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Requested move
The request to rename this article to Ugetsu Monogatari has been carried out.
If the page title has consensus, be sure to close this discussion using {{subst:RM top|'''page moved'''.}} and {{subst:RM bottom}} and remove the {{Requested move/dated|…}} tag, or replace it with the {{subst:Requested move/end|…}} tag. |
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)
Provisional weaksupport - 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)
- 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)
- Oppose. The top-selling translation is Chambers' Tales of Moonlight and Rain (2007), and No. 2 is Hamada's Tales of Moonlight and Rain: Japanese Gothic Tales (1972). Zolbrod's Ugetsu Monogatari or Tales of Moonlight and Rain (1974) is a distant third. See also Britannica. Nobody's just giving romanji without any translation. Kauffner (talk) 12:22, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
- 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)
- 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 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 Moon
the 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 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 Moon
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
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)
- 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)
- 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)
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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- JoshuSasori's interpretation of the links I provided is clearly flawed. Only one of the three links I provided[16][17][18] 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.[19][20] 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[21] 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- JoshuSasori's interpretation of the links I provided is clearly flawed. Only one of the three links I provided[16][17][18] 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.[19][20] 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[21] 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
Sources
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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- Regarding the University of Florida library searches. JoshuSasori (talk) 05:08, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
- 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)
- 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)
- Regarding the University of Florida library searches. JoshuSasori (talk) 05:08, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
Change in the description of the stories
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)