Talk:Earwig and the Witch

English title

@KaitoNkmra23: Hi, according to the Cannes Festival website, the English title seems to be Earwig and the Witch. --Thibaut (talk) 19:50, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

@Thibaut120094: Ghibli also seems to confirm this in its announcement of the Cannes selection: http://www.ghibli.jp/info/013275/. However, some reliable media sources seem to be calling it "Aya and the Witch"; maybe it would be prudent to wait for more info. — Goszei (talk) 20:01, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for this link.

英題 means English title, if Ghibli chose an official English title, I think we should use it.

Most sources (except ANN) just literally translated the Japanese title. --Thibaut (talk) 20:07, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

I agree that we should be perhaps wait for more information, however, most sources refer to the film as Aya and the Witch, so I felt it was appropriate for a page move. Additionally, they only refer to Earwig and the Witch as the book it’s based off of and not the official title of the film. Despite this, I’d be happy to change it back if you’d prefer. KaitoNkmra23 (talk) 21:28, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Well, we have the Cannes Festival and Ghibli itself, I think it’s more than enough to determine that it is the official English title. We can always rename later if a US/UK distributor decides to change the title.

@Yoshiman6464: What do you think? --Thibaut (talk) 06:10, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Plus, the “Āya” in the Japanese title is a transliteration into Japanese of the “Ear-” part of “Earwig”. It is not the Japanese female name “Aya” – that has a short “a” and would be written in katakana as “アヤ”. --Thibaut (talk) 11:31, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Actually, the "Aya" in this case is referring to the name of the character and does not translate/transliterate to "Ear-" at all. Ear would translate to "mimi" (耳) and Earwig would translate to "hasamimushi" (ハサミムシ). The "A" in the name is held and the name is pronounced as "Ah-ya" so the katakana in this case would be written as アーヤ. Again I could be completely wrong here in terms of the context and background of the naming of the film so I'd still be ok to change it back to the original title. Or we should leave it at here for now until an official English title is announced as most recent sources (including ones cited on this article) point to the film being called Aya and the Witch. KaitoNkmra23 (talk) 12:31, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Names are often shortened in Japanese, I wouldn't be surprised it's the case here. アーヤ (Āya) does sound like the Ear- part, not アヤ (Aya) which is a completely different name.

アーヤと魔女 is also the Japanese title of the original book, the character is named アーヤ・ツール (Āya Tsūru), apparently there's a nameplay between Earwig and ayatsuru (操る, witch which seems to be her power).

Or we should leave it at here for now until an official English title is announced

But we already have an official title, listed at Cannes and on Ghibli website, it would be more logical to revert back to it instead of keeping this unofficial literal translation that could be wrong. --Thibaut (talk) 13:33, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Earwig and the Witch is the title of the original novel, and Ghibli will surely use it just like they did for Howl's Moving Castle from the same author. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 23:55, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Here’s a more recent article from Anime News Network that seems to confirms it: “Earwig and the Witch adapts Diana Wynne Jones' novel of the same name.”.

I suggest we move back to the old title, it would make more sense to use the official English title until we know for sure Ghibli changed its mind. --Thibaut (talk) 05:05, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

@KaitoNkmra23, Goszei, Yoshiman6464, and TAKASUGI Shinji: If there’s no objection, I’ll rename the page in a few days. --Thibaut (talk) 05:18, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

I’m OK with the move. The article should mention the novel first. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 06:51, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

I’d also have no problems with the move KaitoNkmra23 (talk) 07:29, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

I also agree with us moving the article back to “Earwig and the Witch” - as it was the original name of the article when I created it. My rationale is that the English titles were typically used for anime articles (for example, “Kiki’s Delivery Service” is not titled “ Witch's Delivery Service”, even though that is a literal translation from the Japanese title). Yoshiman6464 ^♫🥚 14:07, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

 Done

Thank you all. --Thibaut (talk) 08:35, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Aya and the Witch logo.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 06:52, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Replaced by a better quality logo hosted on enwiki. --Thibaut (talk) 11:49, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Move to draftspace or deletion

I think we should consider moving this article into draft space, or just deleting this article entirely. There’s not a sufficient amount of coverage in English and in English-speaking countries. I also looked at the Japanese Wikipedia for this article and it is currently nominated for deletion. If the Japanese Wikipedia page for the film is nominated for deletion, perhaps we should consider doing something similar with this article until it officially releases, or we get further information on it. I’m also aware of WP:NFF, where it states that an article should not be created until principal photography or production has commenced, which this film has already. But again, there’s just not enough coverage in English for it. KaitoNkmra23 (talk) 13:07, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Actually the article on jawiki is nominated for deletion because there's a copyvio in the page history (synopsis copypasted from another website) and they just wait for an admin to revdel it. It's not to delete the whole page. --Thibaut (talk) 13:13, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Literal translation

Well, Tempjrds is not wrong, like I said back in June, アーヤ is not the Japanese name Aya, otherwise it would be just アヤ or あや.

In the novel, her real name is Ayatsuru アヤツル in one word (Earwig in the English version) which means manipulation (操る) which is her power, the matron of the orphanage didn’t like her name and changed it to Āya Tsūru アーヤ・ツール (Erica Wigg in the original English version) [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]

There’s some play on words there, it’s not that easy to translate, I would suggest removing the literal translation or replacing Aya by Āya. --Thibaut (talk) 19:08, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

I think you shouldn’t translate the name and it’s better to stick to Āya. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 23:50, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Now I’ve had it explained (rather than having to guess) that Āya isn’t a transliteration of English but a made-up name that’s pseudo-Western (but has no official way that it would be written in Roman characters), I agree with both above that it cannot be translated but should be left as Āya in a translation. Tempjrds (talk) 11:51, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Is the film a TV Movie or not?

Toho announced today that the movie is getting a theatrical release in Japan and it appears to be a director's cut version. Should the infobox be changed to a movie one then? Luigitehplumber (talk) 02:51, 11 February 2021 (UTC)