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I think you mean Translation. Transliteration is the art of taking a language's sounds and putting them in a different alphabet. (think Hiragana to Romaji vs. japanese to English - They're totally different.)

But i get what you mean, translation is a bit of an art, as my japanese classes could tell you. As a language student studying Japanese, you would not believe how many times I yell to the tv and say "your translation is wrong" or something like that.
You have to be able to tell what is an object that can be translated, shouldn't be translated, or cannot be defined as anything but itself, and be able to discern people's names, places, things, and all this other stuff, while keeping it appropriate to the target audience (that really should be abandoned, because the profanity in japan is not that bad - it's just that there's a lot of it), and making it fit the mouth movements. (WHEW!)

Then there's the content itself. that's a whole 'nother matter in itself.

But still, there's some nuances that some sentences have that are quite tricky to comprehend... but almost anyone who has a decent education in Japanese can argue with the subtitles/dubbing till they're blue in the face, but it won't change anything.

Eh~? I guess you would just have to pick up on the people themselves~. I think having good people skills and good observation~. The better you know someone, the better you know what they are thinking and then translation just kind of takes over~. Just to hear the whole story and have a mindset in it would help I guess surprised There is always a moment in our lives where someone says something and it doesn't make sense in a logical way, but you automatically know what they mean by that... and I don't mean poetic... it is just a really messed up way of speaking but, in that messed up way it just sounded very clear or just an action of something making it a statement. Also I would think that in understanding the messed up language someone speaks you, yourself, would have to be a very understanding person and be able to convert it to another persons level of understanding and maybe a similar understanding with the same effect.... I think being a translator is just about being a people person and understanding I guess... in my opinion. '-'

While I'm here, maybe you guys can help me out with a translation assignment I have, it's really doing my head in, it's the lyrics to an Enka song, as my translation professor loves Enka, anyway here it is;

函館の女

"Hakodate woman"

はるばる来たぜ　函館へ
さかまく波を　のりこえて
あとは追うなと 云いながら
うしろ姿で　泣いてた君を
おもいだすたび　逢いたくて
とてもがまんが　できなかったよ

"I wanted to meet you, for I had little self control, the figure who remembered the journey and was crying behind the after spray, while warning not to follow the remains of the great surging wave that came riding across to Hakodate from a great distance."

函館山の　頂で 　
七つの星も　呼んでいる
そんな気がして　きてみたが
灯りさざめく　松風町は
君の噂（うわさ）も　きえはてて
沖の潮風　こころにしみる

"On the peak of Mt Hakodate the seven stars are calling out, I tried to have such a feeling, but voices come alight. In Matsuzechou, the rumors of you have vanished completely, and the salty breeze pierces my heart"

迎えに 来たぜ　函館へ
見はてぬ夢と　知りながら
忘れられずに　とんできた
ここは北国　しぶきもこおる
どこにいるのか　この町の
一目だけでも　逢いたかったよ

"While knowing of a dream I ignored and struck by the inability to forget, I came to Hakodate to meet you. This is the northern country, even ocean spray freezes. Where are you? I wanted to meet you at just my first look in this town"

That last part is really frustrating me, I can't seem to put it into good English, any help would be appreciated

Considering that most the textbooks and beginner books for Japanese have standardized that long "o's" (ou) are written as "ō" for romaji, I'd say that it's pretty easy to understand. One just needs to be more careful when you're writing the romanized characters yourself for clarification. As the "tou" and "too" can make a vast difference in meaning, as you've pointed out. Though, if you're going to be learning to write the language it would behoove you to learn the basics of hirigana and katakana so that reading such items doesn't get confusing to comprehend. blaugh

Why "ō" is used for the English learning Japanese is because if you look in any English dictionary, that is how an extended vowel is denoted.

Also based on what you were saying in one of the word game threads, I'd say it's not the problem of the "ō" being used in books/textbook, it's just the issue of foreigners being uncertain if a word uses only "cho" or if it uses "chō". It's whether or not to take on the an extra "o" or "u" when writing things like 'shachou' or "chouchou". Another item that can confused foreigners is when to use the small "tsu". It's basically the trial and error or learning a language. This does not cause dyslexia. It's also more toward the uncertainty if it has an extended vowel or not. Say, for example the uncertainty a person might have in adding an extra "i" to "tannoshii" to make the right word. In Japanese it's more common to have the "ou" vowel extensions but all types of foreigners will struggle with when to use and not to use vowel extensions because we are not used to them and it's hard to hear if it's an extended vowel or a short vowel when used in a sentence. It's sort of like the saying: "I before e except after c or as sounded as "a" as in neighbor and weigh" for English.
Basically, what I'm trying to say, is I get confused whether or not to make something a long vowel or not, and it's not because of my textbooks, WHICH uses hirigana, katakana, and kanji, but because I'm not sure if the word has an extended vowel when I write the word myself.

It is done. Let me know what you think

That's not an own transliteration system, that's actually a transliteration system called Kunrei-shiki. The most common one, where the words you've written would be written as kanji and chotto, is called Hepburn-shiki. Hepburn is better for foreigners learning Japanese because it focuses on the pronouncation, but kunrei focuses on logic, or however I should put it ... For example: In hepburn H is added in the S-row version of I, shi, but in kunrei it's simply si making the s-row become: sa si su se so. The same goes for tsu, which is simply written tu in kunrei, making the t-row ta ti tu te to, note that chi is spelled as ti here. Why have two systems then? Well, hepburn unfortunately has some flaws. The kana づ and ず are both written zu in hepburn, but in kunrei they're different (du and zu). Because of this you have to write in kunrei sometimes when you type Japanese in roomaji on a computer to get some of those characters.