https://musicbrainz.org/edit/102038029
This release is 85 tracks. All but 2 have English titles. The style guide says to pick the language that’s most common but this can become an issue with a translated pseudo-release is added for the few tracks that aren’t English. What would be the right call here?
It’s surprising to me how many users of both VGMdb and MusicBrainz would think that the “Japanese” tracklist in VGMdb should be “English” in MusicBrainz.
If the purpose of language/script in the MusicBrainz webservice isn’t to help users automatically pick the tracklist written in their preferred language and script, or at least serve as disambiguation in cases where MusicBrainz Style wants the “official” release to contain all the languages and so you can’t use the status (pseudo-release vs. pseudo-release) to tell the difference between a Japanese tracklist marked as English/Latin vs. an English tracklist marked as English/Latin, then I am no longer going to be submitting these values when I add releases.
https://wiki.musicbrainz.org/Style/Release#Language_and_script
For example, a Japanese release with a mix of English and Japanese titles should normally use ‘Japanese’ as the script.
This is intentionally broad and intentionally does not require a majority of Japanese titles, unless I’m mistaken.
Having Japanese script on the original release (usually has Japanese artist names, Japanese release title and/or some Japanese track titles, even if not majority) is helpful to distinguish with the Latin script pseudo-release(s), that will contain zero non-Latin script.
i’d probably say English is the most “accurate”, but Japanese is the most “useful”, if that’s distinction that makes sense to make.
ideally i’d really like the ability to use multiple languages/scripts (instead of the [Multiple Languages] value) when adding a release, like we can with works, but until that happens i think i like Japanese more. for identifying different transl(iter)ation purposes, as @yindesu said.
i make it a point to not vote on these edits because it feels “wrong” to me to say a release is in Japanese even if it only has 1 or 2 Japanese tracks. but at the same time i can see how it’s much more convenient to have it this way.
It has 2 Japanese title tracks, indeed.
But it has 99,9% track artists and 100% release title and 100% release artist in Japanese script. 
A pseudo-release would have them in Latin script.
“unless most of the titles are in other languages, Japanese is probably the best choice”
The guideline implies that Japanese is not right choice here. Also, the language part of the guidelines does not concern artist credits at all.
I think it would probably be easier to make Picard display disambiguations and put “Latin transliteration” or something similar on the pseudo-release. I don’t know how multiple tracklistings will be implemented, but the guidelines can be rewritten for that.
The purpose of the field is for specifying the language/scripts the release is primarily using, not disambiguation, I always thought.
That’s all true but the style guide says it’s only for track titles. If we want do do it another way that’s fine but then the style guidelines should be changed to match.
I added a ticket to support multiple languages and scripts properly (either we didn’t have one, which is wild, or I just didn’t find it…):
If the purpose of release language/script isn’t to allow software to (easily and clearly) pick the track titles most appropriate for the user’s preferred language and script, then I’d vote for dropping these columns from the database entirely. Why track non-audio metadata that isn’t useful to anybody?
It’s not like Picard even uses language/script as-is - PICARD-2270 - so this change would just make it even less feasible for language preferences to be implemented in a way that makes sense if editors will say a tracklist contains multiple languages and multiple scripts.
I’m confused - for a Japanese user, the most appropriate tracks would probably be a transl(iter)ation of the whole release into Japanese, which would appropriately be marked as Japanese/Japanese, wouldn’t it? In the same way an English only user would want English/Latin. As such, that would be easier with multiple languages - right now, the Japanese and English combo would be shown as Japanese/Japanese with your method so they wouldn’t be able to find their transl(iter)ation.
No, a Japanese user would expect the original titles as intended for Japan.
The result of your desired language/script values and the implementation of STYLE-420 is that it won’t be possible for a user to say they prefer the 100% English translation of a Japanese release or the 100% romanized tracklist of a Japanese release because the original Japanese tracklist will contain both Japanese script and Latin script.
You can use them to filter edit searches for releases in a certain language, or to exclude certain languages.
But you can’t actually filter down to the appropriate level - see Japanese album but 99% of the track titles are English - What should the language be? - #13 by yindesu
I’m not sure why we assume only Western Latin speakers are ever interested in translations and transliterations. Seems kind of a weird claim? “Only dumb English speakers care about titles in their language” or something? I’m sure there are Japanese users whose English is not great and would like a version that had the titles in Japanese, even if there’s fewer of them than the other way around. Obviously, if they just want to always use the original titles, then they don’t need to use any transl(iter)ations at all and they can just use the official release, so there’s no trouble
Obviously, if they just want to always use the original titles, then they don’t need to use any transl(iter)ations at all and they can just use the official release, so there’s no trouble
This isn’t true per your guidance for non-Classical releases: How to enter a release with multiple languages? - #2 by reosarevok
I’m not sure why we assume only Western Latin speakers are ever interested in translations and transliterations. Seems kind of a weird claim? “Only dumb English speakers care about titles in their language” or something? I’m sure there are Japanese users whose English is not great and would like a version that had the titles in Japanese, even if there’s fewer of them than the other way around.
I never made any claims about anybody’s intelligence and would appreciate the Style Leader of this community to not shove such offensive words into somebody else’s mouth. I’m simply talking about what the average user would expect the API to be capable of.
Sigh. Ok, that’s true for all except classical, and if the person in question really wants the “original titles” when that just means “Symphony in C / Symphonie en Ut / Sinfonía en do” (which is pretty much entirely useless) then this might not be a good fit, but then nothing is
It really feels that the average user of the API would probably expect something to says “Japanese” as the language to be mostly in Japanese, something that says “English” as the language to be mostly in English, and something that says “English + Japanese” to have both. The title of this field is “language”, not “locale” or “official tracklist for country X”
It’s right in the premise of Japanese Style:
Japanese artists have a tendency to choose capitalization and punctuation (and language) for aesthetic reasons, and to be very consistent regarding case over all releases.