Forum:Furigana

So I've been really confused as to how you guys do things here with regards to. On pages like Deva or Royal Knights, you insist on using the literal kanji reading when the point of furigana is that it overrides that reading. If some material says in some written form but you only ever hear デーヴァ in the anime, what is the purpose of providing the "Jūni Shinshou" literal reading to people who come here? Only 十二神将 by itself is "Jūni Shinshou". When it's written as it's just "Dēva".— Ryulong  ( 琉竜 ) 23:11, January 8, 2018 (UTC)
 * The kanji are supplementary to the katakana, and providing a secondary meaning. For example, the Deva are just the, in meaning, pronunciation, and most spellings. The "Twelve Heavenly Generals" bit is given in rare, supplementary descriptions, and is as if I said in English "The Deva (y'know, those twelve general dudes)". It's not as if the furigana was "fureimu aro" and the kanji was "an arrow made of flame". It's not even like Matadormon, where there's a clear pun on the pronunciation of the kanji being performed. These instances are pure abusing the format for purple prose.
 * From what I understand of how furigana are usually done, the original Digimon merchandise is bastardizing that format for puns and in-jokes. We are attempting to mimic that usage here, without miscommunicating that the kanji are actually intended to be read as the primary meaning. 16:06, January 9, 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not entirely sure that's the intent of the author(s) here. In all works I've come across, furigana is used to provide the intended phonetic reading of either an esoteric word or something that the author intends to be read differently, but still provide the original meaning to the Japanese reader. In the Deva example, the author(s) want to make sure that people call them "Devas" (デーヴァ) but also inform the reader that these Devas are the "" (十二神将), a concept that Japanese readers would know about.
 * This doesn't really carry over to the English-speaking fans that you have here. As it stands (and particularly how you are formatting the romanicized text in Ruby as well), you are placing too much emphasis on the literal reading that is not being used within the context of Digimon. is just read as Dēva, which you should be informing the readers of first and foremost.
 * I can understand adding a statement to the effect of "kanji literally means 'Twelve Heavenly Generals'", because that's what they do over at Bleach Wiki for all the Spanish and German words that the author set to kanji strings. Their set up is this: Official Term Name (Japanese text (with furigana)). They don't bother with the original intended reading of the kanji if furigana is in use because they know that the name is intended to be different and it's meant to be read differently within the context of their subject anime/manga. They don't use ruby, but they want to have the alternate readings more easily readable.— Ryulong  ( 琉竜 ) 03:24, January 10, 2018 (UTC)