[Talk-GB] City names translation

[John Sturdy]

I hadn't known (or remembered) that recommendation from the wiki; but
still, the Ukrainian spelling (resulting in a Ukrainian reader
understanding it as a reasonable phonetic imitation of the English
name) may often be very far from a transliteration (letter-for-letting
substitution) from the English name.  I'll put Towcester forward as an
example!  (For those not familiar with it: it's pronounced like
"Toaster".)

__John

On Mon, Aug 4, 2014 at 4:36 PM, Ed Loach <edloach at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Since English has non-phonetic spelling (and some placenames are
>> particularly non-phonetic) there's no solid base for automatic
>> transliteration to something meaningful in another script, so I
> think
>> it's reasonable to put the Ukrainian spelling in explicitly, for
>> places for which such a spelling is established..
>
> Perhaps in the cast of non-phonetic places there is some argument
> that such names could possibly be added, but looking at Pavlo's
> proposed cities I noticed Chelmsford which already has two Cyrillic
> language transliterations I feel would be better removed.
>
> There is a bit in the wiki which recommends avoiding
> transliterations:
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Names#Avoid_transliteration
>
> Speaking of an on the ground example, a few years ago I visited
> Crete and while all signs were in Greek, some of the tourist ones
> were also in a Roman script (I can't claim "English" - a name is a
> name). One particular place we wanted to visit we struggled to find
> on the map, and it was only when we were driving in the area we
> found that the translation from Greek in the guide book we'd read in
> advance, and the translation and the map and the translation on the
> sign post were three different translations. In this instance (if
> I'd been an OSM mapper at the time) I'd have added a name:en of what
> was on the sign, though as noted above it isn't technically "en". I
> suspect the three different translations were transliterations of
> different ways it was pronounced.
>
> As far as I know Chelmsford has no cyrillic translations on their
> signs.
>
> Ed
>