On 03-Oct-01 Sampo Syreeni wrote:
> Well, naturally. Putting a lot of effort into "getting it right" would not
> be sensible. However, I still think slipping the original Arabic form into
> background graphics or the like would not take too much work, and would
> please the pedantic among us. Not to mention Arabic immigrants.
What about bi-/multilingual place names like "Dublin" vs. "Baile Átha
Cliath", "Turku" vs. "Åbo" or "ירושלים" vs. "القدس" (= Jerusalem)?
If only one version was to be chosen, the other linguistic group(s) might be
offended, even if it's in the background graphics. OTOH, it would neither be
sensible to include all the local variants, especially if there are a great
number of them (e.g. names of big cities in truly multilingual countries
like India or Nigeria).
> Place names are a bit different, since people are often accustomed to
> hearing them in some variant, native language mutation. I don't think many
Some people have different variants for their personal names, too, e.g.
many Westernized Chinese outside China and in Hong Kong have a proper
"Chinese" name but in addition a "Western" given name which is to be used in
other linguistic contexts.
> would be thrown off if CNN from the beginning decided to report Osama's
> dealings using the correct pronunciation or spelling.
The correct spelling on CNN? Do you mean like this:
"The leader of القاعدة organization اسامة بن لادن has said..."
Also the "correct pronunciation" might be something unachievable for most
newsreaders not specialising in linguistics, e.g. the phonemes /q/ and /ʕ/
in "al-Qâ`ida", tones in Chinese names (cf. the provinces 山西 and 陕西,
which are both pronounced [ʂanɕi], just with different tones), long/short
consonants and vowels in Finnish (e.g. Mika vs. Miika vs. Miikka) etc.
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E-Mail: Miikka-Markus Alhonen <Miikka-Markus.Alhonen@tigatieto.com>
Date: 04-Oct-01
Time: 01:00:34
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