Re: Translations of cities of Ukraine

[Bondar-Skowronski Bohdan]

середа, 12 грудня 2018 р. 11:17:48 UTC+2 користувач Bondar-Skowronski Bohdan написав:

I want to ask Estonians for permission in name: et new translations.

As a Ukrainian, I critically perceive when in the 21st century they continue to use Russian names instead of Ukrainian ones.
For example, the capital of Ukraine Kyiv
There are two versions of the translation in the Estonian Wikipedia.
Old to which Estonians are accustomed - Kiiev
and the new version of Kõjiv
Kõjivis the real name of the city 
Kiiev is a Russian name coined in Moscow and moved to world cartography.
Since now Ukraine is completely independent of Russia and on the basis of the rules on ground it is necessary to use the Ukrainian name Kõjiv/
Russian name Kiiev to write as an alternative.

When a foreigner arrives in Kyiv, he will see more than 99 percent of Kyiv and will mostly hear Ukrainian.

[Jaak Laineste]

Hey,

This is interesting topic. Many international names (and words in general) in Estonian do have obvious etymological route via our big neighbour's language. More well known to me is the case of Georgia (the country) what we normally call Gruusia (for centuries I believe), but some years ago some were questioning whether the name has some bad associations for the georgians, and suggested to have new name "Jürimaa". Which is totally weird, strange and it never gained any wider popularity, so we gave up. I suspect also English name "Georgia" would have similar issue.

Very similar sample to the Kiiev case: https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/29787492 - I see now that there are a lot of "Tallin" variations, which is clearly from Russian and therefore wrong.  Some people complain about this too, but I would not teach others how to write in their language, that's totally up to them.

In Estonian there are no 'official' ways to write or transliterate foreign names, for person names there is probably some more official transliteration rule (as sometimes you need to translate Arabic names etc), but not for placenames.

Estonian Language Institute has database which is often used as useful guideline, even if it is not legally binding. For Ukrainian capital there is one main form, and many parallel ones: https://www.eki.ee/cgi-bin/mkn8.cgi?form=mm&lang=et&kohanimi=96062986&f2v=Y&f3v=Y&nimeliik=&maakond=&vald=&kihelkond=&asum=&f10v=Y&f14v=Y&of=tb

However, we have also general trend to move from "Estonian-like" placename writings to more similar to original (and sometimes to international/english) ones. So  before 1940 we wrote Kalifornia and Kostariika, now we have always California and Costa Rica. Similar thing has happened with our neighbour Latvian names - people say Salacgriva, not Salatsi etc. 

My personal opinion is that if we have more or less firm consensus what is Estonian version of a placename, then I'd stick to that, regardless from where it is coming from. Maybe one day we would start writing for example Kõjiv or Kõjev to be more close to Ukrainian origin, but first our language tradition should change, and then we'll fix it on the map, not vice versa. 

Jaak

p.s. I think you'd need to subscribe to the list to be able to post and read answers

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[Bondar-Skowronski Bohdan]

This table has an error
The Chinese have recently switched to the Ukrainian name.
Jifu In Chinese Wikipedia, the Chinese provided me with an official confirmation of the new translation.
In Chinese Wikipedia, an article about Kyiv is called the Ukrainian name.


середа, 12 грудня 2018 р. 11:20:18 UTC+2 користувач Bondar-Skowronski Bohdan написав: