Current irritation...

[danohu]

...is how much translation proper nouns take. What possible reason is there to call a language 'German' in English, 'Allemand' in French, and 'Nemetskii' in Russian, none of them with the faintest similarity to 'Deutsch' (*)? And just about every name or place gets mangled by one language or another. Not to mention all the faff over everybody transliterating Cyrillic in their own special way.

At RIA Novosti there used to be a little old man whose sole function was to figure out how to transliterate names of people and places for the various foreign-language newswires. When I was there I chalked it up to the inefficiency of a former Soviet propaganda agency. But maybe they really did need Igor and his library of atlases and Who's Who's. Grr!

(*) I assume there is some deeply fascinating and compelling historical excuse. I don't care. It's silly.

Also: I have the strong sensation that this is a rant I'll regret later, although I can't for the life of me imagine why. May as well post it and find out, in any case...

Comments

[deerfold.livejournal.com]

Most of the names for German (and Germany), I believe, are due to each language using the name of the Germanic tribe they were most familiar with - the Italian and French certainly are. Certainly this is what I was told by a multilingual aquaintance.

Ah - yes, Wikipedia ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_for_Germany

[oedipamaas49.livejournal.com]

Goodness - I had no idea there were quite so many different names for Germany. Thanks.

[d37373.livejournal.com]

Indeed. The transliterating is causing me problems at the moment - I am supposed to be fuzzy-matching people by name against existing entries in a database. English names are ok, just some least-moves, swap/insert/remove stuff which has been fairly well researched by the people who make spellcheckers. The far east, however, is giving me quite a lot of trouble.

[oedipamaas49.livejournal.com]

ouch. That sounds like the kind of problem that could be fascinating or infuriating, depending on mood and how much pressure you're under to have it done yesterday. Hope it's the former.

[d37373.livejournal.com]

Well, given the current system is "haven't I heard this name before?" said by eurasian people, anything I come up with is better. I guess that means it's the former.

Improving it is on my list of 'things to do which people would appreciate if they noticed the difference on a conscious level'. Or in other words, 'When I have spare time' / 'when hell freezes over'.

[d37373.livejournal.com]

Hmm, re-reading that: I meant to say that I will not have spare time for a while, rather than I am unwilling to do good but unnoticed work.

[whatifoundthere.livejournal.com]

I remember when I was a little kid, my dad would tell me crazy-ass shit like "John and Ian and Yahya and Evan and Hans are all the same name," and I'd say, "No they're not! Just look at them!"

[oedipamaas49.livejournal.com]

oh, yes.

Although when I was a kid it didn't even take international variants to flummux me. I once wrote a story where the main characters were called Sue and Susan. That confused the hell out of everybody - except me, because I just hadn't figured out that they were the same name.