There are thousands of cases where a mistranslation or mistransliteration has caused the standard English name for a character or book or place or name to be different than in the original. That's why we need a rule, and have one, to avoid arguing over he merits of each individual instance. Once a mistake has been adopted in the english language, there it is. When the standard changes, as it sometimes does, in response to increased knowledge or a desire for increased precision, then we change it here. The point of a manual of style is to avoid these discussion every time or we'd spend all our efforts on this, instead of substantial content.
On Wed, Jun 25, 2008 at 1:33 PM, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
We have the flip side of this in another article, where a firearms enthusiast is going ballistic over usage of the term "clip" as a synonym for "magazine" in firearms. He is technically correct - in the engineering sense, a "clip" is a different type of hardware used for a slightly different thing. But common usage has blurred the line and they're used interchangably by a large portion of people with firearms.
He wants to stand on principle and deprecate "clip" as a synonym, despite its widespread common usage. We keep telling him that that's not how Wikipedia works - we reflect common usage, and report where technically correct terminology differs. But he's riding the line on abusive behavior trying to keep it out.
-george
On Wed, Jun 25, 2008 at 10:17 AM, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Ken Arromdee wrote:
Besides, you're choosing a very strained interpretation of the rule. I would say that a "common English name" is a word that has become part of the English language, and can be found in dictionaries and similar places. A character or a sword in a manga would have no common English name at all.
Well, it can also include translated proper names, not just things that have become part of the English language and show up in dictionaries. The "use common names" rule is strongest when something /actually/ has a common English name, though.
In cases where a particular English translation is well established, we use it even if it could be argued that it's somehow "wrong"---for example not everyone is happy with the title [[The Stranger (novel)]] as a translation, but it's so well established as to be obviously the right place to put the article. The same goes for lots of other novels, works of philosophy, etc., that have conventional but in one way or another "wrong" English translations to which a minority of people virulently object. In a different example, we also tend to use Western name order for famous individuals who are conventionally referred to in that order in English media, and use nonstandard transliterations of personal names if they've become standard in English for that person.
In the case of this sword, though, it'd be hard to argue that there's a particularly "common" translation or "standard" English name, so some sort of more systematic/mechanical transliteration is probably best. That's also what we also do with more obscure real people who don't have clearly established English versions of their names.
-Mark
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-- -george william herbert george.herbert@gmail.com
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