How The Atlantic handles Arabic transliterations. Since I can barely spell in English, my odds of adhering to correct transliteration policies for foreign languages are pretty low.
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From the Copy Desk
26 Nov 2007 03:11 pm
Comments (14)
The best way is to figure out what's the popular way right now AND STICK WITH IT.
There's few things more irritating that changing the spelling of foreign words due to the whims of fashion. Most Americans are barely aware of what the Koran is, so calling it the Qu'ran simply reduces the stock of knowledge.
Same with changing place names like Bombay to Mumbai and ethnic group names like Eskimo to Inuit (which drives Eskimos who aren't Inuits crazy). These all just serve as secret fraternity handshakes allowing insiders to identify themselves to each other and sneer at the baffled masses.
We call Germans Germans, even though that's not what they call themselves, because it would be too confusing to change. So, that should be a general principle.
A very small part of respecting a person is calling that person by their name insofar as the sounds which form it are available in speaker's language, and the same goes for writing (a name should be represented as best as it can be in the writer's language). There is no reason to limit this requirement of respect for people just getting their name right, it's also a part of respect for a city, country, or culture to get its name right. This doesn't mean that one has to hunt down the most accurate version of a name, but rather that if one knows the version they're using is wrong, they should update it.
Bringing up the entirely independent point that Eskimoes and Inuit are different groups demonstrates an intention to confuse and avoid argument on the above point.
Leave spelling and transliteration issues for your editor! [Ed.: what editor?] Borrow Mickey Kaus's editor if necessary!
Transliterating Arabic is almost hopeless. If you go by how it is pronounced, Qadhafi would really be spelled with a letter "g" in place of the "q" because in colloquial Libyan dialect Arabic, the letter "qaf" is pronounced sort of like a standard English hard "g". But, the hard "g" in, for instance, Gamal Abd Nasser should really be like a soft English "g". It's just that in Egyptian dialect Arabic, the usual hard "g" is prounounced soft. Clear?
Bonus - The name Egypt doesn't even exist in Arabic. The country along the Nile is properly known as Misr
I agree with you in general washerdreyer, but try pronouncing München - I don't think many English speaking people are at all capable of that or are even aware that it's spelled that way (were you?). So I think a compromise is in order: well established transliterations like Munich, Florence or Rome are fine for convenience' sake, but anybody with some interest in the culture and language of foreign countries should at least be aware of what the locals call their place.
Our policy, then, is to be as exact as we can without trespassing on the comfort of our readers, to be as conventional as we can without irking the sticklers, and to respect the traditions of our language and the reasonable requests of the people whose names we transliterate.
Gotta love copy editors. They're like the last bastion of civilization in our public discourse.
Re: Since I can barely spell in English,"
The first step in getting over your problem is admitting you have a problem.
Re: Since I can barely spell in English,"
The first step in getting over your problem is admitting you have a problem.
All this got me wondering, how many alphabets are there in the modern world? Actual alphabets, not counting thousand-character nonphonetic systems like what's used in the Chinese language. There's the one we use, the Latin alphabet I think it's called. It has accents and a few characters in French and other languages that we don't use, but it's still the same basic alphabet in all Romance languages, and I think all Germanic languages as well. There's the Cyrillic alphabet, which I'm pretty sure is different enough from the Latin alphabet that it's considered a different alphabet, but I just counted æ and ß as being part of our own alphabet, so what do I know. There's the hindi alphabet, there's sanskrit, there's the Arabic alphabet, and the Japanese alphabet... anything else? I'm sure there must be at least a few more I don't know of. Does Polish have its own alphabet?
I don't find it hard to believe that the Arabic alphabet is especially complicated, though. It's the same alphabet from Morocco to Pakistan, more or less, but spoken languages vary widely, as someone said upthread about Qadhafi. To make it worse, vowels aren't written half the time. A dictionary would include "short vowels" as accent marks over the other letters, as would a textbook or an archaic source like the Qur'an, but in a novel or newspaper or in written text on the TV, you have to get a lot from context.
The first step in getting over your problem is admitting you have a problem.
Posted by Spelling Zauberer
Which was double-posted. Heh. Is there a name for the the rule that a correction to grammar or spelling or syntax in an online comment thread will always contain a mistake or two of its own?
how many alphabets are there in the modern world?
This site lists 50 -- 3 consonant alphabets, 28 syllabic alphabets, and 19 "true" alphabets, all in active use.
"I'm sure there must be at least a few more I don't know of."
Korean.
Its funny how proud Koreans are of their alphabet considering that most of the rest of the world doesn't realize that they have one :)
Will this also apply to the first dominoes of English linguistic colonization? Can we look forward to articles on the thriving economy of Baile Átha Cliath?
Reminds me of the story (which may not be true) of an exchange between TE Lawrence and the editor of "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom". His editor said "Do you realize that you spelled 'Jeddah' three different ways in one paragraph?" Lawrence responded "I'm surprised it was only three."
Comments closed December 10, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
I like rule 3. Seeing as my name is spelled Mostafa, though it is traditionally spelled Mustafa. I have had many people write Mustafa in the greeting of the email, even though they have had to type in Mostafa to send me email.
Once, I was asked by an interviewer, of Egyptian descent, why I spelled it with an o rather than a u. My response was you'll have to take that up with my parents.
Posted by Mo | November 26, 2007 4:20 PM