Japanese Translation

[Pyro8933]

Hello, I was surprised there wasn't a Japanese translation already, so I thought I'd be the first to make one. I have a few questions about just how much info to include, so any help would be appreciated in sorting those out.

For example the Vatican City wikipedia page is バチカン, but in the first paragraph it also says ヴァチカン, バティカン, ヴァティカン, and ヴァティカーノ are common spellings. Would I include that information in country_info, or not at all? The same thing happens with some capital cities, and so the same question applies but for capital_info.

Another problem for me is with the US. Wikipedia lists both 米国 and アメリカ as common names, so which should I pick, or try to find some way of listing both?

And I've noticed for Chinese, it also has the English names in parentheses. Should I do that as well?

While I'm still learning Japanese and not close to fluent, since a large portion of translating is grabbing info from wikipedia, I think I can handle it. Although any help from people better at Japanese, or native, would be greatly appreciated. As well as people more experienced with github, since I'm new to contributing as a whole lol

[aplaice]

Thanks for volunteering! A Japanese translation would indeed be nice to have!

Regarding country/capital info, we generally only include variants that are significantly different and exclude minor spelling or transcription variants.

For the Vatican, it seems that here there are multiple variants due to questions on how to represent "Va" and "ti" (and whether to have -no or just -n) in Katakana, so I wouldn't list these variants, but it's mostly up to the translator to determine what's "significantly different".

Another problem for me is with the US. Wikipedia lists both 米国 and アメリカ as common names, so which should I pick, or try to find some way of listing both?

The name we use should be the title of the Wikipedia article. 米国 can be mentioned in the country info.

And I've noticed for Chinese, it also has the English names in parentheses. Should I do that as well?

Unless there's a convention in Japanese of frequently doing this, then no. (I don't think there is such a convention in Japanese, but I was also unaware of it for Chinese, so I might be wrong.

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For Japanese there's also the question of what writing system to use (Kanji/Hiragana/Katakana). For the (main) country/capital names — I think it's best to use whatever Wikipedia uses for the title name — i.e. probably Kanji for countries close to Japan/long known to it and Katakana for the rest of the world (?). For the more descriptive fields (info etc.), probably whatever feels most natural (i.e. probably some mix)...

My knowledge of Japanese is limited to a very cursory acquaintance with the scripts, so I won't be of much help. Native speakers would be very much helpful!

[Pyro8933]

Thanks for the quick reply!

so I wouldn't list these variants, but it's mostly up to the translator to determine what's "significantly different".

That makes sense to me, most of the alternate spellings wikipedia gives are along those lines

Unless there's a convention in Japanese of frequently doing this, then no. (I don't think there is such a convention in Japanese, but I was also unaware of it for Chinese, so I might be wrong.

I'm not aware of a convention in Japanese for doing that, just wanting to check since the Chinese deck had it.

I think it's best to use whatever Wikipedia uses for the title name

Sounds good, and that mainly fits the description of the closer to Japan the more names in kanji compared to katakana.

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Thanks for the help, I should hopefully have this done by new year :)