Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 March 26

= March 26 =

Hawaiian translation
Can someone translate this for me? Aloha ʻoe,

Ke hōʻike aku nei au iāʻoe, ua pau kā Geo. L. Kapeau noho ʻana ma ka ʻoihana kiaʻāina o Hawaiʻi, a ua hoʻolilo ʻia ka mea Hanohano R. Keʻelikōlani i kiaʻāina nō Hawaiʻi nei. A ʻo Hilo nei nō kona wahi i koho (choose/vote) ai e noho, e hana aku i nā hana apau e pili ana i kāna ʻoihana kiaʻāina.

Nō laila, ke kauoha aku nei au iāʻoe, e hoʻoūna koke (quickly) mai i kou palapala hōʻike (report) hapahā (quarterly), lāua pū me nā dālā apau i loaʻa iāʻoe ma kāʻu ʻoihana luna kānāwai (judge). Mai kali ʻoe o hihia auaneʻi (or there will be law suits).

ʻO wau nō me ka mahalo iāʻoe.

L. L Austin

Hope Kiaʻāina o Hawaiʻi --KAVEBEAR (talk) 05:21, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

there's a greeting, then some stuff about quarterly results. Anyway you'd better the right thing should be done or there will be lawsuits. All this is about hawaii, I guess shareholder votes about a company there? This is pure guesswork on my behalf, based on the words in English you've already provide.d I don't speak any hawaiian. --80.99.254.208 (talk) 19:24, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Anyone?--KAVEBEAR (talk) 01:20, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Hawaiian is not a very widely spoken language, so I'm not surprised that nobody has come along yet who can translate this. In fact, it seems that only three people have the User Box stating that they are native speakers of Hawaiian on English Wikipedia.  You might be able to find them through Category:User_haw, but I don't know if they'd be willing to help. Falconus p  t   c 10:12, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
 * No one at level haw-4 or haw-N has been active at Wikipedia since 2009 anyway; there is no one at level haw-3, and people at levels haw-1 and haw-2 probably don't speak it well enough to translate the text. There's a discussion board at Hawaiian Wikipedia at haw:Wikipedia:Ka hui kaiaulu; you could ask there, but I don't see any evidence that comments to that board ever actually get answered by other people. Personally, I would go to the website for the University of Hawaii, find the e-mail address of someone who teaches it, and ask them. Angr (talk) 10:33, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Googling tells me this is an example from a language textbook. Assuming it is a genuine letter from 1855, "L.L. Austin" is probably a typo for S.L. Austin, who was secretary to Ruth Keʻelikōlani around that time. I can't read Hawaiian though, sorry.--Cam (talk) 12:14, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

[sic] in Personal Names
If someone's name is Steven Smith, but a writer has written Stephen Smith, and I want to quote them, would I write "Stephen [sic] Smith" or "Stephen Smith [sic]"? I'm not sure if the forename and surname count as one, or if they count seperately, for the choice of the positioning of the [sic]. Many thanks for all help that you can provide. Also, I'm in England, so British conventions are cleaved to, if that matters. 134.83.1.243 (talk) 14:01, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
 * You could simply work around it. For example "I like the works of Stephen Smith for their simplicity and grace," said Hernandez could become "I like the works," said Hernandez, "for their simplicity and grace." Hot Stop UTC 14:08, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, however I want to add the [sic] to make the person appear as if they are misinformed. 134.83.1.243 (talk) 14:27, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I think this is extremely underhanded - maybe you want to paint someone talking about Steve jobs in a wrong light. The truth is, Steven and Stephen are interchangeable, and this is why we have editors who have to look up which one is the true version.  They even have a CK they add when they have really really checked the exact name.  Please don't use sic just to make someone seem uninformed.  It's just yellow journalism, plain and simple.  Also, for a blatant typo you can usually feel free to simply silently correct it (for example if someone has has written what I just did - you could silently remove a "has".  This stuff isn't gospel.)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.99.254.208 (talk) 18:58, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I disagree with that. Their motivations are not for you or anyone else to speculate on.  Steven and Stephen are both valid spellings of that name, but that doesn't make them interchangeable.  An individual will use one and only one version, the one that appears on their birth certificate, passport, etc.  If we're quoting another writer verbatim, and they happen to use the wrong version in reference to someone, we have no right to quietly change what they actually wrote, particularly if we're using quotation marks.  That's misleading and deceptive.  I've seen so many examples where public figures are quoted by journos and the exact quoted wording appears in different versions in different papers or on different TV reports - so it's apparent that some of the journos have simply made up at least some of the words that they're telling the readers were actually, literally uttered by the speaker, which is what quotation marks are supposed to mean.  Or they'll combine sentences from different parts of a speech but without using an ellipsis [...], making it seem as if the sentences were spoken sequentially. So much for journalistic standards.  Me, I'd put the [sic] after the misspelled word or words.  So, if the person's name is Steven Smyth, but someone writes "Stephen Smith", I'd quote them as "...  Stephen [sic] Smith [sic] ... ".  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  19:55, 26 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks JackofOz, I agree with your view, nd you have been extremely helpful! All of you have, thanks. 134.83.1.243 (talk) 22:56, 26 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I'd ordinarily agree with you, but this person has said their intention is "to make the person appear as if they are misinformed". This is editorializing in an underhanded way.  If you want to editorialize, go ahead and do it consciously.  Like this: (the person's actual name is Steven).  Would you add that sentence?  No: you want to subtlely editorialize and, in your own words, make the person APPEAR misinformed.  So underhanded.  Italic text  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.99.254.208 (talk) 09:25, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
 * [sic] is a commonly used device, perfectly valid in its place. It's as plain as day, and I can't see that there's anything remotely "underhanded" about it.  Your issue is with the OP's stated motivation, not with the use of [sic] as such.  I suspect the OP expressed themself slightly infelicitously; they didn't intend to make a well-informed writer appear to be misinformed - that would be dishonest - but they did want to make plain where the writer has made an error.  There may be very good reasons for this.  For example, a book critic will often use this device when talking about the appalling number of errors they encountered.  They might quote a particularly egregious passage and use [sic] a number of times in a short space, to show just how terribly mistaken the author was.  Nothing wrong with that; it's a critic's job to bring these things to the public's attention.  A biographer of Steven Spielberg who sometimes spells his given name as "Stephen" should expect negative critical commentary, and if [sic] is the worst they get, they're getting off very lightly.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  20:35, 27 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Of the two I vote "Stephen [sic] Smith" since it is the Stephen that is in error. --Tagishsimon (talk) 14:30, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. 134.83.1.243 (talk) 15:27, 26 March 2012 (UTC)


 * [I am adding nowiki tags around the square brackets in the section heading, to prevent problems with the section link in the Archives.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 16:21, 26 March 2012 (UTC)]


 * I will assume that you're certain the original contained an error and that there is no particular reason to point out the error. In this case, your first choice should be to try to rephrase your quote so that "Steven Smith" falls outside the quotation marks. The following is a quote from the Chicago Manual of Style. (I apologize for not having a British source available.)
 * A verbally accurate quotation that contains minor factual or grammatical errors not noted by the author using the quotation does a disservice to readers and embarrasses the publisher. Authors who notice an error in a passage they wish to quote should paraphrase the original, eliminating the error.
 * If this is not practical, the Manual offers the following advice (quoted directly).
 * Obvious typographic errors may be corrected silently (without comment or sic; see 11.69) unless the passage quoted is from an older work or a manuscript source where idiosyncrasies of spelling are generally preserved.
 * Literally meaning “so,” “thus,” “in this manner” and traditionally set in italics, sic may be inserted in brackets following a word misspelled or wrongly used in the original. This device should be used only where it is relevant to call attention to such matters or where paraphrase or silent correction is inappropriate (see 11.4, 11.8[5]).
 * Since we're dealing only with spelling rather than "grammatical errors," perhaps you don't need to try too hard to have "Steven Smith" fall outside the quote. You can just use the correct spelling directly.
 * If in your case it is relevant to point out the error by using sic, my reading of the Manual's advice is that sic should immediately follow the word containing the error. 64.140.121.160 (talk) 00:39, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

I haven't seen anywhere that this is about a current or intended Wikipedia article. If it is, a search of the archives of Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style should pull up some of the relevant discussions about the use of [sic], and if they don't answer the question, the original enquirer, 134.83... should certainly feel free to pose a fresh question by starting a new section on the current M of S talk page. ¶ If the "[sic]" is intended for somewhere else, calculated indirection and deviousness might very well be called for in the citation; how would we know differently, let alone know enough to judge? ¶ And I agree with others' conclusion, it's by far clearest to put the "[sic]" directly after the questioned word, as long as your readers know what "[sic]" means in the first place. I've certainly often just let my eyes pass over unfamiliar abbreviations and conventions before taking the trouble to find out what they actually stand for. For comparison, see how often ordinary, though not illiterate, writers confuse i.e. (id est or "that is") with e.g. (exempli gratia, or for [the sake of] example). —— Shakescene (talk) 07:59, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Inputing Asian characters
Hello. Every so often, I will see a sign or a page with text in a language other than English, and want to know what it says, so I inquire about it here on the Language RD. (You get a lot of that!) It is of course easy to copy down something written in the Latin alphabet, and texts in Greek, Cyrillic and Hebrew alphabets are relatively easy to transcribe. But when I see something written with Asian (CJK) characters (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc.), I can either photograph the text or attempt to scribble down the characters, but how can I transcribe them onto this page? I have the Unicode tables, but to my untrained eye it is hard to distinguish many of the characters. Also, some signs use stylized characters which makes it harder for me to determine what they are. Is there any key to searching for characters by sight only in the Unicode tables? → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 20:40, 26 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Well, if you don't know the language or it's character set, it's going to be difficult to identify the characters. If you have a photo, I suggest you upload it here.  Not digital ?  Any place like Kinko's can scan it for you.  If you needed to do large volumes of these conversions, an OCR system which recognizes characters in that language would be the way to go. StuRat (talk) 21:11, 26 March 2012 (UTC)


 * If the characters are on a web page, you can just copy and paste them as you would Latin characters. If you are reading the characters from some other source, you can try a free handwriting recognition site such as YellowBridge. Click the brush icon and a handwriting recognition window will pop up.  Using your mouse, draw the character in the window.  If you draw the character correctly, the recognition software will respond with a Unicode version of the character, which you can copy and paste here, or at Wiktionary, which will provide a definition of the character and its pronunciation in various Chinese languages, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. However, if you find it hard to distinguish the characters, there is a fair chance that you won't know how to draw a character you want to understand correctly, in which case the character-recognition function will fail to produce the intended character.  In that case, maybe a screenshot or photo would be the best approach. Marco polo (talk) 00:20, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
 * (ec) There are a number of websites and apps that will try to interpret drawn Chinese characters (or kanji). For example: http://www.nciku.com/. There are also facilities that enable you to look up characters by combinations of character elements, such as http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-bin/wwwjdic.cgi?1R (this one is for Japanese), but these still need a bit of learning to use effectively. If you have large amounts of text then either method will be pretty laborious. In Japanese, words are normally typed phonetically and then converted to the correct characters either automatically when the software figures out correctly what you've typed, or manually from a list of possibilities when that fails (since there are many homophones). 81.159.106.29 (talk) 00:30, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
 * NCIKU is much nicer than YellowBridge. Thanks for that!  Marco polo (talk) 14:46, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
 * So no one mentioned Input method editors that are available for Windows and other operating systems. The Windows IME for Japanese, lets me type Japanese phonetically on my US keyboard, and has expaned facilities in the language bar that let me draw a character and/or pick a character from a (sorted) list.  Astronaut (talk) 14:34, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

The name "Nikita"
In Nikita (TV series), the title character named "Nikita" is played by Maggie Q, a half-Vietnamese, half-Caucasian actress. Her features clearly appear to be Asian, which got me to wondering. Would "Nikita" be a normal seeming name in any of the major Asian languages? It has a feel that makes it seem like it could be an Asian name (at least to my inexperienced ears), but I'm wondering whether that is really the case or not. As I understand it, the Nikita TV series is actually one of several fictional works originally inspired by Nikita (film), where the title character is played by a French actress. So perhaps the character was originally envisioned as French? However, our article at Nikita (given name) suggests that Nikita is often of Russian origin (though also sometimes Indian). The TV show does interact frequently with Russians, so maybe the character was originally envisioned as Russian. Obviously, the creators of fiction are free to take liberties, and even in the real world people often have names that don't seem to match their ethnic background, but I'm still curious if "Nikita" would be a normal seeming Asian (or French) name. Dragons flight (talk) 22:51, 26 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I think you have it right, in that it's only Asian if you consider Russian to be Asian. (Well, even though Russia is culturally European, most of the nation is in Asia, so you could make that case.) StuRat (talk) 05:18, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
 * As StuRat said - Nikita is a common Russian name, and many people who originate from the Asian parts of Russia, and some of the former Soviet republics in Asia, use that name. Many of these people look Mongoloid, and many others look somewhere in between Caucasian and Mongoloid, so Maggie Q's "look", ethnicity-wise, would actually be quite appropriate for a Nikita. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 11:01, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I did not realise that Nikita was strictly masculine in Russian, so having read Nikita (given name) I should add to what I wrote above and say that, Magge Q would be appropriate ethnicity-wise, but not so gender-wise, for a Russian-or-Central-Asian Nikita!
 * For "major Asian languages" -- "Nikita" would not be a likely name in the Chinese language. Chinese language naming conventions also generally do not allow for three syllable given names. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 11:14, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Most TV names are dreamed up by people in Los Angeles without much concern for their linguistic origins based on how they will sound to a typical American with a mediocre education. They probably chose Nikita because it is vaguely exotic and its form sounds feminine to most Americans, who tend to be familiar with the Spanish feminine diminutive ending -ita, as in Lolita, Conchita, or unrelated names such as Rita.  Marco polo (talk) 14:40, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
 * The original film was in French (with some Italian) and had a French writer / director, so I doubt the choice of the name "Nikita" had anything to do with how it sounded in English. Though I suppose the casting of Maggie Q in the updated role could have been influenced by a perception that the name sounded Asian.  Dragons flight (talk) 14:54, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I have always assumed that the name 'La Femme Nikita' was used to indicate that it was a woman with a typically male name. Helene O&#39;Troy - Et In Arcadia Ego Sum (talk) 18:25, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Also, Nikita wasn't Asian in the French film. Alansplodge (talk) 00:46, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

They probably chose Nikita because it is vaguely exotic and its form sounds feminine to most Americans
 * So, how does that work when it comes to given names like Madison and Alison? Who in their right mind ever thought either of these was a suitable name for a girl?  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  19:05, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
 * "Madison" (a horrible name for a girl, in my opinion, unless it was really unique) traces pretty directly to the movie Splash. Alexius  Horatius  19:10, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Both of those are part of the increasing trend in the United States for middle-class Americans to turn last names into first names. Madison, Kimberly, Tiffany, Schuyler (often grossly misspelled on a phonetic plan) and dozens of others have morphed into first names, following the far rarer example of such names as Irving from earlier centuries. -- Orange Mike &#x007C;  Talk  19:27, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
 * It's only a recent trend to give girls first names derived from last names. Boys' names derived from last names have been around the English-speaking world for centuries. Of the men who have served as President or Vice-President of the U.S. (for example), the following first names are derived from surnames: Millard, Franklin, Rutherford, Chester, Grover, Woodrow, Warren, Calvin, Dwight, Lyndon, Elbridge, Schuyler, Garret, and Nelson. Of the women who have served as First or Second Lady of the U.S., on the other hand, not one has a first name derived from a surname (unless Ilo is derived from a surname I've never heard; I don't know where it comes from). Alison doesn't have the word son in it; it's a diminutive of Alice and has always been a girl's name. There's even a medieval poem about a girl named Alysoun. Angr (talk) 20:04, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Allison Danzig wasn't a girl. I'd seen mention of "her" many times over the years (usually associated with the erroneous claim that "she" coined the term Grand Slam) before I finally became aware "she" was a he.  What a comedy of errors.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  20:12, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
 * He must be a "Boy Named Sue" phenomenon then. Michael Learned and Christopher Norris aren't boys either, but Michael and Christopher are still boys' names. Angr (talk) 21:08, 27 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Angr -- One of the first (fictional) cases of giving a girl a surname as a given name was Charlotte Bronte's Shirley (1849) -- before the book was published, "Shirley" as a name would have been considered quite masculine... AnonMoos (talk) 05:26, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes - see Shirley Crabtree (mock at your peril). Alansplodge (talk) 00:39, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Reminds me of the opera singer Sherrill Milnes. What shit he must have had to put up with at school.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  08:28, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Probably not as much as Gay Talese and Gay Mary Byrne. Pais (talk) 15:36, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, they were both born before 1935, so they would have been out of secondary school by the mid-50s. As late as the early 60s, the Flintstones were still having a gay old time without drawing particular comment. --Trovatore (talk) 21:47, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I do notice that the first surnames-used-as-first-names to make the jump from boys' names to girls' names are those that end in -(e)y/-ie, like Shirley, Kimberly, Tracy, Stacy, Leslie, Tiffany, etc. I think it's only relatively recently that other surnames-used-as-first-names, like Taylor, have started to be used for girls. Angr (talk) 09:52, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Evelyn (name), when used as a male name, also tends to confuse, at least confuse us non-natives. --NorwegianBluetalk 21:08, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
 * "Schuyler" as a given name in English has been around for a while, vide Schuyler Colfax. --Atemperman (talk) 13:39, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
 * But in Colfax's day it was: 1. spelled right; 2. used solely for males; and 3. used only by the upper-class families with descent from the upper-class family of that surname. -- Orange Mike &#x007C;  Talk  21:20, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Lists using semicolons
I know one can use semicolons in place of commas to separate items that would be ambiguous if commas were just used, such as: "Once upon a time, there was a cat, Fluffy; a dog, Woofs; and a tiger, Stripey.", but can one then continue the sentance after that, such that the list is in the middle of a long sentence, such as "Once upon a time, there was a cat, Fluffy; a dog, Woofs; and a tiger, Stripey, who all went to the zoo, where they...."? Many thanks. 134.83.1.243 (talk) 23:04, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
 * You could, but it would be far inferior to ending the sentence at "Stripey", and starting a new sentence with the words "They all went...". Unless you want to sound like a yakitty preteen girl. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 23:15, 26 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Or you could avoid the rather awkward semi-colons altogether with "Once upon a time Fluffy the cat, Woofs the dog, and Stripey the tiger all went to the zoo."--Shantavira|feed me 07:26, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't see anything awkward about the semicolons there. Some people have a prejudice against semicolons in general, but this prejudice is absolutely wrong and needs to be hunted down and extirpated.  (It is true that some people overuse them.) --Trovatore (talk) 22:18, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Or use parentheses (brackets). Or avoid using long lists in your prose on the grounds that readers find them difficult and tend to skip over them, and they break up the flow of your text. A good story would introduce readers separately to Fluffy, Woofs, and Stripey, before taking them all to the zoo. --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:56, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Tell that to the editors who insist on rewriting easy-to-read lists as prose in wikipedia articles, so that they resemble the verbal clutter described by the OP. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 11:13, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Amen, Brother! Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 11:27, 28 March 2012 (UTC)