Talk:Lower Sava Valley

Sava Valley?
Posavje can't be translated as Sava Valley. Name in Slovenian language is description for the area on both sides of Sava River. Sava Valley is in Slovenian language Dolina Save.
 * This is a common misunderstanding among Slovenians. Riversheds (areas on both sides of a river) are typically referred to as valleys in English; the term is not limited to a narrow valley (gorge, etc.) For example, the Mississippi Valley is about 160 km wide, the Nile Valley (Sln. Ponilje) is 25 km wide at Cairo, etc. The Slovenian pattern Po-XXX-je = XXX Valley. Other examples: Podonavje = the Danube Valley, Povardarje = the Vardar Valley, Porenje = the Rhine Valley, Povolžje = the Volga Valley, Polabje = the Elbe Valley, etc.. Doremo (talk) 10:00, 11 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I've just spotted this discussion. If this is the case, how does one discern in English between Zasavje and Posavje then? What's the "correct" translation? Sava Valley seems too broad to me for Posavje; perhaps it would be better to use Lower Sava Valley for Posavje and Central Sava Valley for Zasavje. Sava Valley seems more appropriate as a translation of Posavina. --Eleassar my talk 09:43, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I prefer Spodnje Posavje ‘Lower Sava Valley’, Zasavje ‘Central Sava Valley’, Zgornje Posavje ‘Upper Sava Valley’. It's natural and transparent in English, and generally corresponds to what the Slovenians indicate by these expressions (although I've heard some animated disagreements among Slovenians on where Zasavje starts and ends). Of course, all this is also from a Slovenian perspective (but I'm only commenting on Slo-Eng pairs); logically, Posavje should run all the way to Serbia, and Spodnje Posavje ought to include Belgrade, but that's not how Slovenians generally use the terms (one also finds hrvaško Posavje, bosansko Posavje, etc. in Slovenian).
 * I agree that Posavje ‘Sava Valley’ is a problem in this article because the article is restricted to the lower course of the Sava, and so I will change it to Lower Sava Valley as suggested. Thank you for pointing this out. Linguistically, the Slovenian use of Posavje to refer to only the lower part of the river is totum pro parte synecdoche (like referring to the US as America). However, at least historically, Posavje can also refer to the entire course of the river—for example, "Pravimo Posavje za kraje ob Savi" (Novice gospodarske, obrtniške in narodne, 1858), Ljubljansko Posavje v ljudski revoluciji (book title, 1985)—and, obviously, Zgornje Posavje must be part of "big" Posavje. So I would conclude:
 * Posávje -a n. 1. the Lower Sava Valley, 2. the Sava Valley
 * Doremo (talk) 21:56, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually, term Lower Sava Valley applies to a segment of the river significantly east of Zagreb (source), so this article should be renamed. I agree that the discussed section is lower course of Sava - but only the lower course of Sava in Slovenia - and that is actually upper Sava valley when considering Sava River as a whole. Therefore the title is not justified as it is now and potentially misleading to readers.--Tomobe03 (talk) 12:18, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the proposal was Note moved - (non-admin closure) Discussion has been on-going for a while now. Very little to state a support for move. Wesley ☀  Mouse  18:49, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Lower Sava Valley → Posavje – Present title "Lower Sava Valley" is highly misleading no matter how literal translation it may be. Reliable English-language sources actually apply the term to areas significantly downstream from this particular area: either in vicinity of Slavonski Brod (source) or as far downstream as Belgrade (source), which is also very logical hence misleading nature of the present title. If the present title is used in Slovenia, it should be noted by the article, but not in its title. As far as proposed title is concerned, I see no problem with using of native name - it is after all a geographical term not much unlike Posavina. Tomobe03 (talk) 22:10, 2 June 2012 (UTC) Oppose - I agree that "Lower Sava Valley" is misleading in terms of the entire length of the Sava, but Posavje is a Slovene construction that is semantically transparent to Slovene speakers and opaque to English speakers (like Podravje 'Drava Valley', Posočje 'Soča Valley' in Slovenia and Podonavje 'Danube Valley', Ponilje 'Nile Valley' outside Slovenia). A better move (retaining the English name) would be Lower Sava Valley → Lower Sava Valley (Slovenia). Doremo (talk) 11:02, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Posavina should probably also be renamed to something more English; as the article notes in the intro, it is "a Slavic name for ... the Sava river basin." Otherwise, by the native-name standard we'd be calling the Nile Valley the Wādī an Nīl and the Amazon Basin the Bacia do rio Amazonas. Doremo (talk) 11:23, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, Posavje is only one way to go (native name), and I agree that the term may be as you say opaque to English speakers, but Central Sava Valley, Lower Sava Valley should definitely be renamed to avoid confusion which is inevitable in an article on the Sava river. How would disambiguating it with as Lower Sava Valley (Slovenia) work in such an article then?--Tomobe03 (talk) 12:13, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

The term "Lower Sava Valley" (specifically for Slovenia) is found in the American work Rand McNally Encyclopedia of World Rivers, 1980, the British work Jugoslavia: Physical Geography, 1944, and the American work Standard Encyclopedia of the World's Rivers and Lakes, 1965, just to cite some older sources. So the term has a relatively old history of use in native-English sources. Doremo (talk) 13:51, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

The following is quote of further discussion between Doremo and me.--Tomobe03 (talk) 15:47, 3 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Oppose. The English name is Lower Sava Valley see for example http://www.premiumwinesofslovenia.eu/lower-sava-valley and there is currently no need to disambiguate this name. The article makes it clear which region is meant. Andrewa (talk) 20:32, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.