[Wikipedia-l] anglicization is stupid

[Ray Saintonge]

Brion Vibber wrote:

>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