Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 August 20

= August 20 =

Mongolian pronunciation of Оюу Толгой
Could someone point me to video or audio of the correct pronunciation of Оюу Толгой? If not, a basic phonetic pronunciation? Hack (talk) 05:08, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I've found a Youtube channel, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6w-NTNwZfW2uZzCe3f7MPg, which has lots of local news (as well as some cheesy music videos) about the mine. After listening to a bunch of the speakers (and checking some online sources on Mongolian pronounciation) it seems that it's either Oyu/Oyou Tolgoi or Tolchoi, interchangably. The 'г' is usually pronounced like a 'g' in 'garden', but in this case many seem to rather use a consonant closer to [x] or [χ] which isn't that common in English, but familiar from Spanish pronounciation of 'Jesus', for example. Hope that helps, but please note that I'm not a native speaker. Rh73 (talk) 14:44, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The closest one can get from his/her English throat is . It's possible to say also   or . Note the Mongolian o is rather short in these words (unlike the English oh and aw).--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 23:43, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Mongolian words are stressed on the initial syllable, unless there are any long vowels or diphthongs elsewhere in the word, in which case the first long vowel or diphthong carries the stress. Given that the ⟨юу⟩ represents a long vowel (actually the iotified version of the long vowel ⟨уу⟩), and the ⟨ой⟩ is a diphthong, I'd think that both words are stressed on the second syllable, so probably  is a more accurate approximation, stress-wise. --Theurgist (talk) 01:11, 21 August 2015 (UTC)
 * You're probabaly right, I've followed Russian (Soviet) sources that didn't much explain the stress patterns.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 06:16, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

"Good people" just mean "citizens"?
I'm reading several translations of Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris ("NDP") at the same time and I find that most of the translations translate the French term "Parisiens" as the "good people of Paris".

For example, Frederic Shoberl translated
 * "Il y a aujourd’hui trois cent quarante-huit ans six mois et dix-neuf jours que les Parisiens s’éveillèrent au bruit de toutes les cloches sonnant à grande volée..."
 * as
 * "It is this day three hundred and forty-eight years six months and nineteen days since the good people of Paris were awakened by a grand peal from all the bells...".

Collins says the term "good people" mean "fairies". But I don't think that's what it actually mean in NDP or its translations.

I wonder what the exact meaning of "good people" is. Does it just mean "citizen(s)"? Is it an archaic or poetic term whose meaning is figurative? Why did the translators decide to use the term "good people (of Paris)" instead of the direct term "Parisian" or something like that?

--183.89.89.177 (talk) 13:46, 20 August 2015 (UTC)


 * It's just a poetic flourish. 'Burghers' would be better than 'citizens', but 'Parisians' is probably even better. My own translation would be "Three hundred and forty-eight years, six months and nineteen days ago today, Parisians awoke to the sound of all the bells sounding a great peal..." AlexTiefling (talk) 14:19, 20 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I suppose it depends on whether the original was marked as referring to people of elevated status. "The good people of Paris" sounds like politician-speak to make the hoi polloi feel better about themselves - would the original sound the same way or was it a straightforward demonym? 64.235.97.146 (talk) 14:27, 20 August 2015 (UTC)


 * It's a Cliché. Google Ngrams shows it to be rather less prevalent nowadays than in its 1840-80 heyday. Whilst it now does seem to be simply a synonym for 'inhabitants of', it once had, and still retains some of, the sense of the 'good people' of a particular place being contrasted to the 'less good people' of another. See, for example, here. I'd imagine that's what the translator was going for - the image of good Parisians sleeping soundly before being woken by the peal of bells portending later events. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 14:48, 20 August 2015 (UTC)


 * "Fairies" is a completely different use. Forget that.
 * "Good people" does have some sense that suggests the notion of "upstanding citizens" as opposed to "riff-raff". But as Cucumber Mike said, it's a cliché or poetic flourish meant to add a little color to the scene. Interesting that several different translations went there, and that all the subsequent ones bought into color the original translator painted. StevenJ81 (talk) 15:08, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies. Interestingly, I also find that sometimes the English translators translated the same terms differently (resulting in completely different meanings). Examples:

I'm a bit disappointed by the fact that there's no accurate translation of NDP available at the moment. My French is so basic. Maybe I need to resume my French lessons so that I'd be able to enjoy the original French novel directly. T T --183.89.89.177 (talk) 16:01, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The first example is amusing. It's 'chasse' (hunt) vs 'châsse' (shrine), so it seems Hapgood made a little mistake here. In the second example, Shoberl omitted 'belle' (nice/fine) and 'of either sex' sounds kinda clunky and distanced. Rather than being disappointed, I'd become curious if those inaccuracies were intentional (ex. Did Shoberl's version get censored because hanging people isn't a nice thing?) or caused by special circumstances (ex. Was Hapgood's version based on a transcript with a typo?). Rh73 (talk) 18:15, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Translation is not an exact science. The first example, as pointed out, includes one of the translators making a basic mistake, but in the second case, all three renderings into English convey the meaning of the original French. The rest is stylistic preference: for example, "larronesses" is hardly ever used in French (the masculine, "larron" is deliberately old-fashioned). Victor Hugo is using a stylistic flourish with that term, but it can't really be perfectly reproduced in English. "Male and female thieves" is too prosaic to match Hugo, but gives the exact meaning, while "rogues of either sex" gets closer to the original turn of phrase. Une "belle pendaison" is deliberately sarcastic, from a XIXth century opponent of public hangings who thinks any such display is barbaric (Notre-Dame de Paris is set in medieval Paris). This time, the first translation completely avoids this meaning, and the latter two don't make the point as strongly as Hugo. And that's just one phrase (not even a complete sentence) from a 400-page book in the original French. The challenge of translating such a literary work is truly daunting, so it's no wonder that someone wiull eventually come along and think he can do it better. That shouldn't prevent anyone from reading a translation, though. --Xuxl (talk) 07:47, 21 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I'll just note that Hapgood's translation is notoriously terrible and literal – for example, she almost invariably translates the French souvenir as, well, "souvenir", even when the context shows it clearly means "memory" ("Brevet, take a good look at the accused, recall your souvenirs, and tell us on your soul and conscience, if you persist in recognizing this man as your former companion in the galleys, Jean Valjean?) – and she doesn't make attempt at translating puns, so characters frequently break out in nonsequiturs. Unfortunately, because it's on Project Gutenberg, her version is also one of the commonest on the web (it's the version on Wikisource!) I hear her Russian translations are better, but I wouldn't recommend trying to use her Les Mis to get into Hugo's mind. Smurrayinchester 08:21, 21 August 2015 (UTC)
 * In the table above, John Sturrock was mislinked to the article about the Olympic athlete of the same name. I've removed the brackets, but a better solution might be to create a John Sturrock disamb page or the John Sturrock (translator) article. On the other hand, I don't know whether this John Sturrock will meet the notability criterion. Someone might be interested in taking it further...but not on this page please.Akld guy (talk) 09:20, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Nigerian English
I've recently been editing a BLP article for sources and accuracy. The article creator and main contributor to the article uses the same odd capitalization as the article subject. Titles such as Music Journalist, Spokesman, Activist, Social Media Personality are capitalized. This suggests that they are the same person, unless this is something typical for Nigerian English. Can it be just because they are both from Nigeria? Sjö (talk) 17:04, 20 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Can't speak to this directly. Will say that sometimes people bring over capitalization rules from their first languages, and those aren't always right here. (Example: In German, all nouns are capitalized, always.) StevenJ81 (talk) 17:27, 20 August 2015 (UTC)


 * It could be also that they both are trying to keep the same style in accordance to the subject's style for consistency. Akseli9 (talk) 19:30, 20 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Such capitalization is common enough from people not highly educated in Standard English that I would draw no conclusions from it. (Time magazine used to capitalize all such terms when they appeared before a name: "Boxing Fan Bob Smith".)  —Tamfang (talk) 23:58, 20 August 2015 (UTC)


 * See False title, which describes this (and even mentions the Time Magazine usage). Capitalization or not, the use of false titles is usually discouraged in formal writing; thus you wouldn't say something like "social media personality Jane Doe", even uncapitalized.  You'd say instead "Jane Doe, a social media personality".  The usage has become more prevalent in recent decades, to the point where many people in casual usage wouldn't even notice the problem, but it is still often frowned upon.  -- Jayron 32 00:05, 21 August 2015 (UTC)


 * We're straying. The article contained language like "[Name] is a Music Journalist, Spokesman, Activist and Social Media Personality," though few if any Time-style false titles. —Tamfang (talk) 04:29, 22 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I'm not going to argue the page one way or the other. That capitalization is not Standard English, and I would not use that capitalization in an article. You would have justification from a grammar perspective to change it. StevenJ81 (talk) 16:31, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Sjö, a good way to get glance at a foreign version of English is to check some of the country's newspapers. This article from The Guardian capitalises a lot of titles, but in most cases they're official titles, and descriptive titles like "deputy" and "journalist" are not capitalised.  I'm seeing basically the same thing in this article from the Nigerian Tribune.  Bear in mind, however, that major news websites may not reflect common on-the-street usage; d'Azavedo's Some Terms From Liberian Speech contains lots of terms and usages from Liberian English that I've never seen in any Liberian newspaper (either online or printed), and the same is likely true of Nigerian English.  Ultimately, however, I'd go with the online stories: educated Nigerians, writing professionally for other Nigerians, probably wouldn't capitalise these terms, and when educated and on-the-street language are significantly different, we're writing in the former.  Nyttend (talk) 17:42, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Pun lost in translation in "Danger: Diabolik"?
In Mario Bavo's campy (but wonderful) 1968 film Danger: Diabolik, one of Inspector Ginko's outrageous schemes to outwit Diabolik is referred to as "Operation Gold Van". I've always assumed this is a pun in the original Italian, but I don't speak Italian well enough to prove my theory. For those who haven't seen the film, the scheme involves filling a specialized train car with a gold bar so large one man cannot steal it (spoiler alert: Diabolik steals it anyway). Can anyone with a better knowledge of Italian than I shed light on this? I can't stand it when there's a joke I'm not getting! Helene O&#39;Troy - Et In Arcadia Ego Sum (talk) 17:15, 20 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I have no idea about that one, but for an interesting bit of Italian/English wordplay translation, you might like to read The Icicle Thief. --65.94.50.17 (talk) 19:32, 20 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Possibly a pun on the 1966 Lightning Bolt (film) whose original Italian title was Operazione Goldman. I concur that Danger: Diabolik is very funny and well worth a watch: oddly, I can't remember if I saw it in an English language version, with English subtitles, or in the original unvarnished Italian (which I can't speak).
 * Incidentally, I'm not any kind of an Italian film expert – I simply put "Operation Gold" into the Wikipedia search box and investigated what came up. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 185.74.232.130 (talk) 13:33, 21 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I have never found a version of the film in Italian, even when I saw it on the big screen at the AFI Silver, so it may never have been distributed in that language. I do know that many of the film's events were based on classic adventures from the comics, so I thought maybe the 'Gold Van' pun came from there, but I don't know of the best way the research that. I will seek out Lightning Bolt (film), sounds like a fun film to watch even if it doesn't answer my question.Helene O&#39;Troy - Et In Arcadia Ego Sum (talk) 14:30, 21 August 2015 (UTC)
 * It's got a real brewery in it! What more could one ask? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 185.74.232.130 (talk) 15:22, 21 August 2015 (UTC)