Topic: DVD Profiler contribution question

[Taro]

Sorry to get back to this but ... it's happening again 

I completely redid the credits (cast and crew) for Sukiyaki Western Django (Blu-ray, UPC: 687797123268)

So far I got two YES votes, one NO vote stating that part of the (Japanese) credits have subtitles. However, I clearly stated in my contribution notes that the existing credits based on those are erroneous and incomplete. Also, the subs aren't forced, you need to actively turn them on. Finally, those existing credits were copy-pasted from another profile without verification to boot. Here are my contribution notes:

There are a lot of errors and ommissions in the credits (I almost don't know where to begin). So I went through them from front to back to correct them all. There are only Japanese credits on-screen, no English at all. I have romanized these credits EXACTLY as they appear on-screen using the Waapuro romanization method.

Cast:
- Reordered the role to match on-screen order (although it's in multiple columns, so that's open to interpretation)
- The role of Benkei was attributed to the wrong Ishibashi. It should be Takaaki Ishibashi, not Renji Ishibashi (He plays the part of sonchou)
- Kimura Yoshino's role is credited on-screen for the role of Shizuka, which comes from the historical figure Shizuka Gozen. As a side note: many characters in this movie have their names based on historical figures. She is NOT credited for the role of Sheriff (see further in the list)
- Katori Shingo was missing from credits, added him
- Quenting Tarantino was credited as Piringo, not Ringo (ringo means apple in Japanese)
- as stated, Ishibashi Renji is credited for the role of'sonchou', meaning village headman
- Shiomi Sansei is credited for the role of Denshichi
- Matsushige Yutake is credited for the role of Toshio
- Added Kagawa Teruyuki, who plays the part of 'hoankan', which can be translated to Sheriff (see incorrect credit of Kimura Yoshino above)

Crew:
- changed Nobuyuki Tohya to Nobuyuki Tooya, to stay consistent with waapuro romanization. Credits have only him as executive producer
- Producers were completely wrong. No idea where those came from but the correct producers are Yoshida Kouji and Yamaguchi Toshinori. This is also confirmed on their personal blogs
- Added Kitamura Michiko, which is credited as costume designer
- corrected romanization for Endou Kouji, using waapuro
- the first name characters of the editor can indeed also be read as Taiji, but in this case it should be Yasushi. His correct name is Shimamura Yasushi and is an editor for other movies such as Audition and Ichi the Killer (http://j-pitch.jp/jfdb/person/4668)
- Saburou Kitajima performed the title song, he is not the producer

The way things are going, I'm sure the screeners will decline it, again.

This is getting so tiresome. I even put in the extra work to detail every single change I've made and why, and still it won't get into the online because it's a romanization of the original Japanese credits ... sometimes I feel people prefer incomplete, plain wrong credits as long as it's from the English subtitles. If this profile submission gets declined, I'm not submitting a single Japanese romanized credit submission anymore. I'm not mad or anything but it's just not worth my time anymore to write down detailed contribution notes if it's going down the drain anyway. Instead I'll use that time to profile some more for myself. I'm sure had Invelos set a standard for Japanese credits, all my profiles would've been accepted. I guess it's the community's loss then ...

[Dragonfire]

I can understand your frustration with that. 

I haven't contributed much because it doesn't seem worth it to me.  And I wouldn't have been doing any of the romanization since I don't have anything that would need that.  When I do make a contribution, it is usually just the overview from the back of the case and sometimes cover scans.  Everything else is just too complicated for me to try to deal with.  And the contribution rules are very over whelming when you haven't done it before.  The first time I tried one, I admit I did mess it up, but I did read over the rules first.  There was just so much that I got confused on a few things...and my cover scans were horrid at that point.  It was months later before I finally figured out how to get the cover scans right.

[xradman]

Taro,

I run into similar issues romanizing Korean names when doing credits.  What I do is romanize the names correctly, and then if there is conflicting romanization on the credits, use credited as feature.  For example on the Oldboy credits, costume designer is credited in English as Sangkyung Cho.  His Korean name is Sang-gyeong Jo according to revised romanization of Korean.  So he is credited as Sang-gyeong Jo [Sangkyung Cho].

[northbloke]

I don't have this film, so this may be completely wrong but is it possible that Quentin Tarantino is called "Ringo" in the film? As he is a western actor, I would have thought they may have given him a western name and it may be they've named him after Johnny Ringo?

Also, do you know what the differences are between your credits and the subtitled credits? Is it a disagreement in romanization or other things? If there are problems with the subtitles I would specifically mention that in your notes, ie: "English subtitles not used for credits due to innacuracies" or something like that.


Edit: off topic, but what's the film like? The overview makes it sound like a remake of Yojimbo.

[W0m6at]

I don't know if it's the case in this instance, but I think sometimes the screeners get confused if you make reference to what was wrong with the old stuff. Try to focus on why your contribution is correct, rather than why the current information is wrong. Keep it simple to avoid confusion.

Also, perhaps start a PM conversation with your no-voter and work towards a common ground with them. Perhaps they've not understood something, or there might be some minor detail that would get it through.

[Taro]

Thanks for your remarks, everyone

@ xradman: it's very hard indeed for Asian movies. I understand that people who can't understand the language of the original credits have only the subtitled credits to go by and I certainly don't hold it against them. But when someone comes along who's actually able to romanize, you would think they would be happy to get better, more accurate credits ... but now. Even when posting 500 pages of explanation, there are always those who will vote against simply for the fact that it's a romanization and they want to stick with (often very incorrect) subtitled credits. I really don't get that. If I were to see a contribution from you for a Korean movie I own, I would even PM you a special thank you note for submitting that valuable, correct information.

@ northbloke: Your remark makes sense but Tarantino's role is credited as Piringo on-screen. I double-checked with IMDB for reference and they have the same thing (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0906665/). Now that I check it, it seems the existing credits were copied and slightly adapted from IMDB, introducing even more errors in the process.

The subtitled credits have it very, very wrong at times. For example, they mispronounce a firstname of famous film editor (Japanese kanji can be read in various ways), thus crediting a non-existing film editor in the DVDP database. Another example is that they credit a famous music composer as the producer (which of course, he's not) ... it's much worse than simple romanization errors, as it's crawling with severe errors.

The movie can best be summed up, I think, as a mix between a western movie and a traditional samurai-movie, if that makes sense? It's a weird combination but enjoyable with some odd scenes here and there.

@ W0m6at :Thanks for the advice. In fact, I tried such submissions at first with very succint contribution notes, focussing mainly on where I got the info (e.g. romanized this or that credit using this or that method), but each time half of the voters would vote no, stating they want to stick with the subtitled credits. Perhaps they didn't even realize it was full of errors, I don't know ... so I thought instead I'd detail why the existing ones aren't adequate as well as how I got to my credits ... and it's still the same thing although I notice more people vote YES now than when I didn't give such a detailed explanation. To be honest, I think no matter what we put in the contribution notes, there will always be a group of voters that want to stick with the credits they themselves can read, regardless of how correct or wrong they are. I've noticed in general that screeners then tend to agree with those voters. It really depends from profile to profile, really. I've also had on rare occassions contributions where everyone voted YES, as nobody of the 'other group' so to speak had that profile in their collection.


makes me wonder if it wouldn't be worth it to start a manual profile sharing thread somewhere, specifically to share 'correct' Asian profiles, where we as users agree on a standard and share our romanized profiles with each other. Invelos seems unwilling or unable to set a standard for romanized contributions and that is definitely part of the problem.

[Kathy]

makes me wonder if it wouldn't be worth it to start a manual profile sharing thread somewhere, specifically to share 'correct' Asian profiles, where we as users agree on a standard and share our romanized profiles with each other. Invelos seems unwilling or unable to set a standard for romanized contributions and that is definitely part of the problem.

 

You might want to start a thread specifically for that purpose (similar to the re-release cover scan thread). I would also request that Ken pin the thread so that it doesn't get lost.

[hal9g]

You might want to start a thread specifically for that purpose (similar to the re-release cover scan thread). I would also request that Ken pin the thread so that it doesn't get lost.

Actually, there is already a pinned thread for just this purpose. 

HERE

[addicted2dvd]

I posted this over at Invelos... but was wondering if anyone here seen this or had any thoughts. As it is something that I have been curios about for a really long time now (years).

I wonder if there isn't some form of bug floating around in the contribution system.

For one thing Every so often I get a contribution where I never had the chance to vote on it (This has been every since the first days of voting on contributions so not caused by the BY thing)..

And then I see a lot of times when I update all the child profiles for a TV Series where one of the discs gets no votes or significantly less votes for no apparent reason.

Here is an example I have going now...



All 5 updates above has the same exact changes... yet for some reason the last one was only seen by 1 of the 5. All 5 were uploaded at the same basic time... all within a minute or two... and I watched the votes go up one at a time on discs 1-4... the 5th disc didn't get any votes until disc 1-4 got it's 5th vote.

So it seems like most the people couldn't even see the update for the 5th disc. And no there is no birth year or anything like that added.


Thoughts?

[kahless]

That's weird - I agree! Maybe a problem with the disc-id's? 

[DJ Doena]

That's weird - I agree! Maybe a problem with the disc-id's? 

It's suprisingly often that DiscIds do change in the same season set. And if the people already have the profile based on their own DiscId (for example, I never download the profiles attached to a season box but add the Ids myself and then try an update) then it's possible that you got a season from a batch with a new Id for disc 5.

[addicted2dvd]

You just made me look... and there is indeed a second disc 5 in the database under another disc ID.

Thanks for solving that mystery at least.  

though with all the other mysteries I have seen over the years I still think there is a small bug in the system somewhere.

[DJ Doena]

I still think there is a small bug in the system somewhere.

That's quite possible.