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Do you translate peoples names ?

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dakanga

Re: Do you translate peoples names ?

Post by dakanga »

originally posted by ettelly

”It looks to me like people complain about the default names of a target language being translated into English”
But earlier you've said:
”In French for instance I don't see them translating French names into anything”
Well, maybe that has been your experience in other languages, but then, why say that this hasn't been your experience (even if you say in French)...

What do you mean? I said ”this hasn't been [my] experience” because it hasn't. French names in the French tree stay French names in both languages from what I've seen. And no one has any problem with that.
Now in the previous recent post on the same topic I asked what trees those were where people had problems with that. And others said that apparently people had issues with names Sofia/Sophia, Ana/Anna in the Spanish tree. And said that Spanish is very phonetic and you can't confuse Ana with Anna. And it's the same in my native language so I get that.

My experience with the Italian course is that people complain about target language names, saying things like, "how are we supposed to know the spelling" , "they didn't say we need to translate names to Italian" and so on, mostly accompanied by "not fair to be marked wrong and lose my X lessons in a row without mistake".

So I take it that duo actually translated Italian names into English? And then expected people to translate them back without them knowing how to spell them?
Now that would indeed be wrong. And only shows that names should not have been translated. Those should have been Italian names right away. In English translations as well. And people would see how to spell them without translating or guessing the spelling.

I was responding to the fact that people complain about them using "translated" names

It looks to me like people complain about the default names of a target language being translated into English with English ”versions” of them. Not the other way around where they would have any problem with local names being introduced to them in another language.

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dakanga

Re: Do you translate peoples names ?

Post by dakanga »

So, lets try to pick an example.

Lets say you had a sentence that said
Lady Gaga said "You define beauty yourself, society doesn’t define your beauty."

Would you change the name of "Lady Gaga" when translating it to French, German, Spanish, Italian, etc ? As in other languages that use the Latin alphabet ?

Can people think of other examples ?

edited, though they should be better than this one. Ones where you may consider someone's name should be translated to another language, to be changed in the translation. And why you would do that.

User avatar
dakanga

Re: Do you translate peoples names ?

Post by dakanga »

Originally posted by MadameSensei

My dear friend daKanga, you reminded me that I always start the year with a lecture on Google Translate. I show failed tattoos, funny menu items, badly described iPad games, The Osaka subway debacle, how Google Translate was translating "Russia" as "Mordor" for a couple of weeks... I have a screen shot of "Lady Gaga" being translated as "Brittany Spears." :)

User avatar
dakanga

Re: Do you translate peoples names ?

Post by dakanga »

originally posted by Oso-the-Bear

no I don't think that they translate band names. Like the Four Tops are just the Four Tops, they even keep the "the." https://www.musica.com/letras.asp?letras=601 you can see there on musica.com "letras de canciones de Counting Crows."

User avatar
dakanga

Re: Do you translate peoples names ?

Post by dakanga »

originally posted by ARCANA-MVSA

Yes ... The way I see it is that, no matter how similar two names are, that doesn't make them the same.

I.e. Kathryn is not Kathleen is not Catherine, Cathy is not Kathie.

The same, for me, applies to foreign names. Michel is not Michael, Žofie is not Sophie, Kateřina is not Kathryn or Katrina or whatever.

These names belong to the cultures and languages of which they are a part. I don't see the point of stripping them of that culture. (The fact that it can be - and has been - used to forcefully assimilate people into a culture in an effort to strip them of the culture they came from gives me extra pause. If anyone doesn't believe me, there's a link in my comment somewhere above linking to a Storycorps episode called "Facundo the Great", which talks about exactly that.)

There are some exceptions, such as the Japanese course which teaches Western names adapted into Japanese (which includes significant differences), and Russian or Ukrainian with their different alphabets, but other than that, I prefer not to translate the course names.

Volgav vitsenanieff nivya kevach varatsach.

User avatar
dakanga

Re: Do you translate peoples names ?

Post by dakanga »

originally posted by ARCANA-MVSA

Yes ... The way I see it is that, no matter how similar two names are, that doesn't make them the same.

I.e. Kathryn is not Kathleen is not Catherine, Cathy is not Kathie.

The same, for me, applies to foreign names. Michel is not Michael, Žofie is not Sophie, Kateřina is not Kathryn or Katrina or whatever.

These names belong to the cultures and languages of which they are a part. I don't see the point of stripping them of that culture. (The fact that it can be - and has been - used to forcefully assimilate people into a culture in an effort to strip them of the culture they came from gives me extra pause. If anyone doesn't believe me, there's a link in my comment somewhere above linking to a Storycorps episode called "Facundo the Great", which talks about exactly that.)

There are some exceptions, such as the Japanese course which teaches Western names adapted into Japanese (which includes significant differences), and Russian or Ukrainian with their different alphabets, but other than that, I prefer not to translate the course names.

Volgav vitsenanieff nivya kevach varatsach.

User avatar
dakanga

Re: Do you translate peoples names ?

Post by dakanga »

originally posted by MadameSensei

A great speaker named Huda Essa has been coming to my school district to talk about this very issue. Here is her Ted Talk:
https://www.vexplode.com/en/tedx/your-n ... t=00:00:30


edited:
other links that may interest:

(previous link that does not work for me:

Last edited by dakanga on Mon Apr 11, 2022 1:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
dakanga

Re: Do you translate peoples names ?

Post by dakanga »

originally posted by DragonPolyglot

I have so many people misspell my name in my own language, and it makes me feel bad, so I consider how others might feel if they are called a different name that is a "translation" or different version, so I feel strongly about not translating people's names. If a person has a translation of their own name that they want me to call them by, that's fine as sometimes they might have that name because they grew up bilingual or they prefer it, but otherwise I will try to remember the given name (even though I'm very bad at connecting names to faces and vice versa). I try my best to learn how to pronounce and spell names correctly. It's important to me for both cultural and personal reasons. A name means something and often to change a name is to change the context of the name. For that reason, and my own experience with my name being misspelled and mispronounced, I dislike translating names.

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dakanga

Re: Do you translate peoples names ?

Post by dakanga »

originally posted by Kate887291

You don't translate names when they are included. Same goes with places.

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dakanga

Re: Do you translate peoples names ?

Post by dakanga »

originally posted by ColinCanuck

But of course it's not true that we don't translate place names. We translate country names all the time. Germany = Allemagne = Deutschland. Also lots of European cities have accepted translated names. Den Haag = The Hague, Köln = Cologne, London = Londres etc. I've no idea what the Mandarin name for Beijing is, but we needed some way to write it in Latin script.

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dakanga

Re: Do you translate peoples names ?

Post by dakanga »

Ahhh - places !

Now there is another fun topic. And in that, one is how they are written, and the other is how they are pronounced.

There is an example of a city in America, that is spelt the same as a city in France. Though the Americans pronounce the name of their city very differently. I have forgotten which one it is. Perhaps someone could suggest it?

I know it was a very "hot" issue with the Americans I was travelling with, about getting the correct pronunciation for their city in America. I did my best to try to respect this, for it was also a very important issue for the people I was with. And I agree with them. For them, it was key part of the identity for this place.

ref

User avatar
dakanga

Re: Do you translate peoples names ?

Post by dakanga »

originally posted by ColinCanuck

Both France and the USA have a small town called Calais. It i pronounced very differently. Not to mention Detroit.

User avatar
dakanga

Re: Do you translate peoples names ?

Post by dakanga »

originally posted by Baloo319510

We could probably come up with a long list of these. The one that springs to mind to me is Lima, OH, pronounced with the long "I" like the bean. The city in Peru of course uses the Spanish pronunciation.

I know of a couple of smaller communities not real far from where I grew up with odd stories. One was Russiaville, and the other Moscow. Once would assume there were Russian immigrants that settled in the area. The story we were told was that originally Russiaville was pronounced the way you would expect, like the name of the country. After WWII when the cold war started people were very concerned about any references that might tie them to the communists or Soviet Union, so they began pronouncing the name "roosh-A-ville". I have never heard a local say it any differently, and you can tell when someone isn't local if they use the more obvious pronunciation.

Moscow similarly didn't want to be tied to the communists, but were in a little tougher position. The plan was to pronounce the second syllable differently than the traditional reference to the Russian city, but nobody could come to a consensus on what that was! Half the people said "Mos-ko" (long O sound in second syllable) and half said "Mos-cow' (second syllable like the bovine animal). And it is still like that today, though it is now an unincorporated area barely more than a collection of houses on a rural two-lane.

At least those were the legends we were told as kids. They may be totally inaccurate.

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MatOzone
Catalonia

Re: Do you translate peoples names ?

Post by MatOzone »

In Spain we have some political problems due to the lack of interest in our state languages.

Example: In spanish, the "j" sound of "john" doesn't exist. Most spaniards pronuncies "yohn" (like 'yes') or "Khon" (spanish J). But in catalan we have this "john" pronunciation, and too many names and words with it: "Quirze, Joan, Jordi, Judit, Jofre, Sergi",... Also we use very different pronunciation rules than spanish. So our names sound veeeery different. As long as many spanish people say "you must only use spanish language and speak only spanish", people with other mother tongues disagree and become independentists. My own name seems easy, "Eduard". In spanish, Eduardo, pronuncied "eh-duh-áhR-doh". But in my own language is pronucied "Æ-duh-áR". And my friend, "Quirze Mitjajoana" changes from the catalan "keerjæ meetjæ-jooanæ" to "KirZe Meet-ya Yoana"...

I guess it happens the same in Ucraine if Russian impose Russian names instead of the original ucranian...

I also add:

If a Catalan wants to translate his name on his ID card, from Catalan to Spanish, that's very easy: You just need to visit a police station and fill out a form. It's called "name normalization",and it's for free..
However, if the name on the ID card must change from Spanish to Catalan, the process is completely different. You have to provide many documents and pay fees, since it is no longer "name normalization" but "translation".
Assuming that in theory both languages are official, this should not be the case.

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lrai
United States of America

Re: Do you translate peoples names ?

Post by lrai »

daKanga:

Thanks for posting this. I have never translated names, but as a teacher of English in China I have been asked numerous times to give my student an English name. When I can I try to give them a name that is similar to their Chinese name but it isn't always simple.

I was given a Chinese name, let's just say I'm not crazy about it, but it's the one they put on my Chinese Driver's License because my name had to be in Chinese. I was given a Russian equivalent to my English name when I taught in Kazakhstan.

I can tell you as a teacher sometimes learning my student's names in their native tongue can be a challenge but I do my best. A person's name is very special to them and to show respect for that person I believe it's best if we can use their given name in whatever language that happens to be, unless they give permission for them to be called by another name. Just my two cents.

lrai
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pawndemic
Germany

Re: Do you translate peoples names ?

Post by pawndemic »

Usually we don't translate names. Eisenhower remains Eisenhower and will not shift to Eisenhauer . Michael Schumacher is pronounced the German way and Michael Jordan is pronounced English. But as always, there are some exeptcions. One of the famest is Christopher Columbus, who has in many languages a different name. In Spanish is Cristóbal Colón, in French Christophe Colomb and I guess in Italian is something like Cristoforo Colombo. Correct me, if I am wrong.

Translating of names of places, regions or cities is different. Some will be translated others not. I am not sure if there is a rule. I can't detect any pattern :D I guess it depends if there was a historical connection or not.

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Yoong1eKangTerry
United States of America

Re: Do you translate peoples names ?

Post by Yoong1eKangTerry »

So in K-pop a lot of the members name will be in their romanized (IF I am not mistaken correct me if I am wrong) names like for example instead of ‘성훈’ they will use the romanized spelling ‘Sunghoon’. Also they have Japanese translations of their names as well like Sunghoon’s name in Japanese is ‘ ソンフン’ would that count as a translation of a name?

Native:🇺🇸(English)| Novice Mid: 🇪🇸(Spanish)|Beginner:🇰🇷(Korean)

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lrai
United States of America

Re: Do you translate peoples names ?

Post by lrai »

Yoong1eKangTerry:

This is just my opinion, but what you are describing might be a translation if the original name has been changed, but (in my opinion) if the name is simply the same name but in the other language then I don't see that as a translation.

Example: My name in English is Lori, but in Chinese I have two characters that represent the Chinese version of my name but it's not a translation of my name as it is different. The pinyin is Luo Li, whereas in Russian my name spelled in Cyrillic is the same as it is said in English so that to me would be a translation.
In short if the name doesn't change in the other language then I would consider that a translation. Again that's just my take and opinion.

lrai
what's your legacy
Image 🇨🇳 🇷🇺 Learning Yiddish, Chinese, Russian

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Yoong1eKangTerry
United States of America

Re: Do you translate peoples names ?

Post by Yoong1eKangTerry »

lrai wrote: Fri Apr 29, 2022 10:52 pm

Yoong1eKangTerry:

This is just my opinion, but what you are describing might be a translation if the original name has been changed, but (in my opinion) if the name is simply the same name but in the other language then I don't see that as a translation.

Example: My name in English is Lori, but in Chinese I have two characters that represent the Chinese version of my name but it's not a translation of my name as it is different. The pinyin is Luo Li, whereas in Russian my name spelled in Cyrillic is the same as it is said in English so that to me would be a translation.
In short if the name doesn't change in the other language then I would consider that a translation. Again that's just my take and opinion.

Oh ok ;) Thanks for the feedback :D

Native:🇺🇸(English)| Novice Mid: 🇪🇸(Spanish)|Beginner:🇰🇷(Korean)

b05aplmun.ca
United States of America

Re: Do you translate peoples names ?

Post by b05aplmun.ca »

dakanga wrote: Tue Mar 15, 2022 11:35 pm

Originally posted by Gh0stwheel

Oh. This puts the topic in a different light.

I think that the intention of the translation in lesson/practice sentences is neither to say we need to translate names, nor that this is the custom. The way I see the name-translation issue in Duolingo lesson sentences is that we are taught the local version of the name (when there is one).

I don't mind it in this case.
I get to learn the spelling and pronunciation.
I get to feel that even though the language is different, and the prevalent names are too, there is still some small cultural connection. Even if at first it is a little weird to translate names.

I think a lot of the difficulty people have with seeing the pedagogical benefit (once the weirdness is acknowledged) is that they are reluctant to let go of the understandable anger they've felt when they were first marked wrong / lost the points.

I've seen very much the opposite. In Spanish to English and English to Spanish, the names generally do not change in the accepted translations and people then complain (or, these days, I guess, used to complain) bitterly about losing points, because they typed "Anna" or (in one case) "Hannah" instead of "Ana" or "Sophia" instead of "Sofia."

People would get particularly upset, I think, when spelling was a problem in listening lessons, but often their errors reflected ignorance of general spelling norms in the target language.

Sometimes people would complain that names don't have spelling, which is manifestly untrue.
Many/most written languages have standardized ways of writing common names. There may be more than one standard form, but a learner should learn to spell at least one of the standard ways (and be prepared to recognize others).

As well, individuals or their parents might get creative about the spelling of names, but generally for each person there's one form that is stable over years, quite possibly the entire lifetime of a person and that is the name you ought to use (with the limited exceptions of transliterating names into different alphabets and respecting cultural norms like the standardized English/Gaelic automatic translation).

b05aplmun.ca
United States of America

Re: Do you translate peoples names ?

Post by b05aplmun.ca »

lrai wrote: Fri Apr 29, 2022 10:52 pm

Yoong1eKangTerry:

This is just my opinion, but what you are describing might be a translation if the original name has been changed, but (in my opinion) if the name is simply the same name but in the other language then I don't see that as a translation.

Example: My name in English is Lori, but in Chinese I have two characters that represent the Chinese version of my name but it's not a translation of my name as it is different. The pinyin is Luo Li, whereas in Russian my name spelled in Cyrillic is the same as it is said in English so that to me would be a translation.
In short if the name doesn't change in the other language then I would consider that a translation. Again that's just my take and opinion.

What you're describing is actually transliteration, not translation. I don't think anyone disagrees that names generally should be represented in whatever system of writing is currently being used.

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Explorer
Portugal

Re: Do you translate peoples names ?

Post by Explorer »

MatOzone wrote: Wed Mar 16, 2022 11:52 am

As long as many spanish people say "you must only use spanish language and speak only spanish"

Dear Eduard, it's a shame that there are still some hicks who are not able to appreciate our linguistic heritage. There are dumb people everywhere. Nevertheless, most people, especially younger generations, respect the other languages much more than before. Some of us have learned how to speak basic Catalan. And even though my pronunciation is atrocious I feel a sense of pride knowing a little of this beautiful language. I'm sorry if I mispronounce some Catalan names. I always try to do my best :D

🇬🇧 🇪🇸 🇵🇹 🇫🇷 🇩🇪 | Learning: 🇯🇵 |

b05aplmun.ca
United States of America

Re: Do you translate peoples names ?

Post by b05aplmun.ca »

dakanga wrote: Tue Mar 15, 2022 11:44 pm

originally posted by ColinCanuck

But of course it's not true that we don't translate place names. We translate country names all the time. Germany = Allemagne = Deutschland. Also lots of European cities have accepted translated names. Den Haag = The Hague, Köln = Cologne, London = Londres etc. I've no idea what the Mandarin name for Beijing is, but we needed some way to write it in Latin script.

"Beijing" used to be "Peking" in English. Within my living memory, in fact. I assume that "Beijing" was thought to be the best possible approximation of the way the city's name is pronounced in Mandarin.

Transliteration (changing the letters or characters in a word to the same alphabet/symbols system used in the rest of a written work) is not the same as translation.

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lrai
United States of America

Re: Do you translate peoples names ?

Post by lrai »

b05aptmun:

You are nearly right in your assumption about Mandarin, Beijing is the pinyin for how to say the Chinese characters. Peking was how non-Chinese decided to say the city name which had been Peiping. This is from an etymology web site etymonline.com (see below)

Peking former transliteration of the name of the Chinese capital city, now (in the pinyin system) called Beijing. In the Wade-Giles system it was Peiping; the form Peking pre-dates Wade-Giles and was formed by the old British-run, Hong Kong-based Chinese postal system. So Beijing literally means bei = north and jing = capital. Nanking was the southern capital nan = south

Also thanks for correcting my mistake calling it translation when I did indeed mean transliteration... :)

lrai
what's your legacy
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Theron126
Russia

Re: Do you translate peoples names ?

Post by Theron126 »

Sorry if this has been said and I missed it, but many Russians when speaking English will prefer to use the English version if there is an equivalent name - Catherine, not Yekaterina, Eugene, not Evgeny. And so forth.

As for Duolingo, in the Romanian course at least, it translates in the suggested answer but accepts the Romanian spelling for people like me who stubbornly use it.

Incidentally, is there a reason you're reposting comments originally posted by other people? Are these threads salvaged from the Duo forum or something? Just curious.

Native 🇺🇸🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Fluent 🇷🇺 Studying 🇷🇴

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LICA98
Finland

Re: Do you translate peoples names ?

Post by LICA98 »

in Ukraine (and Belarus) it's normal to have 2 versions of the same name, so for example the same person can be called Volodymyr or Vladimir depending on the language
i.e. if a person is speaking in Ukrainian he will say Volodymyr
if he's speaking in Russian he'll say Vladimir (regardless whether the speaker or the person in question is Ukrainian or not (i.e. when speaking Russian you wouldn't ever say Volodymyr)

it's a bit complicated if a Ukrainian is speaking in Ukrainian about a Russian person not related to Ukraine, apparently officially it should be translated but in practice it's kinda weird since that person isn't Ukrainian so why shouldn't they just use the original name? (and some people do that)

the most extreme cases are in Latvia and Lithuania, there they literally modify all personal names (also foreign ones with no local equivalent) to fit their language, so for example Jack and Joe becomes Žaks and Džo

in Latvia I heard that it is forbidden to have a name that goes against the rules of the language (i.e. no foreign letters like XWQ, no double consonants except S, and ending has to be vowel or S), so for example you cannot be Alexander or Pavel but it has to be Aleksandrs and Pavels 🤔
in Lithuania that's also done by default but it's not as strict and you can change it if you want, in Latvia apparently it's literally not possible to get an ID with Pavel on it 😱

also in Czechia (and Slovakia?) foreign female names are modified and you add ová to every name, for example Jackson becomes Jacksonová
and most absurd is that Russian names that already end in -ova don't just add ´ but instead become -ovová (e.g. Sharapova-Šarapovová) 🙄

Last edited by LICA98 on Thu May 19, 2022 8:01 pm, edited 2 times in total.
LongHenry

Re: Do you translate peoples names ?

Post by LongHenry »

i dont mind if people translate my name. rather that than mispronounce my name in English. Im Henry to the English, Henrí to the french. Genri to the Russians, Heinrich to the germans, Henrik to the Dutch, Errikos to the greeks, Heikki to the finnish, harri to the welsh, Enrique to the Spanish, Eanraig to the scots

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dakanga

Re: Do you translate peoples names ?

Post by dakanga »

Those interested in this topic may be interested in the podcast just released on 15/11/2022, by Crooked Media and Duolingo :

viewtopic.php?t=8525-radiolingo-podcast

I recommend checking it out, for some different ideas, and presentations about people names.

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Gentianopsis
Czech Republic

Re: Do you translate peoples names ?

Post by Gentianopsis »

LICA98 wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 3:16 am

also in Czechia (and Slovakia?) foreign female names are modified and you add ová to every name, for example Jackson becomes Jacksonová

Well, this is how it used to be before 1989 since when we "go to Europe". Recently, this is a very rare thing to do with foreign names (although old people still tend to use it). If a female Czech citizen has a foreign name, she can always choose, whether she is going to use it in its original form or with "-ová" added to its end and parents decide that for their children (when a girl's father is a foreigner, she basically always gets her name without "-ová"). It even became some kind of fashion especially among show business people, reporters and journalists, politicians... to quit using "-ová" even in Czech last names (surnames with a clear meaning in the Czech language).

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dakanga

Re: Do you translate peoples names ?

Post by dakanga »

Why is the year 1989 the dividing line ?

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