In the rules section it's written that when uploading the lyrics of a song whose title is not using the Latin script (for example Cyrillic, Japanese or Korean), it should be written the following way: Romanized title (Original title).
I've seen this pretty often, but I somehow refuse to accept it. First of all, I see it as disregard towards the original language by not putting it first, and that's why I can't find a logical reason for this, maybe I'm missing something evident?
I think it would be better to use either only the original title for songs in languages who don't have an official transliteration system [OTS for short] (e.g. Bulgarian, which I'll be talking about below), and the pattern Original title (Transliterated title) for those languages who do have one (e.g. Mandarin's pinyin or Japanese's romaji (Hepburn romanization in particular, which is the most widely used one).
Okay, we can use the official systems of those languages, but what about Bulgarian? (I'm taking my native language because I'm not aware of others, so I it would be great to mention them if you know any).
Bulgarian, unlike Japanese's romaji or Mandarin's pinyin, doesn't have an official transliteration system, which means that if I were to upload, let's say, the song "Пепеляшка" and follow the rules, I can choose to write the title either as "Pepelyashka" (this is how most people would transliterate it), "Pepeljashka/Pepeljaška" or even "Pepeliashka/Pepeliaška". I suppose I can choose whichever I want, but the lack of standard is not helpful at all. Of course, I would be perfectly understood by Bulgarians in this case, but since there are people who don't know the language, they may mispronounce it: e.g. if I leave it as "Pepeljashka", the French would pronounce it as [pepelʒaʃka] instead of the correct [pepeˈ ljaʃkɐ], which sounds absurd.
Concerning this title, Pepelyashka is the best way to transliterate it.
But let's take the song "Моя първа любов", which I would transliterate as "Moya părva lyubov". Possible alternatives are: y being replaced by i or j; ă being replaced by a, u, y.
Another example: "Планетата на децата", where ц ([t͡s] in IPA, similar to the ts in the English bats, although not exactly the same) is the problematic letter. The majority of people would write it as "Planetata na decata", even though the song here is uploaded as "Planetata na detsata". Not to mention the ways the title can be pronounced either like "decata" and "detsata" in other languages.
As you can see for youself, this can be a problematic theme which can sometimes lead to basic misunderstandings which I haven't mentioned here in details, so I think it would be best to leave the original title only, at least for Bulgarian songs, and wait for someone's transliteration or either make a request for one or make one yourself.
Apart from Bulgarian, in my experience, whenever I upload Japanese songs, I put the original title first and then the romaji in brackets: 微かなカオリ (Kasuka na Kaori), which is not as the rules suggest it to be [Kasuka na Kaori (微かなカオリ)].
In conclusion to all I've written:
– For Bulgarian titles (and other languages who don't have an OTS; if you know any, please mention them) I suggest to write the original title only;
– For languages who do have an OTS, I suggest writing the original title first and then the romanization according to the OTS of the given language).
So, what do you think about that?
