4 ms·

I like how they translate/transliterate his name into Serbian: Stiv Voznijak. Wish more languages would do that and not try to keep the original spelling just

by mc32 3y ago

I like how they translate/transliterate his name into Serbian: Stiv Voznijak. Wish more languages would do that and not try to keep the original spelling just because.

dbrgn 3y ago
I guess in Germany/Switzerland/Austria he'd be "Stefan Wosniak" :)
- dsego 3y ago
  That's actually what they used to do in the old days. All the saints, kings, politicians, etc would be localized, eg croatian count Josip Jelačić is József Jelasics in hungarian or Joseph Jellachich in german, Franz Ferdinand is Franjo Ferdinand in croatian, etc
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    Latvia does this today.
    - mc32 3y ago
      And you guys have Spinoza, though you don’t commonly netherlandize names much these days. But it’s neat.
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        We do for city names. Paris = Parijs, Londen = London, Berlijn = Berlin, Warschau = Warsawa etc.
the_af 3y ago
I rather they kept the original spelling because that's his name, but only if Serbs can figure out how to pronounce it. Which, in the modern world, is a reasonable assumption for names written in the Latin script.
- vetinari 3y ago
  Being written in Latin script is not a guarantee on correct pronunciation; languages have wildly different ideas how to pronounce written text. Paradoxically, Serbian belongs in the group "write as you hear"; the mapping between writing and pronunciation is quite simple and uniform in slavic languages. It is English, that you have to learn twice -- first time to speak, second time to spell.
  - the_af 3y ago
    > Being written in Latin script is not a guarantee on correct pronunciation Yes, I understand this: being a Spanish native speaker, I had to learn the rules of pronunciation of the English language. Spanish is also pronounced as written, mostly. You can figure it out, so it's still better to spell English names in English, Serb names in Serb, and so on. The only concession I will make is leaving out extraneous accents and glyphs in informal writing (e.g. written accents; I will accept if they are omitted and substituted by the closest glyph in your language). "Translating" names is something I really, really dislike. In this particular case, it's extra silly, since everybody who cares already knows who Woz is and will read his name correctly, Serbs included. This is not some random person whose name they just heard for the first time.
    - mc32 3y ago
      If my name were John and I moved to Brazil should I be mad if people call me Joao, or if Sebastian, Sebastiao? It’s no big deal. There was a Mexican dude whose parents named him Joe, but they pronounced it something close to /Dzoe’/, so neither /Dzou/ nor /Xoe/. I think he was better off going by Joe over here.
      - the_af 3y ago
        Mad is up to you. But John and Joao are definitely not the same name. If someone asks you "is your name John or Joao?", even in Brazil there's only one right answer. At best you can say "both names can trace their origin to the same root name", but they are not the same name. The Mexican guy's name or your anecdote is named Joe (but pronounced like he or his parents wanted it). There are no two ways about it. In Argentina and Uruguay some people are called "Jonathan", only pronounced "Shonatan" (or in some Spanish pronunciations, "Yonatan"). That's the way it is. Finally, phonetically spelling the name and surname of a known celebrity, as in Wozniak's case, just seems silly to me. Is the president of the US You Baiden? That's a phonetic spelling in Spanish, after all! (Silly, right?).
aix1 3y ago
There are downsides to that. For example, this is how me, my parents and my siblings ended up with different surnames on our passports. They all started as the same surname, but then got mangled independently during translation...
dsego 3y ago
It's funny because in Croatia we don't do that, but it's an almost identical language. I still remember reading old ex-yu comic books with New York spelled as Njujork and so on. The problem is that you can't really capture the pronunciation since english has more sounds and serbian and croatian are phonetic limited to 30 letters, Stiv Voznijak doesn't capture it correctly, that's how you get the harsh slavic/russian accent. There is also a tricky situation with trying to keep the original like we do in Croatian, for example we can't read asian or arabic symbols, so it doesn't make sense to keep them, but we usually use the english transliteration which is to me also a bit silly.
- medo-bear 3y ago
  I find I need to say some names out loud to know what they mean when I read texts from Serbia. In Serbia they take the principle 'speak as you write, write as you speak' to the end. I also think that Croatian is a more pure Slavic language, and that Serbs are more liberal with adopting foreign terms. It is also interesting that all Croats can uderstand someone from Belgrade or Banja Luka without any issues (not including street slang), but some Croats have trouble understanding other Croatian dialects.
- orbital-decay 3y ago
  > The problem is that you can't really capture the pronunciation Can you do that in general if you don't know the actual language, though? Even native English speakers sometimes have issues with certain borrowed French words, despite those being in English.
  - dsego 3y ago
    Fair point, I think it just looks silly to me because I'm not used to it and in this modern age it seems a bit quaint. The other thing is that sometimes it might not be immediately obvious that Matthew Perry is the same person as Metju Peri. And since today everyone is exposed to english and other big languages, knowing the original spelling can be considered a part of basic literacy.
- SergeAx 3y ago
vsnf 3y ago
No thanks, I'd prefer to keep my name the way I identify with it. I'd only do it when a name's original script is not legible to the populace of the residing culture.
- medo-bear 3y ago
  Do you identify more with how your name is spoken or how its read?
- mc32 3y ago
  People are too attached. If you move to Japan of China you will have to transliterate your name or adopt a local name. Unless you’re Japanese or Chinese there is no way around it. I love localized names. So I like what the Serbians did for Steve here. In any event it’s his name but it’s their language and they get to spell it according to their transliteration rules.
  - vsnf 3y ago
    >If you move to Japan of China you will have to transliterate your name or adopt a local name. I can't speak for China, but I can speak for Japan. I occasionally transliterate my name for one reason or another, but 99% of the time I'm rocking my name the way I identify with it. Don't mistake me for not participating the local culture. I speak the language, the government (city and federal), and my employer, a local firm, all use my latin name on all official documents and informal communications. My coworkers and friends will usually use my latin spelling as well. Bear in mind, these are usually mixed-provenance sentences where they'll switch to latin for my name in the middle of an otherwise fully native sentence. I'm happy to transliterate it when the situation calls for it but I'd prefer it not be forced on me if it can be helped. To answer a sibling comment, do I identify it more spoken or written, I would say the written form. I'm tolerant of accents, foreign languages with separate syllabaries, verbal typos, and other such errata, so I don't really care strongly how my name is pronounced as long as an earnest attempt is made.

by mc32 3y ago

I like how they translate/transliterate his name into Serbian: Stiv Voznijak. Wish more languages would do that and not try to keep the original spelling just because.

dbrgn 3y ago

I guess in Germany/Switzerland/Austria he'd be "Stefan Wosniak" :)

dsego 3y ago
That's actually what they used to do in the old days. All the saints, kings, politicians, etc would be localized, eg croatian count Josip Jelačić is József Jelasics in hungarian or Joseph Jellachich in german, Franz Ferdinand is Franjo Ferdinand in croatian, etc
- jacquesm 3y ago
  Latvia does this today.
  - mc32 3y ago
    And you guys have Spinoza, though you don’t commonly netherlandize names much these days. But it’s neat.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      We do for city names. Paris = Parijs, Londen = London, Berlijn = Berlin, Warschau = Warsawa etc.

the_af 3y ago

I rather they kept the original spelling because that's his name, but only if Serbs can figure out how to pronounce it. Which, in the modern world, is a reasonable assumption for names written in the Latin script.

vetinari 3y ago
Being written in Latin script is not a guarantee on correct pronunciation; languages have wildly different ideas how to pronounce written text. Paradoxically, Serbian belongs in the group "write as you hear"; the mapping between writing and pronunciation is quite simple and uniform in slavic languages. It is English, that you have to learn twice -- first time to speak, second time to spell.
- the_af 3y ago
  > Being written in Latin script is not a guarantee on correct pronunciation Yes, I understand this: being a Spanish native speaker, I had to learn the rules of pronunciation of the English language. Spanish is also pronounced as written, mostly. You can figure it out, so it's still better to spell English names in English, Serb names in Serb, and so on. The only concession I will make is leaving out extraneous accents and glyphs in informal writing (e.g. written accents; I will accept if they are omitted and substituted by the closest glyph in your language). "Translating" names is something I really, really dislike. In this particular case, it's extra silly, since everybody who cares already knows who Woz is and will read his name correctly, Serbs included. This is not some random person whose name they just heard for the first time.
  - mc32 3y ago
    If my name were John and I moved to Brazil should I be mad if people call me Joao, or if Sebastian, Sebastiao? It’s no big deal. There was a Mexican dude whose parents named him Joe, but they pronounced it something close to /Dzoe’/, so neither /Dzou/ nor /Xoe/. I think he was better off going by Joe over here.
    - the_af 3y ago
      Mad is up to you. But John and Joao are definitely not the same name. If someone asks you "is your name John or Joao?", even in Brazil there's only one right answer. At best you can say "both names can trace their origin to the same root name", but they are not the same name. The Mexican guy's name or your anecdote is named Joe (but pronounced like he or his parents wanted it). There are no two ways about it. In Argentina and Uruguay some people are called "Jonathan", only pronounced "Shonatan" (or in some Spanish pronunciations, "Yonatan"). That's the way it is. Finally, phonetically spelling the name and surname of a known celebrity, as in Wozniak's case, just seems silly to me. Is the president of the US You Baiden? That's a phonetic spelling in Spanish, after all! (Silly, right?).

aix1 3y ago

There are downsides to that. For example, this is how me, my parents and my siblings ended up with different surnames on our passports. They all started as the same surname, but then got mangled independently during translation...

dsego 3y ago

It's funny because in Croatia we don't do that, but it's an almost identical language. I still remember reading old ex-yu comic books with New York spelled as Njujork and so on. The problem is that you can't really capture the pronunciation since english has more sounds and serbian and croatian are phonetic limited to 30 letters, Stiv Voznijak doesn't capture it correctly, that's how you get the harsh slavic/russian accent. There is also a tricky situation with trying to keep the original like we do in Croatian, for example we can't read asian or arabic symbols, so it doesn't make sense to keep them, but we usually use the english transliteration which is to me also a bit silly.

medo-bear 3y ago
I find I need to say some names out loud to know what they mean when I read texts from Serbia. In Serbia they take the principle 'speak as you write, write as you speak' to the end. I also think that Croatian is a more pure Slavic language, and that Serbs are more liberal with adopting foreign terms. It is also interesting that all Croats can uderstand someone from Belgrade or Banja Luka without any issues (not including street slang), but some Croats have trouble understanding other Croatian dialects.
orbital-decay 3y ago
> The problem is that you can't really capture the pronunciation Can you do that in general if you don't know the actual language, though? Even native English speakers sometimes have issues with certain borrowed French words, despite those being in English.
- dsego 3y ago
  Fair point, I think it just looks silly to me because I'm not used to it and in this modern age it seems a bit quaint. The other thing is that sometimes it might not be immediately obvious that Matthew Perry is the same person as Metju Peri. And since today everyone is exposed to english and other big languages, knowing the original spelling can be considered a part of basic literacy.
SergeAx 3y ago

vsnf 3y ago

No thanks, I'd prefer to keep my name the way I identify with it. I'd only do it when a name's original script is not legible to the populace of the residing culture.

medo-bear 3y ago
Do you identify more with how your name is spoken or how its read?
mc32 3y ago
People are too attached. If you move to Japan of China you will have to transliterate your name or adopt a local name. Unless you’re Japanese or Chinese there is no way around it. I love localized names. So I like what the Serbians did for Steve here. In any event it’s his name but it’s their language and they get to spell it according to their transliteration rules.
- vsnf 3y ago
  >If you move to Japan of China you will have to transliterate your name or adopt a local name. I can't speak for China, but I can speak for Japan. I occasionally transliterate my name for one reason or another, but 99% of the time I'm rocking my name the way I identify with it. Don't mistake me for not participating the local culture. I speak the language, the government (city and federal), and my employer, a local firm, all use my latin name on all official documents and informal communications. My coworkers and friends will usually use my latin spelling as well. Bear in mind, these are usually mixed-provenance sentences where they'll switch to latin for my name in the middle of an otherwise fully native sentence. I'm happy to transliterate it when the situation calls for it but I'd prefer it not be forced on me if it can be helped. To answer a sibling comment, do I identify it more spoken or written, I would say the written form. I'm tolerant of accents, foreign languages with separate syllabaries, verbal typos, and other such errata, so I don't really care strongly how my name is pronounced as long as an earnest attempt is made.