From: Josef 'Jupp' Schugt <jupp@...>
Date: 2006-11-11T22:10:43+09:00
Subject: Babel aftermath (Re: [OT] the name of Matz)

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* John W. Kennedy, 11/11/2006 06:30 AM:
> It isn't usual, but is useful in reference material where the 
> reader may be in some doubt about the order. The hero of "Kozure 
> Okami" is called both "Itto Ogami" and "Ogami Itto" in English.

For reference one should use kanji with furigana and only add latin
transcription if absolutely necessary. On web pages one can use Ruby
(not the programming language :-) to add furigana.

Problem with transcription is that depending on the target language
it can sometimes be almost impossible to recoginize one language's
approximation if one is used to another language one's. While the
problem is only limited for Japanese it can be annoying for other
languages like Chinese and slavic ones ('Standard' means an
international standard transcription):

Standard: Tokyo
German:   Tokio

Standard: Guangdong
German:   Kanton

Standard: Čebyčev
German:   Tschebytscheff (among others)

The last of these is an extremely annoying problem. Given you want
information on Čebyčev polynomials chances are good that you only
find a minor part of the material available because myriards of
different spellings are used :-|

I use to call this issue "Babel aftermath".

Jupp
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