[Talk-GB] City names translation

Philip Barnes phil at trigpoint.me.uk
Mon Aug 4 17:08:04 UTC 2014


On Mon, 2014-08-04 at 16:51 +0100, John Sturdy wrote:
> 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".)

And ones Americans have trouble with such as Leicester and Loughborough.

Then there are then more localised ones such as Belvoir (pronounced
Beaver) a name which caused endless fun at the Leicester site with
visitors asking the Bell Voir room.

Whilst at Telford we have an Ercall room (pronounced Arcall) and
elsewhere in Shropshire we have Sleap (pronunced Slape) and Quina Brook
(pronounced Keena).

The big problem with transliteration to help pronunciation is where do
you stop, Berlin for example has 194 name tags for different languages,
84 of which just say Berlin.

If we are to help pronunciation, then the way to go is the International
Phonetic alphabet which can be used by translators to all language. But
then again its fun to hear non-locals get it wrong. Then again I was the
non-local who was laughed at in the pub when I got Sleap and Quina Brook
wrong :)

Phil (trigpoint)


> 
> __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
> >
> 
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