of moonlight and rain; Japanese Gothic tales (translation), Kengi Hamada, 1972
  • Tales of Moonlight and Rain (translation), Anthony H. Chambers, 2007
The general preference in other secondary sources also seems to be Ugetsu monogatari. Though sources often include "Tales of Moonlight and Rain" (or another translation) as a gloss, they typically use Ugetsu... for the remainder of the text. Sources that do this include Japanese Culture by Paul Varley; Emmanuel Pastriech's "The Reception of Chinese Literature in Japan" from The Columbia History of Chinese Literature; The Japan Encyclopedia; World Within Walls: Japanese Literature of the Pre-Modern Era, 1600--1867; "The Appeal of Kaiden: Tales of the Strange" by Noriko T. Reider; The Pleasures of Japanese Literature by Donald Keene, and Japanese Demon Lore: Oni, From Ancient Times to the Present by Noriko T. Reider. As I said before, unless I'm missing a huge swath of sources that use Tales of Moonlight and Rain, the evidence overall shows a preference for Ugetsu monogatari in the sources.--Cúchullain t/c 17:44, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No one denies that this book is often referred to as Tales of Moonlight and Rain, notably by Chambers in the title of the most widely read translation. One of the most widely read critical discussions is in Japanese Aesthetics and Culture, where the title is given as "Tales of Moonlight and Rain (Ugetsu Monogatari). Is it not obvious that the current title is English, and that Ugetsu Monogatari is...not English? According to WP:UE, we should of "use English" when that option exists. Cuchullain's list confirms that the proposed title is generally given together with a translation of some kind. "If a name is used in translating or explaining the official name, especially in texts addressed to an English-speaking audience, it is probably widely accepted," per WP:WIAN. Kauffner (talk) 08:41, 14 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That guideline is for geographic names. And WP:UE doesn't say to use less common English translation over a name that's more common in English sources, far from it. It says the title "should follow English-language usage". It appears there's no room for argument that "the most common name for a subject, as determined by its prevalence in reliable English-language sources", is anything but Ugetsu Monogatari.--Cúchullain t/c 14:03, 14 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Kauffner, you still seem to be basing your argument entirely on the relative sales rankings on Amazon. Not everyone who has read this book or something about it (or has heard of it from somewhere) necessarily bought Chambers' translation on Amazon. In fact, even if Zolbrod's translation had been more widely-read over the last 40 years (and I'd say it probably has been), it likely wouldn't have a higher ranking on Amazon. If you are going to continue to claim that Chambers is the most widely-read translation, or that Japanese Aesthetics and Culture is the most widely-read critical work, you need evidence of this, and Amazon sales rankings are not enough. Additionally, your argument that English-speaking readers are aware of the title Tales of Moonlight and Rain but not of Ugetsu Monogatari falls down when one considers that no source exists that discusses the work in any detail and gives the title as Tales of Moonlight and Rain but doesn't give Ugetsu Monogatari. elvenscout742 (talk) 01:13, 15 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Use of the Chambers translation of the title in the body of the article[edit]

Kauffner's arguments above seem to center around the idea that the title of the article should be the "most recognizable". I still don't agree with the rationale for this, but nothing he nor anyone else has said has indicated why we can't write the body of the article in a historically accurate manner. The fact is that "Tales of Moonlight and Rain" is the title of a 2006 translation of the work, not the work itself. The anon (who has shown no indication that he/she has ever edited a JLit article before now) has reverted me three times[45][46][47] in my attempts to fix the wording of the article. Statements like "Tales of Moonlight and Rain, then, occupies an important yet often overlooked position between these two moments in Edo literary history", "At the same time, he presents in Tales of Moonlight and Rain some of the moral views of the kokugaku school" and "Tales of Moonlight and Rain was first published in a 1776 woodblock edition" are anachronistic and look ridiculous to me as a student of classical Japanese literature. Whether or not the title of the article is changed, the actual text of the article needs to be fixed. elvenscout742 (talk) 04:13, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I would also like to ask the anon to please read WP:COMMENT, which is the only relevant guideline, before again reverting my addition of the Japanese source text to be translated. Additionally, I need stress again that Wikipedia:COPYWITHIN#Translating from other language Wikimedia Projects does not allow you to delete comments and leave the actual translated text. If you have found that I forgot to include something (like adding {{Translated page}} to this talk page), please either do it yourself or politely remind me of it. Do not revert me just because of minor technical problems. (This kind of behaviour reminds me very much of the indef-blocked user JoshuSasori, who would look for little errors in my edits, and revert the whole edit without explaining why.[48][49]) elvenscout742 (talk) 04:29, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
With this edit the Anon has reverted me again. I reverted back, because no reasonable argument appears to have been made, and requested that this topic be discussed here. I don't understand the reference to The Motorcycle Diaries: the English title there appears to be a straight, accurate translation of the Spanish, and post-dates the death of the original author by at most a few decades. I don't see the relevance of this reference at all. Could the Anon please explain what is meant here?? elvenscout742 (talk) 14:48, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(EDIT CONFLICT) Additionally, this edit summary removes an entire section of the article based on an odd interpretation of WP:COPYWITHIN#Translating from other language Wikimedia Projects. I have clearly already provided a citation on this talk page, and a link to the Japanese Wiki article is already in the article. elvenscout742 (talk) 15:04, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I read WP:COMMENT. However, if you (or someone else) will translate material from ja:雨月物語, then attribution is needed. You should not use invisible comment this way. I don't think it's "minor technical problems". (Again, I'm not JoshuSasori's sockpuppet.) 124.85.41.57 (talk) 14:54, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(EDIT CONFLICT AGAIN) You keep saying that, but you haven't provided any evidence of these "other" move requests you made last year, or any evidence that you edited articles on classical JLit before coming here to oppose my move request. Additionally, as I have already said a few times, the citation is already provided on this talk page in accordance with WP:COPYWITHIN#Translating from other language Wikimedia Projects. Revert. elvenscout742 (talk) 15:04, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You haven't provided any clear evidence of that I'm JoshuSasori's sockpuppet. 124.85.41.57 (talk) 15:13, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You suddenly appeared immediately after JS's block, and made very similar edits. You had one "alibi" that you had prepared, but have been unable to link to any other edits you made before JS's block. Even if you are not the same person as JS, you have been making the same kind of disruptive edits, and because you have a constantly shifting account you are making it very difficult for us to deal with these RMs, since you look like a SPA. Why don't you create an account? Why, when I have made this request before, have you always ignored me? elvenscout742 (talk) 15:29, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't "suddenly appear immediately after JoshuSasori's block". In fact, I have edited other articles such as Nagisa Oshima, Koji Yakusho and Manami Konishi, where I interacted with him, before his block. 124.85.41.57 (talk) 15:46, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
What I mean by The Motorcycle Diaries (film) reference is that if the title of the article is not the native title but the English title, then we use the English title in the whole article page. 124.85.41.57 (talk) 14:58, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
But with The Motorcycle Diaries (film), the use of the "English title" (which doesn't differ semantically from the original at all) is not a historical anachronism in contexts like I mention above. elvenscout742 (talk) 15:04, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Even if you think the English title is "a historical anachronism", the title of the article is Tales of Moonlight and Rain now. 124.85.41.57 (talk) 15:13, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, because you and JoshuSasori followed me here, and Kauffner followed IIO here, and the two or three of you have managed to overrule Wikipedia policy, the academic community, and a decent consensus. But that doesn't prevent me from improving the body of the article. You clearly have not read the sources that this article uses, and I would be willing to guess that you have never read any significant body of scholarship on this or other works of koten bungaku. elvenscout742 (talk) 15:17, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
How can you accuse me of following you here without any clear evidence? 124.85.41.57 (talk) 15:25, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Why did you suddenly show up here a matter of days after opposing my move of a completely unrelated article?? elvenscout742 (talk) 15:31, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Because what I'm interested in is Japanese-related article. 124.85.41.57 (talk) 15:49, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Please do not add Japanese text copied from ja:雨月物語. This is English Wikipedia. If you want to copy and paste it, you can use your sandbox page. "If you have registered an account, and you are logged in, you can find or create your own user sandbox here. For future easy access, you can put {{My sandbox}} on your user page" (Wikipedia:Sandbox). 124.85.41.57 (talk) 15:25, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's a comment. It's for translation for this article, not some private project in my userspace. elvenscout742 (talk) 15:31, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The Tales of Moonlight and Rain page has already the interwiki link of ja:雨月物語. We don't have to add Japanese text in the form of invisible comment to let other editors translate from it. That's what the interwiki links on the article page are for. 124.85.41.57 (talk) 15:56, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That's far more inconvenient. How about instead of arbitrarily reverting my contributions to the page, you try actually contributing something yourself. elvenscout742 (talk) 23:41, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Additionally, since the template I added to the top of this talk page now cites the version of the Japanese Wikipedia article from mid-January, if we translate straight from Japanese Wikipedia (not from the copy-pasted comment) then we have to update the template.
"If you feel that copy-pasting a piece of text from Japanese Wikipedia to be translated later, and placing it as a comment in the English article's code, is a copyright violation and is not covered by the template I added above, please feel free to take the case to WP:CP." ... is what I was going to say, but then it occurred to me that it would be faster to do it myself.
elvenscout742 (talk) 02:23, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Since some editors seem to be unclear on this, I note that the current title of the article is "Tales of Moonlight and Rain". As long as that is the case, this is way the subject should be referred to in the text. The original author didn't use Roman characters, so it is equally anachronistic to call the subject Ugetsu Monogatari. "Tales of Moonlight and Rain" was the title of both the Hamada and Zolbrod translations, so it has been the standard way to give the name of this subject for over 40 years. Kauffner (talk) 22:21, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The current title is what it is. However, it is a historical anachronism. It is an interpretation of the Japanese title that was born in the late-twentieth century, 200 years after the book was written. Additionally, the sources cited in the article almost all refer to the book as Ugetsu Monogatari, not "Tales of Moonlight and Rain". And please, Kauffner, tell me about why you think that is? Why they decided to translated the word for "rain and the moon" (雨月, ugetsu) as "moonlight and rain"? Or maybe you can't? Maybe you know nothing about classical Japanese literature, cannot speak Japanese, and are only here to troll me and IIO?? elvenscout742 (talk) 23:41, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • “The title Ugetsu monogatari (literally 'rain-moon tales') comes from the phrase 'misty moon after the rains' in the preface. It alludes to the nō play Ugetsu, in which Saigyō appears, as he does in “Shiramine,” and in which rain and moon are central images....In any case, educated East Asian readers would probably guess immediately that a book containing the term 'rain-moon' in the title would deal with the strange and marvelous.” (Chambers, p. 13) The translator may have interpreted the title as a reference to the belief that the light of the moon causes mysterious beings to appear, and therefore added "light". Go ahead. Ask me a hard question. Kauffner (talk) 00:49, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe so, but Wikipedia still doesn't have a hard-and-fast "rule" that says we have to use the title as the standard terminology throughout the article. Okinotorishima, for instance, takes a non-problematic, uncontroversial romanization of the Japanese name as its title, but then uses "Okinotori Islands" in its opening sentence. And then there are all the articles that don't have a "standard title" and just use a descriptor as their title, and they aren't bound by this either. Unless you have a specific Wikipedia policy or guideline to point me to that indicates we can't use the Japanese title and the English translation interchangeably in the article (or in the first sentence) then I suggest finding some sources we can use to improve/expand this article that actually use the name "Tales of Moonlight and Rain". elvenscout742 (talk) 06:10, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't productive. I suggest taking a breather. The sockpuppetry is being dealt with; there's no reason to let an indefinitely blocked editor affect the discourse, and there's even less reason for things to get heated between good editors here. Let's focus on article improvements.--Cúchullain t/c 00:52, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As above, I agree. Positive discussion. We can work through this. There's no reason to believe anyone left here is editing in bad faith. (By the way, I've "turned myself in" on the CO issues over at WP:MCQ#Translation of text from other-language Wikipedias? if anyone here knows anything that would clarify things.) elvenscout742 (talk) 06:10, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • The guideline on the use of alternative names is here. I do not see anything that would support what is being proposed, i.e. using a different name in the text just because you prefer that name to the one in the title. Kauffner (talk) 07:49, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Please read the guidelines yourself before suggesting that I read them. Or, perhaps you misunderstood where the above link says There is also no reason why alternative names cannot be used in article text, in contexts where they are more appropriate than the name used as the title of the article. For example, the city now called Gdańsk is referred to as Danzig in historical contexts to which that name is more suited (e.g. when it was part of Germany or a Free City). elvenscout742 (talk) 07:31, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This is a question of whether to use an English-language name or a Japanese-language name. It's hardly analogous to a city that had different names in different historical period. Kauffner (talk) 07:49, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Modern English name versus 18th-century Japanese name. The 18th-century Japanese name is also the only one used in all the sources for the article. And the guideline you cited specifically states that there is nothing wrong with using alternative names in the article text. elvenscout742 (talk) 08:35, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Now that the title is Japanese, can the article itself be in English? Kauffner (talk) 18:55, 23 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
What are you talking about? Have you noticed that in the last month or so I've been harassed/PAed by three users, and all have been either blocked or had harsh restrictions placed on their editing? Do you really want to keep this harassment up under these circumstances? elvenscout742 (talk) 14:02, 24 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The terminology most common in English is now being used, so we can move forward with improving the article. Kauffner, if you have anything to add to the article beyond arguing about what it's called, please do so, otherwise run along.--Cúchullain t/c 10:58, 25 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Requested Move 3: → Ugetsu monogatari[edit]

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus. Jenks24 (talk) 07:10, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Ugetsu Monogatari → Tales of Moonlight and Rain – Neither of the two editors responsible for the drama earlier are active anymore, so perhaps this issue can now be considered in a less emotional way. Both the current and proposed titles are well-attested in the literature. Our guidelines say to use English. So the question is, which one of these two titles is English? I would think that most English-speakers can figure that one out at a glance. But there is a more scientific way to make this determination, as I explain below. Kauffner (talk) 08:39, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  1. “If the original language does not use the Latin alphabet, the title [of a book] is normally translated.” (WP:NCB)
  2. “translate it if this can be done without loss of accuracy and with greater understanding for the English-speaking reader.” (WP:UE) An English speaker will pretty much always understand a English-language title "with greater understanding" than a non-English title.
  3. On GBooks, Ueda-Akinari "Tales of Moonlight and Rain" -llc gets 2,170 post-2000 English-language results, Ugetsu-Monogatari Ueda-Akinari -llc gets 1,490. If you count variations like "Tales of a Pale and Mysterious Moon After the Rain" and "Tales of Moon and Rain", it is clear that the general practice is to translate this title one way or another. The top-selling translation is Chambers' Tales of Moonlight and Rain (2008).
  4. No matter how common a non-English language name is, that’s not enough to make it an English-language name. If a name is normally given together with a translation on first mention, as is the case with this title, that’s a tip off that it’s not English, per WP:WIAN, point 6.
  5. The name “Ugetsu monogatari” usually refers to the 1953 film. If you google "Ugetsu monogatari" -wikipedia, eight of the results on the first page refer to the film, two to the manga, and none at all to this book.
  6. A title like this defeats the purpose of titling, i.e. that somebody should be able to read it and recognize it as the name of the subject.

Survey[edit]

  • Oppose - no new information. In ictu oculi (talk) 09:22, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Enough already, three RMs in as many months is silly. The proposal is based on a continued misunderstanding of WP:UE and related policies and guidelines. UE actually says "The choice between anglicized and local spellings should follow English-language usage" and "In deciding whether and how to translate a foreign name into English, follow English-language usage". This tracks with WP:COMMONNAME; it does not say to prefer a less common English translation over a name that's more common in English works.
In this case, English-language usage shows a clear preference for "Ugetsu Monogatari". To reiterate my previous argument (for the third time): Though Google Books has been parsed in various ways, this ngram shows "Ugetsu Monogatari" as more common in English books published since 1950. This tracks with my findings from my actual university library. At the University of North Florida library, I find the following works with the name of this work in their titles:
These sources use Ugetsu monogatari:
  • "Ghostwriters and Literary Haunts. Subordinating Ethics to Art in Ugetsu Monogatari", Dennis Washburn, 1990
  • "A Critical Approach to the Ugetsu Monogatari", James T. Araki, 1967
  • "Tales of the supernatural in early modern Japan: Kaidan, Adinari, Ugetsu Monogatari", Lawrence Marceau, 2004
  • "Ghostwriters and Literary Haunts: Subordinating Ethics to Art in Ugetsu Monogatari", Dennis Washburn, 1990
  • "'A Garden Inclosed:' Fuentes' Aura, Hawthorne's and Paz's 'Rappaccini's Daughter,' and Uyeda's Ugetsu Monogatari", Lois Parkinson Zamora, 1984
These sources use Ugetsu monogatari with Tales of Moonlight and Rain as a subtitle:
  • Ugetsu monogatari : Tales of Moonlight and Rain : a complete English version of the eighteenth-century Japanese collection of tales of the supernatural (translation), Leon M. Zolbrod, 1974. (This is the standard translation).
  • Ugetsu Monogatari or Tales of Moonlight and Rain (translation), Dale Sauders, 1966
These sources use Ugetsu monogatari with a different English subtitle:
  • Ugetsu Monogatari: Tales of a Clouded Moon (translation), Wilfred Whitehouse, 1938.
  • Ugetsu Monogatari: Tales of a Clouded Moon (translation), Wilfred Whitehouse, 1941.
These sources use "Tales of Moonlight and Rain":
  • Tales of moonlight and rain; Japanese Gothic tales (translation), Kengi Hamada, 1972
  • Tales of Moonlight and Rain (translation), Anthony H. Chambers, 2007
Other secondary sources also appear to prefer Ugetsu monogatari. Though an English translation (not always "Tales of Moonlight and Rain") is often included as a gloss, they typically use Ugetsu Monogatari for the rest of the work. Sources that do this include: Japanese Culture by Paul Varley; Emmanuel Pastriech's "The Reception of Chinese Literature in Japan" from The Columbia History of Chinese Literature; The Japan Encyclopedia; World Within Walls: Japanese Literature of the Pre-Modern Era, 1600--1867; "The Appeal of Kaiden: Tales of the Strange" by Noriko T. Reider; The Pleasures of Japanese Literature by Donald Keene, and Japanese Demon Lore: Oni, From Ancient Times to the Present by Noriko T. Reider. Again, unless I'm somehow missing a large amount of English sources that use "Tales of Moonlight and Rain", by all indications the "English-language usage" is "Ugetsu Monogatari".--Cúchullain t/c 14:31, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • You continue to misunderstand WP:AT. The WP:COMMONNAME and WP:UE sections agree: in determining the name we go with the one that's most common in English sources, we don't give preference to English translations that are less common. "Ugetsu Monogatari" is easily more common in the sources as shown Google Books and my review of sources available at the library.--Cúchullain t/c 17:04, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Hijiri88/Elvenscout742 has left Wikipedia and may not contribute to this discussion, but future participants and the closer should make note of his various in-depth comments in the first and second recent move discussions.--Cúchullain t/c 18:02, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • You know the ngram includes many references to the film adaptation, which we have a separate article for. After all, a reader typing in "Ugetsu Monogatari" is more likely to be looking for the film than for the book. We have a specific guide that says to translate book titles. (WP:NCB). Here is yet another guideline: "Foreign words should be used sparingly." MOS:FOREIGN. The published sources don't give this title in Japanese by itself the way we do. They give it with a translation, or they give only the translation. What's the point of an article title that no one can read? I really don't understand why this even an issue. Kauffner (talk) 11:58, 9 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Eh, this is nothing you haven't said in the last two RMs. I see no evidence that the ngram "mostly" includes references only to the film, which is usually known as Ugetsu. More typically the references say something along the lines of "The film Ugetsu is based on the book Ugetsu Monogatari", which is of course more evidence for using that title for the book. At any rate, my review of actual sources at an actual library is more convincing. And no matter how many guidelines you dig up (I'm afraid you're misinterpreting these as well), they don't trump the wording at the WP:COMMONNAME and WP:UE policies, which say to use the form most commonly used in English sources - in this case, "Ugetsu Monogatari".--Cúchullain t/c 14:23, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Wiki Education assignment: JPNS 312 Japanese Lit Medieval to Mod.[edit]

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 19 January 2022 and 5 May 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): MenoEnds (article contribs).

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