In message
<648f108b0603100121k2d9e159fw19f370215b94b095(a)mail.gmail.com>om>,
"Wikipedia Romania (Ronline)"
<rowikipedia-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w(a)public.gmane.org> writes
Hi,
I'm planning to work on a number of articles related to Irish, Scottish and
Welsh localities on the Romanian Wikipedia. I am currently in a dilemma as
to what name to use - the Celtic variant or the English variant. I have
realised that most non-English Wikipedias use the English variant - so that
place names such as "Cork", "Dublin", "Edinburg" and
"Cardiff" are used. For
the exception of Dublin, perhaps, many of these place names, particularly
smaller towns, do not have native variants in languages such as Romanian,
German, French, etc.
So, why should the English name be used in this situation? Wouldn't the
Celtic name be more appropriate? Celtic languages are co-official in
Scotland and Wales, while in Ireland, Irish is the first official and
national language. Due to this, I would prefer to use placenames such as
"Corcaigh", "*An Uaimh*" (for Navan), "*Chill Dara" *(for
Kildare), etc.
However, this sounds quite odd and are not frequently used, even though they
are the first official name. What do others think? I am inclined to use them
so that people are actually educated that there exists an Irish language as
the first official language of Ireland. Too often, people in Romania say
"the Irish speak (just) English" and stop it at that. They're surprised,
for
example, when I tell them about Irish names such as "Baile Atha Cliath" for
Dublin, etc.
Writing from the point of view of the Welsh Wikipedia, I'd suggest using
the English name for simplicity, with the Welsh equivalent listed in the
introduction, so that your readers both know that there is a Welsh name
and what it is. Have a redirect from the Welsh name to the English one,
as I presume most Romanians are more likely to know the English name. If
you're doing a thorough list of Welsh place names the problem is fairly
limited, because most villages will only have a Welsh name, it's just
the cities and towns which may have two. There are a few places where
the Welsh name has now supplanted the traditional English name, even in
English usage - "Caernarfon" rather than "Carnarvon", and
"Conwy" rather
than "Conway".
We had a similar problem in the Welsh Wikipedia - most countries in
Europe and the Commonwealth, and a few other countries, have a
traditional Welsh name, but we got into a dispute over how to name or
spell more obscure places - apply a Welsh transliteration to the English
name or not? Wsbecistan or Uzbekistan (using two letters which aren't
even in the Welsh alphabet!!). Eventually we settled on using the
country names used in the only Welsh-language atlas ever published -
which generally uses English country names! I'm not totally happy with
that decision, and some of our articles are consequently in a horrible
mess - China is at "Tsieina" with a redirect from "Tseina" which is
another popular spelling, but "Peoples Republic of China" is at
"Gweriniaeth Pobl China". Traditional city names are used where
available - Paris, Llundain/London, Brwsel/Brussels, Rhufain/Rome, but
we had to get creative with Moscow and finally settled on "Moscfa", as
the local name transliterated. Russian names are "interesting" - Pyotr
Ilyich Tchaikovsky - should that be Tsaicofsgi? Should we change Pyotr
to Pedr? Should we change Ilyich to ap Ilia? Actually we decided to keep
the usual English spelling, recognising that few music lovers are likely
to bother trying anything else, though we did include a redirect for
Pedr I.T.!
We're very aware that as we're putting a fair volume of text online in a
language which doesn't have a very large web corpus that any wrong
decisions we take may stick, and affect the direction the language
develops in the future, so we tend to be a bit hesitant about taking
these decisions...
--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/