Re: re [QAC] A few translation/standardization issues

[Youcef Rabah Rahal <rahal at arabeyes dot org>]

On Saturday 31 January 2004 10:35, Arafat Medini wrote:

> Same for me in every point.

Good. Others ?

> Well ok maybe for the last point I make some research and try to
> pronounce the word as it is pronounced in the other language so for eg.
> for shanghai I don't write شنغ هاي but شان هي which is the real chinese
> pronounciation, and many examples like that with names of apps names of
> ppl etc...

This is strange.

I think it is good that you're doing that for unusual names (I mean those 
which have not a common spelling in Arabic). But, writing Shanghai as شان هي 
is rather confusing. Since I was a child I have always crossed the spelling 
as 
شنغهاي، شانغاي، إلخ
So if I come to cross شان هي in the GNOME interface I will not understand what 
city it is, aboveall if there's no Latin name beside it... Here's another 
example: Paris. How do you write it ? 
باريس
as it is always written in Arabic or باري like the French people pronounce it 
? I think we have to stick with the first one, because it is already the 
common spelling/pronounciation in Arabic.

Also, if we transliterate names as we pronounce them it _will_ generate some 
mistakes. For example, take a french name. How do you pronounce it ? The 
English way or the French (original) way ? What happens when you don't know 
French so you can only pronounce it the English way (which will already 
create a mistake). That's why I think it will be helpful to have the name 
transliterated (even with a mistake) with the original form beside it. I took 
french as an example, but it is the same for: Spanish, Norwegian, German etc

To summarize my opinion:

1/ For common names (know cities, celebrities :-) that have already a common 
spelling in Arabic: we _HAVE_ to stick with that one.
2/ For others: let's transliterate in the best way (try to pronounce the name 
as it would be in the original language) but let's keep the name in Latin 
characters too.

Salam,

-- 
Youcef R. Rahal
Arabeyes.org
http://www.arabeyes.org/~rahal