On 7/30/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Two good examples are historical. We should use
"Hermann Göring" (not
Goering) and "Napoléon" (not Napoleon).
Hmm, I would agree that Göring is marginally preferable to Goering,
but Napoleon is vastly preferable to Napoléon. In the latter case,
it's a pronunciation thing: in English, we say "Napol-ee-on" not
"Napol-ay-on". In the former, Goering just seems uneducated...
It's a really tricky question overall, and I often have trouble
deciding which form I prefer. Particularly, on French topics, I have
major leanings towards keeping the French name, but that's just
because I'm biased. It often seems so much more precise to keep the
real French term for something than some novel translation (can you
imagine High Speed Train rather than TGV for instance?)
The other major point to bear in mind is that all of this should
really only apply when there is a genuine established tradition of
using the name in English. That is a very small minority of any
foreign names...
Steve