I hadn't known (or remembered) that recommendation from the wiki; but still, the Ukrainian spelling (resulting in a Ukrainian reader understanding it as a reasonable phonetic imitation of the English name) may often be very far from a transliteration (letter-for-letting substitution) from the English name. I'll put Towcester forward as an example! (For those not familiar with it: it's pronounced like "Toaster".)
__John On Mon, Aug 4, 2014 at 4:36 PM, Ed Loach <edlo...@gmail.com> wrote: >> Since English has non-phonetic spelling (and some placenames are >> particularly non-phonetic) there's no solid base for automatic >> transliteration to something meaningful in another script, so I > think >> it's reasonable to put the Ukrainian spelling in explicitly, for >> places for which such a spelling is established.. > > Perhaps in the cast of non-phonetic places there is some argument > that such names could possibly be added, but looking at Pavlo's > proposed cities I noticed Chelmsford which already has two Cyrillic > language transliterations I feel would be better removed. > > There is a bit in the wiki which recommends avoiding > transliterations: > http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Names#Avoid_transliteration > > Speaking of an on the ground example, a few years ago I visited > Crete and while all signs were in Greek, some of the tourist ones > were also in a Roman script (I can't claim "English" - a name is a > name). One particular place we wanted to visit we struggled to find > on the map, and it was only when we were driving in the area we > found that the translation from Greek in the guide book we'd read in > advance, and the translation and the map and the translation on the > sign post were three different translations. In this instance (if > I'd been an OSM mapper at the time) I'd have added a name:en of what > was on the sign, though as noted above it isn't technically "en". I > suspect the three different translations were transliterations of > different ways it was pronounced. > > As far as I know Chelmsford has no cyrillic translations on their > signs. > > Ed > _______________________________________________ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb