Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 23:15:30 -0700 From: David Schultz <dschultz@uclink.Berkeley.EDU> To: "Greg 'groggy' Lehey" <grog@FreeBSD.ORG> Cc: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr>, Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@FreeBSD.ORG>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Language in danger: Language loss Message-ID: <20020528231530.A897@HAL9000.wox.org> In-Reply-To: <20020529123333.G82424@wantadilla.lemis.com>; from grog@FreeBSD.ORG on Wed, May 29, 2002 at 12:33:33PM %2B0930 References: <20020527014353.B1951@HAL9000.wox.org> <20020528091410.G29491@wantadilla.lemis.com> <20020528001001.GA20175@hades.hell.gr> <20020528095208.A16567@wantadilla.lemis.com> <20020527175613.A1214@HAL9000.wox.org> <20020528102802.K16567@wantadilla.lemis.com> <20020527184817.A1485@HAL9000.wox.org> <20020528104311.A37937@lpt.ens.fr> <20020528150600.A79546@energyhq.homeip.net> <20020529123333.G82424@wantadilla.lemis.com>
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Thus spake Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.ORG>: > > It's usual, in Spanish, to translate the name of a person, and keep the > > original surname. IMHO it's totally correct. So you could either say > > Johan Sebastian Bach, or Juan Sebastian Bach, both of which would be > > correct. I think the same can be applied to french and other languages. > > OTOH, some names are fully translated in english: Cristobal Colon -> > > Christopher Columbus. I think it makes sense to translate names, now, > > surnames, that I find a bit odd. > > I suppose it's a matter of opinion. I look on names as not being part > of a language, more a tag, so the spelling shouldn't be changed. > There's still a significant issue when transliterating from one > language to another, though. It's also a problem in declined languages, in which it's often necessary to attach suffixes to foreign names. As I've said before, English is far from being the worst offender. My take on the matter is that people should be able to pronounce the words in their own language, even if they have to mutilate foreign words to do so. On the other hand, if I picked up a German document, I *expect* that I would recognize any English proper nouns in it, but I wouldn't say that I have a *right* to recognize them. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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