A question about transliteration

[quamp]

I've been seeing some variations in transliteration that seem to deviate from my textbooks. I'm wondering if these transliterations are just a case of sloppy transliterating or of this is some new trend I've never heard about. All transliteration examples given were supposedly done by native speakers and professional translators.

Example #1: In this scene, a young woman starts to run when she sees a young man that is interested in her. She isn't interested in him, of course. He asks her:

何故逃げるんですか? This was transliterated as: Naze nigerun desuka?
Using the rules of my textbooks, it would have been transliterated as Naze nigeru n desu ka?

Example #2: A mother is trying to get her child to take a vitamin pill. The kid refuses to do so. She tells the child:

体にいいなのに. This was transliterated as: Karada niii nanoni.
Using the rules of my textbook, it would have been transliterated as karada ni ii na no ni.

Example #3: At a business meeting, the supervisor tells a subordinate to do something illegal. The subordinate hesitates on doing this, asking his boss:

それは違法行為じゃないですか? This was transliterated as: Sore wa iboukoui janai desuka?

So is this really some new trend or just sloppy transliterating?

 

[JimmySeal]

Where did you find these examples?

There's no official way of placing spaces in transliterations. As you well know, actual Japanese usually has no spaces, so the spacing of romaji has some degree of freedom. #2 is the only one that seems strange to me.

 

[Toritoribe]

yeah, plus, if the transliterators were actually native speakers or professionals, they would no doubt realize the awkwardness of "体にいいなのに" and "iboukoui".
品詞分解の方法は学説によってまちまちですからねぇ。。。

 

[JimmySeal]

I knew "iboukoui" didn't seem right, but I accepted it and doubted myself.

By the way, most of the native speakers I've seen using romaji seem to have a horrible understanding of it. I don't see why they'd be especially good at transliterating.
As for professional translators, well, their job doesn't usually involve rendering Japanese in romaji.

 

[Toritoribe]

It's probably from the difference between "kanji to romaji" and "romaji to kanji".
The former is easy, the same way to read kanji normally. The latter is tough, since, as you know, Japanese has quite so many homophones.
ひらがなだけの文章が読みにくいのと一緒ですね。だから原文とローマ字が同時に提示してあれば間違いはすぐ見つけられます。「いぼうこうい」クラスの違和感は原文なくても気付けるとは思いますが。。。

 

[nice gaijin]

just regarding the issue of transliteration, there are a few different conventions, but none of them seem to provide any solid guidelines for spacing. English being my first language, I prefer to use Hepburn if I must write in Romaji, as it seems to come closest to the sounds in Japanese, and I place spaces generously (ie not combining particles and words, even breaking down 四文字熟語 or larger compounds into multiple parts). If I'm using IME on a computer, however, I'll use another convention to cut down on the number of keystrokes, as it all comes out the same way.

As has been pointed out, there are two glaring mistakes in the originally posted material: one is a transliteration mistake, and the other is a mistake in the Japanese itself.

 

[srintuar]

There is only 1 proper rule for ローマ字:
never ever use it.

Also, quamp,

体にいいなのに" and "iboukoui".

Toritoribe-san was telling you these are wrong.
did you grok why yet?