CZ Talk:Romanization

Roman-script languages

Do we want to have a brief discussion about languages written in Roman script with diacritics on this page? Or at least a mention, and a link to some other page? I think it is entirely conceivable that folks will end up at this page when they are looking for information about whether or not to use diacritics... Otherwise, good start. Brian P. Long 07:23, 26 April 2008 (CDT)

I think it is entirely reasonable to cover most Roman-script languages here, unless one has so many individual issues that it deserves a separate page. J. Noel Chiappa 11:42, 26 April 2008 (CDT)

Diacritics do need covered but perhaps on a separate page. Personally, I don't have a problem with people using them within the text. When used for the article title, a non diacritic version should provide a redirect, including popular misspellings. Derek Harkness 10:44, 29 April 2008 (CDT)

More content

This page is woefully short on content; a lot of material from the Proposal page, which could be simply cut-and-pasted here, isn't here. Someone should improve this page, or... I will! :-) J. Noel Chiappa 11:42, 26 April 2008 (CDT)

Yeah, I know... it's a start. Yes, we can copy material from the proposals page. John Stephenson 21:15, 26 April 2008 (CDT)

I just copied over everything that seemed useful. J. Noel Chiappa 22:03, 4 May 2008 (CDT)

Nice job-- this page is looking pretty good. Brian P. Long 22:58, 4 May 2008 (CDT)

Famous last words...

In the CZ:Romanization page as currently written, it says "once agreement is reached, these decisions will form policy." What exactly does that mean? Are contributors who come along later allowed to re-discuss these decisions-- i.e., is there an appeals process?

It seems like the simplest method would be to follow the 'Ad Hoc Proposal' method, where someone sets a date for a vote, and then everyone who has had a chance to contribute to the discussion gets a vote.

Perhaps the policy should be that the original decision will stand unless someone points out there is a crucial fact that the folks who originally made the decision ignored or did not know about. If two of the original decision-makers feel that the decision merits re-examination, they may move to re-open discussion and have a fresh vote. Thoughts? Thanks, Brian P. Long 07:48, 29 April 2008 (CDT)

The original proposal said that after consensus had been reached, the decisions would be "formally adopted". I always took that to mean, after we conclude discussion, we pass the proposed rules to the Editorial Council and they would rubber stamp them.

If someone later on wanted to alter things, then they would have to draft a new page and have that approved by the Editorial Council in much the same way as we have editors approve our articles, if someone wants to add to an approved article they must edit a new draft version first then have an editor sign off on it again.

There was one comment, made after the vote, on the proposal page, that suggested that some people thought the proposal allowed for the bypassing of the editorial council. However, that is not explicitly stated in the proposal and would require editorial council approval. My understanding of the words "formally adopted" were that the official, formal, editorial council resolution system would come into play. Derek Harkness 10:33, 29 April 2008 (CDT)

The way the current proposal is written (and the way policy will be, assuming this proposal makes it through the Editorial Council by acclamation), each decision on Romanization will be made on an ad hoc basis by the folks who weigh in on each language (point #6 under implementation). I think this makes sense, too-- though most of the people on the EC are very intelligent people, I don't know that all of them have the specialist knowledge required to weigh in intelligently on questions of Romanization. I am still curious, though, whether anyone feels it necessary to institute an appeals process for Romanization-- or whether there is already some part of the machinery of Citizendium policy that would take care of it. Thanks, Brian P. Long 19:52, 29 April 2008 (CDT)

I like the concept of passing the developed proposals back to the EC for ratification, but I take your point that per-language proposals are probably too detailed for them to want to mess around with.

Perhaps the thing to do is get them to stamp the main CZ:Romanization process, once it is worked out in all details. For the individual languages, something less heavy-weight is probabl appropriate - but I agree there should be some way to make decisions, and then leave them closed unless there is some unusual development. J. Noel Chiappa 23:39, 29 April 2008 (CDT)

Follow usage

As I've said in Talk:Usama bin Laden, I do not think Romanization policies are tremendously necessary. We should follow common usage where it is overwhelmingly consistent. Encyclopedia authors should simply follow common usage - Osama bin Laden, Jesus not Yeshua. We need naming conventions before we need romanization guidelines. ...said Tom Morris (talk) 20:56, 4 May 2008 (Please sign your talk page posts by simply adding four tildes, ~~~~.)

Romanization policies are extremely important for precisely the reason you gave. A few names form foreign languages have become common in use in English today however the vast majority of names there is no common usage. Just look at the page for CZ:Romanization/Chinese to see the vast number of competing Romanization methods. If authors just pick and choose at random whichever suits them then we will create a mess where the readers can't follow our articles.

If, and this will be the minority case, the name has a common form in English then use the common name. This is an English web site and we use English names first. However, you must at the same time give a standard romanised form as well and ideally also give the name in the original script so that people reading several articles and sources can track the name without confusion.

This is really the difference between Anglicization and Romanization. Where an name has become Anglicized in regular English speech, then the Anglicized form may take precedence over the base Romanized form. So we have 'Hong Kong' (English) not 'Hang Gang' (standard romanization of the Cantonese). But where there is no English name - how do you transliterate the Inner Mongolian city name 乌兰浩特. Is it going to be Ulaɣanqota, Wūlánhàotè Shì, Ulan Hot, Ulanhot, Ulaanhot or Ulaan Hot? Derek Harkness 21:34, 4 May 2008 (CDT)

Whereas common usage in English for placenames is perfectly reasonable, it is not reasonable for transliteration of names of living persons. There is no consensus on how to spell in Latin script the contemporary Arabic names, although by searching on Google you can see how many webpages use which form. This is hardly a proper procedure for a serious approach: we can note the various common forms, divert from those, and place the page with a title which may not be the most common form but is used and is also the most accurate for pronunciation purposes. Martin Baldwin-Edwards 21:53, 4 May 2008 (CDT)

Without necessarily disagreeing with your points about Arabic names, I think the Anglicization/Romanization distinction is an important one. When something has been fully taken into English, I think we probably have to live with whatever spelling English has decided to use. J. Noel Chiappa 00:07, 5 May 2008 (CDT)

That is certainly true for the rather quaint Anglicised versions of classical Greek names, which are (at least in pronunciation) so far removed from modern Greek that they are often almost unrecognisable, yet their usage persists...Martin Baldwin-Edwards 04:04, 5 May 2008 (CDT)

How different in pronunciation are modern and classical Greek? I studied the latter briefly (gave up after one term, as it was even more complicated than Latin :-), but not the former. J. Noel Chiappa 08:30, 5 May 2008 (CDT)

The pronunciations of Modern and Classical Greek are really quite different, but there are compelling reasons for trying to reconstruct the pronunciation of Classical Greek. There are also (at least to my mind) compelling reasons for sticking with the conventional Anglicanized names of Ancient Greeks. (But of course we can discuss this on the talk page for Romanization/Ancient Greek) Brian P. Long 11:36, 5 May 2008 (CDT)

Man with torn pants: "You menna dese?"
"Yeah. You rippa dese?" Hayford Peirce 11:45, 5 May 2008 (CDT)

Should we say something on this page about the difference between Romanization and Anglicization? I assume we are going to 'go with the flow' and say that an Anglicized word should use the common English spelling, even if does not comport with the Romanizatin standard for its original language? J. Noel Chiappa 14:41, 11 May 2008 (CDT)

Romanization versus Anglicization

Speaking of this, I see at CZ:Romanization/Chinese the following:

It is not our objective here to decide on wither to use English names for Chinese things or English names. We are not deciding whither to use 'Confucius' or 'Kǒng Fūzǐ' here. Instead we are discussing wither 孔夫子 transcribes as Kǒng Fūzǐ (Pinyin) or K'ung-fu-tzu (Wade-Giles) or something else. The discussion as to whither to choose Anglicized names or Chinese names can be done else where.

I would have assumed (perhaps naively) that this issue would in fact be covered under the rubric of romanization, but perhaps not. So, if not here, where? J. Noel Chiappa 11:37, 14 May 2008 (CDT)

I think this discussion is a Romanization issue. What is the point of going to the trouble of having a Romanization policy if it's never put to use? This is an issue that needs to get worked out, and hopefully before the EC adopts the Romanization proposal. My sense of it is that Confucius is pretty much the only English-language name used, but I may be wrong. At any rate, we need to figure out a way to resolve the issue when there is an active discrepancy in usage. When the discrepancy is between scholars in the field and popular media, I think we should side with the scholars. What's your sense of the issue? Brian P. Long 12:17, 14 May 2008 (CDT)

By 'elsewhere', I meant not specifically on the Chinese page. I would say it's not specific to just romanised names. Whither or not to Anglicize goes for all foreign names irrespective of script. Anglicization rules could apply equally to French and German as to Chinese and Japanese. So while Anglicization can be associated with Romanization, it's really a bigger ball game. In many cases we will have to give an Anglicized name AND a Romanized name. For example, Macau (澳門 Aòmén).

Turning to the actual issue, Anglicization has been discussed before. Since this is an English wiki, we should use the English names for things where the English name is in common use. Where the Anglicized name has fallen out of common use, we shouldn't feel the need to revive it. So Macau and Hong Kong use the Anglicized names but Guangzhou shouldn't be Canton as that name has fallen form common use. Derek Harkness 06:16, 15 May 2008 (CDT)

Multiple transliteration systems

A number of excellent points about use of secondary transliterations were made in a discussion here, which seemed to me to be generic, and not specific to any particular languages, so I have added them to a new section here; hopefully everyone will agree that they are good points! J. Noel Chiappa 08:09, 25 June 2008 (CDT)

Resolution passed

The resolution allowing us to eventually form policy on romanization has been passed by the Editorial Council. The Council instructs that a group be formed to put through the proposal - something we've already been doing (e.g. by creating CZ:Romanization). To start, I interpret this to mean that contributors should formally associate themselves with this project by adding their names to the main page. John Stephenson 04:02, 2 July 2008 (CDT)

Transliteration vs transcription

I think it's important to bear this distinction in mind. Transliteration represents the spelling of the original language; transcription represents the pronunciation. Languages without spelling, eg Chinese, can only be transcribed, of course. We're very familiar with the difference between spelling & pronunciation in English, but liable to forget that it occurs in many other languages too. Peter Jackson 17:13, 6 November 2008 (UTC)