Talk:Slano Blato Landslide

RFC: Should "Salt Mud Slide" be moved to "Slano Blato landslide"?

 * The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Should this article, "Salt Mud Slide" (which is a translation into English from its Slovenian name), be moved to "Slano Blato landslide" (which is based on its place name in Slovenia)? — Gorthian (talk) 19:31, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

Original discussion begins here: I've moved the page back to "Salt Mud Slide" because "Salt mudslide" is a parsing error. The Slovenian name structure plaz Slano Blato is composed of the generic plaz 'slide' + Slano Blato 'Salt Mud', and the capitalization pattern is typical for such names (as, e.g., Storegga Slide, Hope Slide, etc.). Doremo (talk) 19:21, 9 January 2016 (UTC)


 * So "Slano Blato" translates as "salty mud"? I see. If we stick with English, though, it should be "Salt-mud slide", since it's a unit modifier. But I've been thinking that the article should actually be moved to "Slano Blato landslide" instead of translating it. A quick search on Google books finds two English-language sources that call it that (here and here.) And that would comply with the "reliable English sources" part of WP:COMMONNAME.— Gorthian (talk) 03:54, 10 January 2016 (UTC)


 * "Salt" is a more typical modifier (like Great Salt Lake rather than "Great Salty Lake", or Salt Spring rather than "Salty Spring"). A hyphen would be unnecessary, as for Salt Spring Hills (rather than "Salt-spring Hills"). Because the specific element is a common noun phrase (rather than a settlement, person's name, etc.), "Salt Mud Slide" is more informative for an English reader than "Slano Blato Slide" (similar to Great Bitter Lake instead of "Murra al-Kubra Lake" or Black River rather than "Đà River"). It's rather obscure, so it's difficult to find a significant number of English sources on the feature. The English name "Salt Mud Slide" does appear in the volume Contrastive Analysis in Discourse Studies and Translation, but it's not available (yet) on Google Books. Doremo (talk) 05:21, 10 January 2016 (UTC)


 * I can tell you're a connoisseur of language. :-) The book you name looks as if it concerns translation and language, whereas the two books in English I noted above discuss this landslide in particular; they refer to it as "Slano Blato landslide". There are also a plethora of scientific papers in English that call it by that name (e.g.,, , , , and ). Wikipedia does not always translate names for article titles: e.g., Storegga Slide (Storegga = "Great Edge" in Norwegian), Schurre ("chute" in German), and Bølling Lake (bølling = "boiling" in Danish). Especially because WP:UCRN explicitly states that Wikipedia "generally prefers to use the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources", I think the article should be moved to "Slano Blato landslide". — Gorthian (talk) 19:39, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't characterize myself as a connoisseur. All of the papers cited above are by nonnative speakers of English. That doesn't negate their scholarly quality (or even necessarily their linguistic reliability, although the available texts—nos. 2 and 4—show quite basic and clumsy grammar errors). The editors of the volume Contrastive Analysis ... do include a rather prominent native English speaker for the Slovenian context—again, for what it's worth. They are not geologists, but they are language professionals. Doremo (talk) 20:15, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Shall I go ahead and move the article to "Slano Blato landslide"? Or would you prefer a third opinion? — Gorthian (talk) 17:33, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
 * It would be more appropriate to seek broader consensus. In any case, "landslide" does not seem to be the appropriate (natural) generic element based on the examples already discussed above. Doremo (talk) 18:22, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Okay. I changed the section name to a WP:RFC. Let me know if you want to change the wording in the RFC summary. — Gorthian (talk) 19:31, 15 January 2016 (UTC)


 * If I remember correctly, we use English translations of the names when they appear in English sources often. Here, this does not seem to be the case, all English-language sources use Slano blato. I suggest keeping the Slovenian name here. --Tone 10:24, 17 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Move in the few sources there are about the event Slano Blato seems the more common usage. In the slightly less few sources about the place Slano Blato seems the more common usage by slightly more. Translating makes the page look like a generic event in which salt-mud slides rather than a specific event. SPACKlick (talk) 09:42, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Move per WP:COMMONNAME, given the sources cited so far (that are actually about the topic, not about how to translate; we have to decide we're going to translate before sources about how to do so are relevant).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  12:41, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

It seems this debate got stale. I'm moving the article and fixing names within. --Tone 08:40, 30 January 2016 (UTC)


 * I've reverted the move. The most natural name really is 'Salt Mud Slide', and the consensus for the move to anything else is evidently missing. --Eleassar my talk 15:53, 30 January 2016 (UTC)


 * All three editors that cared enough to come by and state an opinion said that it should be moved to "Slano Blato landslide". How is that not consensus to move? — Gorthian (talk) 01:41, 31 January 2016 (UTC)


 * I prefer the name "Salt Mud Slide" for semantic transparency, but that's just my preference. I can't back it up with numbers of Google hits. Doremo (talk) 04:54, 31 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Well, we have two editors preferring 'Salt Mud Slide' and three the name 'Slano Blato landslide'. It's hard to claim there is a consensus. On the other hand, it's true that "Wikipedia generally prefers what is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources", but given the low language level of those that are available, this is a pale argument to support the move to 'Slano Blato landslide'. At the least, given the slightly predominant choice not to translate the specific part of the name, if the article is moved to 'Slano Blato (landslide)', we should follow the general capitalization rules, i.e. write it as 'Slano Blato Landslide' (like we have done elsewhere; see e.g. Logar Valley (Slovenia) and ) --Eleassar my talk 08:39, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, move it to Slano Blato Landslide, then. --Tone 11:26, 31 January 2016 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.