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Examples from various countries

Taiwanese examples

On exonyms and endonyms

From: owner-gnso-contactinfo-pdp-wg@icann.org [mailto:owner-gnso-contactinfo-pdp-wg@icann.org] On Behalf Of Sarmad Hussain
Sent: 07 March 2014 03:36
To: gnso-contactinfo-pdp-wg@icann.org
Subject: RE: [gnso-contactinfo-pdp-wg] MP3 Translation and Transliteration of Contact Information PDP WG meeting - 06 March 2014

Dear All,

Thank you for sharing the recordings and sorry for not being able to make to the call. 

Listening to the recording, regarding the excellent discussion by Chris on transliteration inaccuracies, I would like to contribute two terminology words and a comment specifically in the context of the discussion around Krung Thep and Bangkok (in which Bangkok is being recommended during the call).

United Nation Group of Experts on Geographic Names (UNGEGN) suggests the following relevant terminology:

Exonym is the name used in a specific language for a geographical feature situated outside the area where that language has official status, and differing in its form from the name used in the official language or languages of the area where the geographical feature is situated. Examples: Warsaw is the English exonym for Warszawa; Londres is French for London; Mailand is German for Milano. The officially romanized endonym Moskva for Москва is not an exonym, nor is the Pinyin form Beijing, while Peking is an exonym. 

Endonym is the name of a geographical feature in one of the languages occurring in that area where the feature is situated. Examples: Vārānasī (not Benares); Aachen (not Aix-la-Chapelle); Krung Thep (not Bangkok); al-Uqşur (not Luxor); Teverya (not Tiberias).

And in addition, please note that

The United Nations recommends minimizing the use of exonyms in international usage

Thus, Bangkok is not the recommended form by the UN.    The same applies to other examples from Taiwan discussed in the call, where transliteration/pinyin is recommended by the UN instead of the popular romanized versions.  Thus, if we want to keep Bangkok (over the transliteration) we may want to document clear reasons why we want to diverge from this recommendation.  Or other possibility is that we stick to the UN recommendation and use the transliterated forms (as this may be more consistent for all city names even if it means some names may not be in their popular exonyms).

Regards,
Sarmad

Dear Sarmad,

Thank you very much for your contribution. I think we certainly need to add both terms to our definitions page. I will wait for any responses to this email before doing that.

Personally I believe in making things as simple and intuitive (e.g. close to what normally gets written on an envelope) as possible for those transliterating or translating and ideally the use of exonyms for at least countries and major cities would be part of that. Most English speakers do not know what Krung Thep is.

If, however, we are unable to locate a user-friendly list of such exonyms, we may be driven to transliteration. At least that would be a very simple rule: “Transliterate the address using the national standard transliteration.”

Incidentally, it is interesting that there are two possible Japanese pronunciations and transliterations of 日本 ‘Japan’: the formal Nippon, as on postage stamps, or the more commonly used Nihon.

I am about to send a couple of other emails picking up points made by Amr, Peter Dernbach, Rudi et al. during the call.

Regards,

Chris.

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Research Associate in Linguistic Computing, Centre for Digital Humanities, UCL, Gower St, London WC1E 6BT Tel +44 20 7679 1599 (int 31599) ucl.ac.uk/dis/people/chrisdillon