I have problems with Ian Miller not because I have a problem being corrected. Yes, he posted a series of e-mails that he posted without my permission and broke copyright law in doing so as per the Berne Convention found on copyright.gov. However, that's not why I am complaining. I think it's natural for those who know a lot about a series to butt heads occasionally. I've butted heads with many of my Sailor Moon-based fans. Lunar Archivist, Nishi Rajan, and so on are just a few of those people. I've even posted on my website when someone made corrections and additions to the website with fervor sometimes. Even when it's a small thing to the person.
I also know I strive for purism and perfection when it comes to Sailor Moon. I include all sorts of things to try to make this site comprehensive. I rather enjoy the pursuit of knowledge.
However, I do object to people who correct information without the proper sources and will not be corrected in return. This would be Mr. Miller.
I know Mr. Miller from several places. Sailormoon.org, Mailing lists, moonromance.net, etc. He's "corrected" Lunar Archivist, Hitoshi Doi, Alex Glover, Nishi Rajan, Sailor Moon Uncensored, picked on newbies, and various website owners. Then he posts their e-mail on his website without their permission hacked up.
Let's review three specific examples.
Example 1: Maboroshi no Ginzuishou- Silver Water Stone
Sometime in about 2001, on Sailormoon.org Ian Miller posted that the Mboroshi no Ginzuishou was translated as the Silver Water Stone. He started posting this by correcting people. First he has never had formal training in Japanese. He admitted this openly. However he was compelled to correct people of their spelling of the kanji to try to get more credibility than Alex Glover.
The first appearance of the Maboroshi no Ginzuishou word is actually from Mamoru. He says, and I quote in Japanese, ーーーでかい宝石店じゃないか ここにならあるかも なーーー「幻の銀水晶」
I scanned the pages in question, gave the Volume and the frame count, then posted him the translation and linked a dictionary. 2 which was well linked. I linked to each individual kanji, and then added words.
幻 - Illusion (Maboroshi)
の- of or posessive. (no)
銀- silver. (Gin)
水- Water (Sui, or in the case of the placing zui.)
晶- Stone (seki, in most readings alone, shou in this case.
水晶 means crystal. 水 is a morpheme. 晶 is another morpheme. together they make the word "crystal" thus a stone that's clear. Just like 頭痛 (zutsuu) is made up of the kanji for "head" and "ache" meaning headache. Just like in english "head" and "ache" make up the word headache. Or the word "playground" is made up of "play" "ground", even borrowed foreign words like kindergarten are made up of the german words, "kinder" meaning "kids" and "garten" meaning "garden."
Soon after I posted this on sailormoon.org with a detailed link system of Jeffrey's dictionary to each specific page and kanji, with the explanation and scan he posted this to a Sailormoon mail list. Soon after instead of admitting he was wrong he disappeared from both places. However this is not the worst of it.
Example 2: Mau- Egyptian has no vowels.
He e-mailed me later with corrections to my website. I have no problem with this--I took corrections before. However he chose a sketchy way of doing it. Among his claims was that Mau came from the Egyptian, was not a pun and that Takeuchi-sensei couldn't know the vowels because there were no vowels in Egyptian. He says it's Egyptian for cat. He says that the Egyptians don't have vowels, and that all people have to *guess* the vowels.
cn sy mn thgs wtht vwls.
You can understand that without the vowels, right?
In addition, he had no proof that Takeuchi-sensei wanted it to be Japanese. It could be a pun for a cat sound is. There is Nyan, however, Mau, is very close to the sound of a cat too. There is no correct way to romanize a lot of the words. Such as Pallapalla could be a pun on parapara, which is a light sprinkle of rain. Selenity, and Serenity, etc.
So I cited the current head of the Egyptian Antiquity Commission Dr. Zahi Hawas from a website, and then linked up several Egyptian websites. I cited websites that put in vowels guessed from the Rosetta stone, cited the Rosetta stone itself, which while an older invention did break the code. I gave him a detailed link list.
He gave me his one source and I asked him for more. Again, he refused, then I found it--the source that he had been holding onto. It was the book he cited. It was the exact quote. So I copied it down. By then he'd blocked my e-mail. That source he is using contradicts him in everyway. He'd misquoted! (Most likely on purpose) Irony of ironies it was from Hawas he'd misquoted from in an outdated book... 3
That goes to show if you quote one source and I find a newer version from the same person and the same book you quoted and I catch you misquoting, I'm suspicious of you. So back up your sources, and when someone quotes a pargraph in a book (since his quote was a quote of a quote) quote the whole thing, not just a part of a sentence. You never know if the other person checks your sources! And have your sources ready (more than one) if you are going to pick on a website master that claims to have a geeky fascination with mythology!
Edit: A friend of mine, NyankoTenshi says she owns some cats which are half Mau. She gave me this website: http://catzinc.org.nz/profiles/egypt_mau/profile.htm 3
Example 3: Reading Furigana- Furigana doesn't count!
Ian Miller likes to insist that people should read all of the attacks by the kanji. He admits he's never had formal Japanese training. (I, for the record, at the time of this debacle did. I was taking Japanese language classes under a Japanese person--he argued that this person wasn't qualified on reading Japanese... and wouldn't know how to translate... which is why she was teaching Japanese and had been married for several years to an American with two children one of whom corrected my kana writing...).
The last one he really likes to do is: Submarine Violin Tide is not in English-- It's in Japanese.
The problem with that is that tons, upon tons of the attacks are in kanji, however, when they are put into the anime they are read in English. Why? It's something called furigana.
Furigana in Japanese tell you how to read the kanji presented. However, in this case the furigana, they can be written in either kana form. They can be written in hiragana or katakana. The katakana are present in this particular attack which he is referring. They read Submarine Viloin Tide. (sa-bu-ma-ri-n vi-o-ro-n ta-i-do specifically)
To show that there are others as well, here:
So I told him this, and he said that this was not true, that it was subjective. So, I gave it to my Japanese teacher, several japanese language students, and they did not think so. He argued that it was still subjective. However, if Rainbow Moon Heartache is in kanji-- should we pronounce it as Nijishiki Tsuki Shintsu...? He won't dispute this, because it was said in the anime.
Conversely, there are attacks that are in Japanese.
Now you can see that there are many attacks in the manga that are in kanji and katakana. How do we know which one to read, then?
One clue comes from another manga, Cardcaptor Sakura. All her attacks are in kanji, when she releases the staff, she does so in kanji. However, again, they are spoken in English. (or butchered thereof).
Why would an author do this? Well, most of the kanji used can be read at the level chosen. In Ian Miller's case of the Submarine Violin Tide, there are kanji up to about the 4th grade level. The target audience is 14 years old. Since not a lot of Japanese retain their English, they wouldn't know what it meant in one panel.
In the anime, however, it is very clear what they are saying, since they have multiple frames to convey it.
Again, when I sent this info, he ignored it. This does not seem like rational behavior. Just because I spent time scanning, and analyzing kanji with multiple sources, does not warrant this behavior. He could not back up what he had to say with sources when I asked. (I gave him a list of dictionaries from Kodansha and an American publisher, as well as one online.)
Someone who doesn't read the furigana isn't that credible in naming attacks.
Conclusion
I like it when I'm corrected and that my typos are corrected. It makes sense to me to have my website up to date and correct. I have no problems with this. It's productive to me.
I don't blame him for making mistakes. I do blame him for not being able to own up to his mistakes, and posting and cutting up e-mail. I hope this is not in an effort to feel superior. To me that sin of pride is sad if one thinks about it. It's one thing to be superior in information, it's another to never admit that you're wrong--even SOS admitted to me when they were alive that Prince Uranus was a mistake.
What's sadder and sillier than this is that to this day he insists that my "real" name is "Kimberly". That my first and "real" name must be Kim because it's in my profile of the e-mail I used to respond to him. Now, we all know that we can put anything on the name line of our e-mails. Why I know people that use random numbers. People that know me think this is funny. Why? The name I gave was "Kim Yoon Mi" which is clearly a Korean name. I stated on my website that he combed through I was Korean. I posted it throughout the e-mails I was Korean. I stated that "Korean and Japanese are related." Kim is a last name. It's not even pronounced the same as the diminutive for Kimberly. Keem (short ee) is closer to the sound. Kim Yoonmi is actually my Korean name. It's on my birth certificate in Korean, but not on my passport. I became a citizen of the US and was adopted with a different name. I've put a lot of things into my sender line, it doesn't mean it's the one on my passport--but being who he is, I bet he'll insist that I'm wrong and that I don't know my own name.
After he carefully blocked all my e-mail, this is the result. He posted my name wrong, and he supports things on his website by cutting the evidence I've given above. Don't sulk because I corrected your corrections. Be well-informed before e-mailing, like you would to anyone. (And don't get their names wrong!)
Footnotes
1
Takeuchi, Naoko. Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon Original Volume 1, Act 1, Page 13, Frame 2-3.
2
Japanese dictionary in Japanese
Japanese dictionary in English
3 a href="http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/47145599/">Isis with lillies is her cat.. she appologizes it doesn't look much like the Mau, but it is only half... Her Deviant Art account
4 The original paragraph roughly said, that while *ancient* Egyptian often deleted it's vowels, thus the vowels wouldn't be known that Coptic did not. Coptic is directly descended from Ancient Egyptian and was used to transcribe vowels. Although not all words of Egyptian are recovered with their vowels, Coptic has many of them. In addition many vowels were transcribed into Latin, Greek, Italian and other languages who attempted to transcribe the sounds of Egyptian. He conveniently cut after the first sentence.