On 7/30/06, Oldak Quill oldakquill@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