On Mon, 2002-11-18 at 00:18, Anthere wrote:
If the latter, would not that make sense from time
to time maybe, to actually use the most widely used name for an "object" which
is not english, or the most widely used "name" for a non-english person, rather
than the name which is most widely known by native-english-people ?
In general we should use the form that's most widely used in the
language we're writing in; that's just plain sensible. Where alternate
forms exist (eg the form in the language(s) native to or used by or in
or near or with or in conjunction with the person, place or thing
described), they can and should be noted (and usually are!), and if
possible available as redirects.
The biggest fallacy with this is what we mean by "most widely used".
Some are fairly obvious. No-one would reasonably that an article in
English about Rome, Italy should appear under "Roma". Still, the entire
set of these obvious cases is only a small subset of the entire body of
articles that could have this problem.
When you try to translate everything the very real risk is that you end
up using a form that nobody recognizes. If a name is not widely known,
we should be favouring the original language form, with standard
transliterations when that is applicable. With novels and movies we
should be favouring the original language title; there is no way that we
should be attempting the translation of titles that have never been
produced in English translations. Whether the title of Camus's novel
"L'Étranger" should be the literal "The Stranger" or the
metaphorical
"The Outsider" is a matter of literary debate that is well beyond the
scope of this encyclopaedia. Using the original title for the main
entry avoids that problem completely.
I use the word "favour" carefully since a one rule fits all policy will
never work. Nobody has ever used the English title for "La Dolce Vita"
while the movie "Wo hu cang long" is only known by its English name.
Eclecticology