Talk: Soundtracks

Soundtrack Translation Project[]

As some of you may know already, there is currently re-translation project handled on CR handled by me and several other people with knowledge of Japanese. Our goal, as stated there, is just establishing the most possibly accurate translation of Ace Attorney soundtracks. While we've already made some significant progress, it is still incomplete, and I don't think I'll be bold enough to claim otherwise, before we conclude some of topic handled there and before PLvsAA's release.

However, I would like to get a prior confirmation here - do I have approval to replace the current tracklists with ones that will be posted there, once the project complete?

Speaking of which, should we use localized names for locations and characters, or romanized ones, as it is right now? Sligneris (talk) 18:30, January 24, 2014 (UTC)

For the last point, I would personally say the Localised names, but that's just me. CrashBash (talk) 19:56, January 24, 2014 (UTC)

A more accurate list of track names would be good. My initial thoughts are if you're going to translate the track names, you may as well localise them as well. The problem is what to do with things like "Gyakuten Saiban 3 - Prologue"; should it stay like that or should it be "Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations - Prologue"? And if you do change it to the latter, won't that make the page's title of "Gyakuten Saiban 3 Original Soundtrack" look a bit odd? Just a thought.

On a separate note, the widely-varying track names I've seen all over the place (Furio Tigre's theme being listed as "Warehouse Tiger" in some places on the net springs to mind) have bothered me for a while, and it's good to see people making some sort of effort to get a peer-reviewed (for lack of a better word) consensus on what they are actually called. It's almost scientific (*opens bag of snackoos*). - Strabo412 (talk) 00:00, January 25, 2014 (UTC)

Wow I'm glad I saw this! Thanks, Sligneris for engaging the community over at C-R to do this. I do second Strabo412's comments whole-heartedly and apologize for changing a few track names myself on here for the Reminiscence tracks before seeing this. I noticed you were updating the tracklists on the C-R forum you linked to. I take it to mean that you and other members have agreed to all of the translations there from GS and GK? I just want to confirm so that I can help keep the relevant pages here conform to the community's work. Diagnosed as Sound 17:16, February 2, 2014 (UTC)

Okay, now that PLvsAA is out in English, thanks to the Sound Test, we got most of the official names for tracks like "Reminiscing" or "Confess the Truth", and we are almost finished making the updated tracklist. As it stands, the only thing that seems to be not yet decided is prefix for "Cornered" themes. Once we arrive at conclusion, would it be okay to implement the changes on the wiki? Sligneris (talk) 20:35, April 28, 2014 (UTC)

I'd be in favor, just so long as you if you change a track name, you'd be willing to change all mentions on it on the wiki (e.g., OST pages, pages on music themes like "Cross-Examination", pages on individual tracks, and in character templates under "Leitmotifs"); I'd prefer not to have two or more names for the same track on different parts the wiki. Of course, I'd be willing to help out.

I think the following format might be useful to use: "[English localisation]" ("[kanji]"; lit. "[literal translation]"). That way we're at least trying to cover our bases. Thoughts? - Strabo412 (talk) 21:08, April 28, 2014 (UTC)

Um... To have the sample look like it's part of the message, I'll leave out the ":::"s, because I don't how to make "<tabber>" work with it...

Vast majority of the names are literal translations, so I'd say there's little point in the "literal translation" one, although we could use romanized names, that's for sure. Due to some pretty long titles, I personally think most convenient would be something like this:

1. [English track name] *
2.
3.
etc.

1. [Japanese track name]
2.
3.
etc.

1. [Romanized track name]
2.
3.
etc.

Sligneris (talk) 22:05, April 28, 2014 (UTC)

Looks good to me. I didn't realise you were thinking of using a table-style format, therefore the quotation marks are probably unnecessary. I suppose any literal translations that deviate from what we have as the English name can be explained in mouse-over text ("Reminiscing ~ Heartbroken Maya" springs to mind). It also looks clean and neat. Which is always appreciated. - Strabo412 (talk) 22:23, April 28, 2014 (UTC)

We could use it as opportunity to implement the template below, but... I don't really have an idea on how to use it. How do you separate track numbers, names and lengths, as well as tracks itself? Sligneris (talk) 23:39, April 28, 2014 (UTC)

I'm afraid templates aren't really my forte. Maybe the way it's used on the Gyakuten Saiban film page might be of some help? - Strabo412 (talk) 10:37, April 29, 2014 (UTC)

Strange how it actually is on movie's page, given how there is separate article for the soundtrack... And I personally think it looks a bit ugly as collapsible table with a headline... Still, I don't think I'm going to include either and having such and example is useful indeed. Sligneris (talk) 12:53, April 29, 2014 (UTC)

Suffixes[]

To quote myself from the localization thread back at the court-records...

Quote

The sound test introduced a new track naming format: "prefix - suffix -". It's obviously a bit different from the old "prefix ~ suffix" we knew. I doubt it was influenced by Level-5, given the fact they never used either format in the first place, so I'm pretty sure the new format is official one, at least in the English localization of the series. So, now, I believe we have 3 options to consider:

Use "prefix - suffix -" for the crossover and "prefix ~ suffix" for the series (which would make the names pretty inconsistent...)
Use "prefix - suffix -" for both the crossover and the series (which would require even more updating that it took before and take a while to get used to...)
Use "prefix ~ suffix" for both the crossover and the series (which would completely disregard that one thing we got from the official source)

This... I really don't think it's something I should decide myself. ^^;

I believe it's a decision that should also be made here. So far I've seen that the first method is being used, so I suppose I should word the question differently - should we keep it this way or go for something else instead? - Sligneris (talk) 12:30, May 19, 2014 (UTC)

What format does the Japanese version of PLvsPW use? If it uses the same format as the English track titles, then it shouldn't matter. - Strabo412 (talk) 20:01, May 19, 2014 (UTC)

Had the new format been introduced in the Japanese version as well, I wouldn't even bring it up. However, the Japanese track titles for the crossover remain unchanged from the ones from the series: "prefix ~ suffix" format. The new, "prefix - suffix -" format was introduced in the English version of the game, being the first official mention of the sound track titles in the history of Ace Attorney... - Sligneris (talk) 20:50, May 19, 2014 (UTC)

Fair enough, thought I'd just check. Personally, I think we should just keep them as is. The formatting of the tracks doesn't really matter too much in my opinion; changing all instances of, say, "Great Revival ~ Miles Edgeworth" to "Great Revival - Miles Edgeworth -" is just giving us a lot of extra work without any real benefit. - Strabo412 (talk) 20:56, May 19, 2014 (UTC)

So, it'd be the first option? Or, I have another idea. How about such a solution: When referring to the soundtrack titles, we would use "prefix ~ suffix" format, including the crossover soundtracks. However, when referring to sound test tracks from Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, we would be using the new "prefix - suffix -" format. Does that sound good? ^^ - Sligneris (talk) 12:23, May 20, 2014 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable enough to me. To be honest, I don't really like the "<name> - <name> -" format; that second hyphen makes it look a bit messy. - Strabo412 (talk) 00:18, May 21, 2014 (UTC)

Tracklist Templates[]

Hello all! I recently found that we have templates for CD tracklistings in this community that we haven't been using (including myself so sorry about that). I'm eventually planning to add them to the Soundtrack pages (also listed here.) but for others who may get to it before me, the templates are here:

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Diagnosed (talk). Please sign your posts with ~~~~

I completely forgot that we even had that template! Be good to use it somewhere other than the one page it's on at the moment... - Strabo412 (talk) 18:14, February 2, 2014 (UTC)

Differing track lengths[]

This is probably a long shot, but does anyone know what's up with the differing track lengths listed for the same track between different albums? I've looked up the given sources (by archive.org) and they don't list any track lengths. I'm not sure how much these different lengths are worth preserving. I don't mean to remove them entirely, but a mini-project I've been working on would get really complicated if it had to account for all of them. Capefeather (talk) 03:59, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

I think the track lengths on the OST pages might have been taken from YouTube videos? Or I might have used the listed track lengths on rips I had years back? Perhaps it might be better to just use the track lengths listed on Steam and change pre-existing OST pages and music track pages to those?

On another note, I was thinking of creating a template and subcategory for pages like Pursuit and Defendant Lobby (music) to better organise them, but I can't think of a good name to refer to them. Music track series? Music groups? Music families? I'm also unhappy with how I've dealt with the titles for Psyche-Locks (music) and Psyche-Locks (music track), so a good name for these music series might help with that as well. - Strabo412 (talk) 10:26, 16 March 2021 (UTC)