User:Opencooper/Finding manga chapter titles
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Articles on manga usually have a list of volumes which can contain chapter titles and volume summary. In this essay I'll share my process for hunting these down. First off you should make sure if there even are chapter titles. Some manga also have volume titles as well.
English[edit]
English titles are the most important because they actually convey meaning to readers. Official titles are always preferred rather than scanlation titles. If you are confident in your Japanese-language ability, you could try translating the titles yourself, but that only describes a minority of editors. Places to find official titles are:
- A physical copy of a volume. Just turn a few pages to the table of contents. If access to a manga is difficult, you can try a library, a bookstore, or even request someone with a copy for help.
- Amazon.com. Amazon contains previews for the first few pages of many manga. You can use this to just look at the table of contents (zoom in to read better). In some cases other retailers might provide previews as well, including the original publisher (but many skip directly to the first chapter).
- ComicVine is a wiki that often contains chapter lists.
Japanese[edit]
When only kanji is available, I'd avoid putting just plain kanji without accompanying romaji, since readers won't know how to read the former and the latter might provide hints for common terms. However, unless you know Japanese or title translations are available, transliteration can be difficult since Japanese words can have multiple readings (sometimes I've had luck finding romaji on other language versions of articles and Wikias. Though they don't always use Hepburn romanization which Wikipedia favors). In that case, putting just kanji might be permissible so that someone with language knowledge might later help. How to find:
- Publisher. The best place to look for Japanese chapter titles is on the original publisher's website. One publisher that has been really good for this is Kodansha, which lists them under a "目次" heading.
- Web search. You can try typing in[1] one of the chapter titles, along with the series' kanji and see if there are any results, and with luck you'll find chapter listings rather than just individual chapter discussions.
- Manual transcription. This method is only really feasible if you know how to enter in Japanese. I've tried OCR in the past and it didn't work so well. Finding Japanese manga scans shouldn't be too hard, either try Amazon.co.jp, or search the manga's kanji and "RAW".
Romaji[edit]
Once you've got chapter kanji, for most shōnen manga, furigana is usually available as well in the original raws which can help you easily type in romaji without worrying about readings. If not, you'll have to manually figure out the readings of titles using a dictionary.[2] I would suggest only doing this if you also have translated English titles to consult (so you know you're at least close) but some kanji can still be tricky with their readings and can require actual language knowledge. Otherwise, only enter in the romaji if you're confident in your language skills. Google Translate often gets these wrong.
Notes[edit]
- ^ Use Japanese input to type hiragana and katakana. For individual kanji, unless there is furigana present (in which case, type it in and hit spacebar until it comes up), I prefer to use Jisho to find the kanji by its radicals. That's why it's preferable to pick short titles or those with mainly kana, and in some cases you might actually come across titles written in English.
- ^ For cases where you don't get any hits, it's usually a name.