Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2001 18:43:29 +0200 From: Brad Knowles <brad.knowles@skynet.be> To: Paul Richards <paul@freebsd-services.com>, Paul Robinson <paul@akita.co.uk>, jason <kib@mediaone.net> Cc: FreeBSD Chat <chat@FreeBSD.ORG>, Technical Information <tech_info@threespace.com> Subject: Re: What is it good for? (was "Helping Victims of Terror") Message-ID: <p05100356b7d3bf6c07f8@[194.78.144.27]> In-Reply-To: <1305300000.1001245232@lobster.originative.co.uk> References: <4.3.2.7.2.20010922153752.017f8b18@threespace.com> <024601c143d4$37253e80$89941bd8@speakeasy.net> <20010923123443.B270@jake.akitanet.co.uk> <1305300000.1001245232@lobster.originative.co.uk>
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At 12:40 PM +0100 9/23/01, Paul Richards wrote: > It's difficult to convert Arabic names into English. The Taliban for > instance is spelled Teleban by the Times. The problem is that an English > approximation is made to how it sounds in Arabic and that's not always > agreed upon. There is not a standard system for converting Arabic words > into English spellings as far as I know. This is a problem when translating most any name from most any language into most any other. My Political Science teacher in college (who spoke/wrote something like five different languages, most of them related to Polish or Russian) told the following story: In Russian, the native spellings for both Chekov and Tchaikovsky have the same initial character. However, Tchaikovsky was first translated into German and then into English, and when the Germans hear that name, they "see" a "tch". Contrariwise, Chekov was translated directly from Russian to English, and most native english speakers see only a "ch" when they hear that sound. Same for translating English names into other languages. When Russians hear the name "George", they see a "Dg" as the initial characters. This caused no end of confusion for my PolySci teacher as he was doing research in Moscow, and kept reading their writings about some "D. Washington" guy who was apparently the founder of the US. It took him a little while to make the connection. Getting back to the topic at hand, regardless of how the name is spelled in English by native speakers of Farsi (or whatever the language is over in that region), I heard an interview on CNN a few days ago with a guy from Pakistan who kept pronouncing the name closer to "Ozz-mah" rather than "Oh-sah-mah". The same goes for the spellings and pronunciation of the names of cities. For example, it may be spelled "Budapest", but the proper pronunciation is closer to "Boo-dah-pesht". So, which is correct? The spoken version or the written version? And in what language? If you ever want to get into a spelling flame, this is a really good rathole to drag things down into. ;-) -- Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles@skynet.be> H4sICIFgXzsCA2RtYS1zaWcAPVHLbsMwDDvXX0H0kkvbfxiwVw8FCmzAzqqj1F4dy7CdBfn7 Kc6wmyGRFEnvvxiWQoCvqI7RSWTcfGXQNqCUAnfIU+AT8OZ/GCNjRVlH0bKpguJkxiITZqes MxwpSucyDJzXxQEUe/ihgXqJXUXwD9ajB6NHonLmNrUSK9nacHQnH097szO74xFXqtlbT3il wMsBz5cnfCR5cEmci0Rj9u/jqBbPeES1I4PeFBXPUIT1XDSOuutFXylzrQvGyboWstCoQZyP dxX4dLx0eauFe1x9puhoi0Ao1omEJo+BZ6XLVNaVpWiKekxN0VK2VMpmAy+Bk7ZV4SO+p1L/ uErNRS/qH2iFU+iNOtbcmVt9N16lfF7tLv9FXNj8AiyNcOi1AQAA To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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