In case I have not expressed myself clearly, I am not saying that we should ignore the current guidelines and allow anything just because the script isn't latin. I am saying that the current guidelines may not be very good for Chinese and Japanese artists and that some modifications to them may be appropriate.
The "styles I've seen in chinese artists" are not things I've encountered on MusicBrainz, but rather on Chinese discographies, ID3 tags and the like. I asked n4l, a Singaporean Chinese editor who recently joined us for some input in http://musicbrainz.org/show/edit/?editid=7700922, copied here for your convenience: Me (foolip): The debate going happening on the MusicBrainz-Style mailing list is this: "collaboration artists" are used for when two artists form a temporary group and are on the form "Artist A & Artist B". 3 artist are usually written as "Artist A, Artist B & Artist C". However, there is some disagreement whether or not "艺人甲, 艺人乙 & 艺人丙" is acceptable for Chinese (and Japanese) artists. The format often actually used us "艺人甲、艺人乙、艺人丙" but this is in violation of the guidelines so we need to either change the guidelines or change the artist names. So, does "艺人甲, 艺人乙 & 艺人丙" look "wrong" to you in a Chinese context? What would you consider the "best" format? n4l: "艺人甲、艺人乙、艺人丙" has to be the best option for lists of two or more. But it does look odd at times and I honestly don't see it often. "艺人甲, 艺人乙 & 艺人丙" doesn't look nice at all. One alternative that is also usually used is "艺人甲 & 艺人乙 & 艺人丙". Another alternative that I see is being used on Chinese sites (that are like Musicbrainz) is "艺人甲 / 艺人乙 / 艺人丙" (Example: "仨人 - 郭静/范玮琪/张韶涵"). (end copy) Still not conclusive, but at least one Chinese editor agrees that "艺人甲, 艺人乙 & 艺人丙" doesn't look great. -- Philip On 10/26/07, Chad Wilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Philip Jägenstedt wrote: > > Hi! > > > > voiceinsideyou asked for input on > > http://musicbrainz.org/show/edit/?editid=7696392, but I want to raise > > the issue to this list. > > > > The issue in short: the collaboration style guide requires and "Artist > > A, Artist B & Artist C" format which is very unnatural for Han scripts > > (Chinese+Japanese). We can either make all Chinese and Japanese > > collaboration artists really ugly or we can have inconsistent data. I > > don't have an example at hand, but the inconsistency might be > > "堀江由衣、倉田雅世、雪乃五月" and "堀江由衣, 倉田雅世, & Latin Script Artist" on the same > > release. > > > > To reiterate what I said in my edit note, I've seen the following > > formats actually used for Chinese artists: "歌手甲/歌手乙/歌手丙" (full or > > halfwidth slash) and "歌手甲 歌手乙 歌手丙" (full or halfwidth space). For two > > artists I have seen "歌手甲 & 歌手乙" which is why this is only an issue for > > 3+ artist collaborations. > > > > I beleive that MusicBrainz defaults to forcing everything into a mold > > that was made to fit latin scripts and that we need to review this > > particular guideline (http://musicbrainz.org/doc/SortNameStyle). We > > don't have many Chinese users and we would get even further away from > > the possibility of having any by enforcing the guidelines as they are. > The fragmentation alluded to by Arturus is part of the reason I think > they probably should be standardised in some way. > > I also question the assertion made by rowaasr13 and Philip (foolip) that > the "A, B & C" format is "unnatural" for Han script (and probably > others). I don't quite see how a funky fully spaced reverse comma thingy > "、" is much different (or more natural) than a latin comma when all > we're taking about is a special collaboration artist that often only > exists because of weaknesses in the schema (as alluded to by Brian), and > additionally when using the latin "&" (which isn't Han, kanji, kana etc > either) is quite common in the use of these languages? > > With regards to the "styles I've seen in chinese artists", I've seen all > of those same styles in Western releases as well, and we still have > managed a style guideline there; it possibly just represents the > relatively immaturity of the Chinese and Japanese data in the database, > and the newness of its editors (on average) rather than on a real > preference or "more natural" representation. > > I don't really have a /strong/ opinion on this, but my gut feel is that > it's not that big a stretch from what's "natural", and having a common > style will make it easier to find and split these artists when the > schema (one day in the distant future) can represent these multiple > track/release artists. Alternatively, I wouldn't have a problem either > with an alternative style guideline for these scripts that said to use / > separate artists either. As long as there is /some/ consistency, and the > issues with the "倉田雅世 & Chad" (or "倉田雅世 / Chad") type artists > are considered. > > Chad / voiceinsideyou > > PS: For what it's worth, a straw poll of the Chinese Singaporean people > sitting around me at work expressed no real preference or problem with > the naturality of it. But that's not scientific, obviously :D > > _______________________________________________ > Musicbrainz-style mailing list > Musicbrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org > http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style >
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