Board Thread:Wikia Discussion/@comment-25683568-20150318062713/@comment-25999378-20150417111313

Firstly, while I understand the idea behind not using half-translations, are you seriously telling me that you expect someone with no prior knowledge of Japanese to know that Kai Yon is Kai-4? Kai Ni is prevalent enough in the game that it can be said easily out of hand, and with ships having two remodels, Kai and Kai Ni, even without knowing Japanese numbers it can be followed. However, there is no Kai Yon ship; Bismarck goes to Drei not Kai Yon, let alone Kai San. That's not helping anyone with a background in only english understand what the hell it means, and as such I'd go with Mikado's, as the purpose of this wiki is for english speakers.

Secondly, I really don't see the issue with doubling up the translation for "号". This is an english wiki, designed for use by people who unsurprisingly speak and read english. Whilst its great and all for the translations to match up to the Japanese meaning as closely as possible, the purpose of the wiki is to carry across information in english. No. 13 radar sounds weird as hell when spoken or read,  and I see no reason why not to use Type other than an overbearing desire to sound "accurate". Also, what kind of misunderstanding could come about in the non-japanese community by translating  "号" as Type? Given that this is for english speakers, if they didn't speak Japanese they wouldn't know. Why complicate it and try to find a different meaning when the people reading it wouldn't know there's anything wrong? Another thing is why so fixated on making the kanji mean ONLY one thing? Even in english a word can have multiple meanings, layered on with context, then with usage, then with place in the sentence. What's with this deadset desire to make each one mean hold only one definition if its only going to complicate matters further. I say leave it as Type; it reads better, flows, better, doesn't sound weird as hell either, in english.

Thirdly, I also don't see the reason we should ignore Western naming conventions to show that an item isn't Western. That sounds unneedingly overbearing. If you're playing this game, you know its based on Japanese warships. No one's gonna come up in the comments and say "Look at this sweet Western ship I got" That's bullshit.

Finally, I agree with Dechi. It might seem natural to translate "号" as No. but that sounds weird as sin in english. I can't even see why bother with changing it when Type fits the english saying of the item so much better. Given that this is an english wiki, for a NON-JAPANESE COMMUNITY, Type is a much better answer than No. is. And yes I did look above and no its not set in stone; we stopped carving into stone a long time ago.