How to credit Cast & Crew for East Palace, West Palace …?

1. Back Cover: Zhang Yung
2. Subtitles: Yung Zhang
3. Imdb: Yung Zhang
4. Wiki: Zhang Yung
5. Production Company: Zhang Yung
6. Distribution Company:  Yung Zhang (opposite to their cover)
7. Google search just a mess
8. CLT: Zhang Yung 6/6
9. CLT: Yung Zhang 5/8

And this goes for all but 2 Cast & Crew Credits.

The End Credits only in Chinese, over the opening credits the subtitles give the western Cast & Crew names, there its also a mix sometimes its last name first then first name first…

E.g. Zhang Yung – Director, Yung Zhang – Producer

I have similar issues with Japanese cast and crew. The general rule there is that Japanese (original) credits will have the last name first, followed by the first name. This is a cultural thing as Japanese tend to identify in terms the biggest unit first (family), followed by the smaller unit (the individual). Romanized western credits will more than often switch them around and put first name before family name.

Ken said that for Asian names it's up in the air but for western names, first name means first name and last name means family name.

Taken all of the above into account, when I credit Japanese films I always use the Japanese credits as my basis, romanize using the same methodology every time (to be consistent) and put first name in the first name field and last name in the last name field. That seems, at least to me, a logical approach to have a consistent and linkable crediting system for Japanese movies while still staying within the contribution rules.

Perhaps something similar can work for Chinese cast and crew?

Asian credits remain a huge pain in DVDP, especially if you wish to contribute online and I really, really wish Invelos would finally kick things into high gear regarding concise, clear and logical rules for romanizing such credits. We are the ones doing all the work after all but more often than not, we have to deal with partial or non-existing rules, which doesn't benefit anyone: not the contributor and not the end user who downloads inconsistant data into his local DB, depending on each contributor's method employed. (sorry if it sounds like a rant. Not mad but just wish thing would move a bit faster as all this doesn't require a software modification, only a rule modification. Moreover, the longer this drags on, the bigger the clean-up work will be when a set of rules will be defined)

Quoting Taro:

Quote:
I really, really wish Invelos would finally kick things into high gear regarding concise, clear and logical rules for romanizing such credits.

I'm not sure if a rule would really be of assistance.
With the two basics that are known to me (1. reversed order; 2. no middle names) it should be quite easy to establish a decent cast and crew listing (provided the credits are transcribed into Latin letters). The problems arise if for some credits the Asian naming conventions get exchanged against the Western. Without truly understanding the names, I wouldn't be able to recognize the difference (especially since the same name obviously can be used as first and last name). I don't see how a rule would help me here.

I agree with you though, that DVDProfiler should handle Asian names correctly (a first name is a first name, no matter where it's placed in the credits).

There is a sticky thread on Chinese names above, but without further guidance from Ken, not much can be changed now.  If the cast name is all in Chinese, I also parse the name in western fashion as given name/family name.

I think for the CLT it's more important what people put in the "credited as" field.
Do we mimic the name order or not?
In this example, even if we parse the name as Yung//Zhang do we put "credited as Zhang Yung"?

I would suggest not because then the CLT results would show Zhang Yung as the credited name and people unfamiliar with the name would start entering Zhang//Yung's again!

But the question is, does that break the "as credited" rule? If the credits are in Chinese anyway, we can't do "as credited" anyway so it's a moot point. But then you have Hong Kong titles that tend to have credits in chinese and english!

I think I've just made my brain hurt! 

To be honest, without a ruling by Invelos to ignore CLT for these kind of names or a program change to support the name order, any solution we come up with is only going to create problems.