Now that artist credit is possible on pseudo releases (on both official or pseudo releases).

So what to we need artist aliases now?

• Search hints,
• information, and maybe the
• localised display in MB website if one chooses an option to not display original artist names?

Now that artist credit exist for releases, I think this ticket should be reviewed.

Another related topic: https://community.metabrainz.org/t/alias-type-for-transliterated-legal-names/479054/11?u=jesus2099

I very much agree with the addition of script in the locale list.
But I also think we still need languages. They are not super useful for artists (except in the rare few situations like Yaz/Yazoo)

But for things like Instruments, they are so necessary: https://beta.musicbrainz.org/instrument/b3eac5f9-7859-4416-ac39-7154e2e8d348/aliases
(note how there are several aliases in "Cyrillic" script that are not identical, they correspond to the language)
of course I am not against having the ability to put "Japanese in Latin script" ie transliteration, so exactly what this ticket asks for. This will be useful also for instruments.

The need for this is no longer really for pseudo releases as we now have the artist credit that is even more convenient.

But the Latin script alias could be useful for displaying alias instead of artist name (internationalisation):

• MBS-7830
• https://community.metabrainz.org/t/use-of-disambiguation-for-translation-of-non-latin-script-languages/340132/7?u=jesus2099

BTW just to let you know that I now wonder what we need in aliases exactly.
I'm now completely clueless. http://musicbrainz.org/edit/36811479

The only things I remember :

• align system with tracklist language/script... but why now that we use AC on tracks
• avoid having to create the same latin alias for all languages using the latin script... maybe the last valid issue with current Locale system.

It's great idea (root) and seems very keep consistent !

To make this actionable, I'd like to propose the following approach:

• Add new locales, with one locale per script. The code should be root_Latn, root_Cyrl, etc., where root is the "root locale" from which all other locales inherit. This makes it a valid Unicode Locale Identifier, just as zh_Hant or ar_EG that we currently use. (The corresponding IETF/BCP 47 tag, by the way, would be und-Latn etc., where und is the ISO 639-2 registered code for "undetermined language". See BCP 47 Language Tag Conversion for the correspondance.)
• Define the meaning of multiple aliases, whose locales overlap, as follows: A script-only locale applies to all locales that use this script, but with lower precedence than an alias with a more specific locale. (This is not something to be implemented in code, it's just a definition "how we understand it" that should be documented somewhere.)

E.g., Michael Jackson could get these aliases:

• "Michael Jackson", primary for locale root_Latn
• "Maykl Cekson", primary for locale az
• "マイケル・ジャクソン", primary for locale ja
• (some more)

Then someone interested in the most appropriate name for en_GB could automatically derive that it's the root_Latn alias (because there is no en_GB nor en alias, but a script-only locale with the same script); someone else looking for the most appropriate name for az_AZ would find (no az_AZ, but) an az alias and stop there.

Another example which does not fit to the script-only concept are Slavic female form surnames.

For example in Czech Republic and Slovakia surnames of foreign women (often) get a female suffix -ová:
Michelle Obama -> Michelle Obamová
Sinéad O'Connor -> Sinéad O'Connorová
Audrey Hepburn -> Audrey Hepburnová
Ella Fitzgerald -> Ella Fitzgeraldová

Though for artists adding of the suffix seems not to be common especially when the artist's name is a pseudonym. E.g I do not remember I have ever seen Édith Piafová or Alanis Morissettová.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_name http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_name#Slavic_surname_formation

—

I think it is a good idea to have the script attribute especially to be able to create a default transcription alias for a certain script but this attribute cannot replace the language attribute. There will be special transcriptions / aliases for some languages.

• there are different sets of transcription rules (even for transcribing from the same script as Ulrich Klauer showed)
• there are other language specialities like gender name suffixes

Another example that just sprang to mind: Hungarian names are family-first, e.g. Bartók Béla; other languages with Latin script invert the name (Béla Bartók).

Another case to keep in mind: Most Latin-script languages retain the original spelling of names from other Latin-script languages even though it does not match their pronunciation rules; e.g., it is "Michael Jackson" in French, German, Swedish, Turkish, Vietnamese, etc., so we probably don't want to add hundreds of identical aliases for each of these languages. However, one notable exception is Azeri: It uses a Latin script, but transcribes names in the same way as is usually only done for foreign scripts. Michael Jackson is written "Maykl Cekson" there.

So we'd want to have a "script default" that can still be overridden by a more specific, language-based alias.