Current irritation...
Apr. 3rd, 2008 03:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
...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...
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...
no subject
Date: 2008-04-03 03:37 pm (UTC)Ah - yes, Wikipedia ;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_for_Germany
no subject
Date: 2008-04-03 03:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-03 07:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-04 08:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-04 11:11 pm (UTC)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'.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-05 09:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-04 01:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-04 08:25 am (UTC)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.