This's been something that has popped up a couple of times before, but now that we have some official translation guidelines I figured it may be prudent to have someplace to concentrate efforts for getting usable character/artist/media names and to collect high-quality citations (including images, videos, twitter messages, etc. which provide names that are already transliterated or can be transliterated). It might also be a good idea to post in here if you determine that a tag (character, artist, etc.) needs to be replaced wholesale because the previous name is wrong.
Name Translation Style Guide
Artist Names
1. Artist names generally do not require translations, and if direct transliteration proves difficult (such as using characters where the intended pronunciation is ambiguous), the best practice is frequently to look for romanized display names (Twitter usernames, Furaffinity usernames, etc.).
2. If the artist prefers a specific romanization, use it unless something makes that impractical.
3. Suffixes like _(artist) might be used if the artist identifies by a particularly common word.
Character Names
English names from authoritative sources are preferred, if they are known to exist. Communities generally have the right to determine what an "authoritative" name for their characters is. If a particular translation sees consistent use on other sites, it's probably valid as a tag name (or it might be worth turning into an alias.)
- Some communities adopt highly transformative localized names made for the purpose of preserving or adding wordplay. In this case, the JP names are aliased to the EN ones once they are made available.
- the Ace Attorney series, including the fan translation for Gyakuten Kenji 2.
- the Dragon Quest series.
- the Mother/Earthbound series, including the fan translation for Mother 3.
- In some cases, a character's name may have multiple plausible transliterations. In this case, one name is chosen and the others are aliased to it, and the alias may change to reflect authoritative sources.
- マルス (Mars, Marth) from Fire Emblem.
- クレス・アルベイン (Cress Albane, Cless Alvein) from Tales of Phantasia.
- In rare cases, the "authoritative" name may differ from whatever name is officially used by English-speaking publishers.
- キラークイーン (Killer Queen) is localized as "Deadly Queen" in English Jojo's Bizarre Adventure media. In this case, the Japanese can be directly transliterated into English, and the localization removes a deliberate musical reference.
- ガンツ (Guntz) is localized as "Gantz" in the international version of Klonoa 2: Dream Champ Tournament. In this case, the localization removes what is understood to be a reference to the character's association with guns.
- If a character's name is a literal descriptor with no embellishments, you may consider using the literal description.
- Fox (Persona 4)
- Bibi (o-den) was once known as "failure succubus".
- In all of the above cases, if a suffix is necessary to disambiguate the tag, use the artist's name, the name of the media the character is from, or a convenient and well-understood shortening.
Copyright Names
English titles from authoritative sources are preferred, if they are known to exist. Communities generally have the right to determine what an "authoritative" name for their media is. If a particular translation sees consistent use on other sites, it's probably valid as a tag name (or it might be worth turning into an alias.)
- キミガシネ has the connotation of "you in particular, die!", but is commonly known as "Your Turn to Die" following a fan translation establishing the title (and then working officially with the creator on a Steam release.)
- 戦国武将姫Muramasa has no official English release, but the publisher's English website calls it "Muramasa: Princess Commander".
- In some cases, a piece of media might have an English subtitle (ハルキの最大の敵は理性。 TWO BEASTS OR NOT TO BEAST!!). The subtitle should not automatically be treated as an English translation, but sometimes communities attach to these subtitles regardless.
Previous threads/citations
tl;dr: ask about names you can't read, provide high-quality answers (including citations if they're available) to other people.