Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Cyrillic)/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

View point of someone originally from outside the Cyrillic area

OK, I agree I have some private interest in this - as my name was once mangled beyond recognition when turned into the Cyrillic alphabet. When I married in the Ukraine, I found that the translator (the only one in the town who could translate from Dutch into Ukrainian, and I guess he also translated from German, now and then) had interpreted my Mazurian name as ... German. So, there I was - with a "ю" instead of "ы" at the end of my name and the guy reponsible having gone on a holiday. In the end I decided the best way was to wait for him to come back after the marriage ceremony and then pay him extra to turn the "ю" into "y" and not "ü" for the translation of the marriage certificate in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, I had not counted on the Ukrainian passport guys putting the same "ü" in my wife's new name...

I think when it says "use the convential name" we must be careful. In the case of Ludmilla Tourischeva we are faced with two different problems. First, the lady still lives, and lives in a country which uses the Cyrillic alphabet. Second, the Christian name is spelled wrong, apart from any transliteration issues. This is not an "Alexander" case. I think whether we use the "convential" name (which actually googles a little better in the Tourischeva case because the votes split on Turishcheva and Turischeva, nobody writes Tourishcheva) will have to depend on a few factors:

1) how well established is that convential name? We need something to differentiate. 2) if the name is not so "well established" does the person in question still live in the Cyrillic area? If not, do we have an idea how (s)he likes the name to be transliterated? 3) if the "established" name is spelled wrong (even if it is only one part of the name) discard the complete name and go for normal transliteration.

I hate to refer to nationalistic sentiment here, but I have noticed that using frenchified or germanized versions of Russian names in an English text (I have even seen "Poutine" in an English text) makes them look distinctively non-Russian.User_talk:Pan_Gerwazy--pgp 14:19, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

As to "Ludmilla Tourischeva" variant, I believe, it's more popular, than other ones. By the way, previous discussion showed, that arguments for "Ludmilla Tourischeva" variant is stronger, than against.

As to "shch" or "sch" usage for "щ", for example, transcribing "Лещенко" as "Leschenko" is much more popular in the web, then as "Leshchenko". And "Petr Leschenko" variant also seems to be more popular, than "Pyotr Leshchenko". Hence, "shch"'s preference over "sch" is questionable at least for me. Cmapm 08:18, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

You cannot have your cake and eat it! Meaning you cannot use the web to say it must be "Leschenko" (how many references are in the English language, by the way?) and then forget about it when Lyudmila Turishcheva is concerned. If you had had a look at Romanization of Russian you would know why "shch" is to be preferred as transliteration. This is the English Wikipedia, not the German or the French one - so how to transliterate is not even in doubt. The point is : do we transliterate or not. We do NOT, when there is a conventional name in English. In the case of Leshchenko a good clue is given by the number of references in the English Wikipedia itself to him IN TEMPORE NON SUSPECTO (before this argument started). 6 for Pyotr Leshchenko, 2 for Pyotr Leschenko and zilch zero nada kein einzige for Petr Leschenko. In fact, Petr is totally unacceptable, the high number of googles for that one are caused by a mistake (just Like Ludmilla with two l's is a misprint by the way) - people mixing up Russian "e" and "ë". "Conventional" would be "Peter", of course. If there is no conventional way of spelling the name in English (and the low frequency of the name in English texts suggests that) we transliterate. Using Romanization of Russian. Again, to do otherwise - use a German looking name in an English context - would mean to de-Russify the name. And judging on how desperately Leshchenko wanted to return to Russia after World War II, I suspect he may not have liked that himself.

Returning to Turishcheva, I can tell you (having experienced this once more with my own wife three years ago) that if Lyudmila is now a Ukrainian citizen, she (or anybody else) does not have much say in how her name is spelled outside the Ukraine. That is why I leave her name to the Ukrainians on Wikipedia. User_talk:Pan_Gerwazy--pgp 12:49, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Having raised myself the "how many ENGLISH googles" argument, I decided to have a look myself. The number of googles for "Petr Leschenko" does look impressive - but only at first sight. When you page through, you will find that Google only finds 37 unique pages. The count for "Pyotr Leshchenko" LOOKS much lower, but in fact they come from 30 unique websites. Now add the condition "English language". Surprise, surprise: 13 times "Pyotr Leshchenko", 12 times "Pyotr Leschenko", 7 times "Petr Leschenko", 7 times "Petr Leshchenko". In fact, in my opinion, these google numbers are so low and so evenly divided we can safely say there is no established conventional name in ENGLISH. Which means: transliterate. That the correct transliteration is also the leader in English Wikipedia and the marginal leader in Englsih googles, is a good point. [[User_talk:Pan_Gerwazy]--pgp 13:26, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

As I said earlier, Google searches are not the argument. Even if it would be one source, but a reliable one, it would be worth attention. Saying "popular in the web", I mean, that a lot of reliable sources exist in the web, I don't mean, that there are a lot of Google hits. In favor of "Lev Leschenko" I can provide links to a lot of sources, while for "Lev Leshchenko" I can provide much fewer. I am not so sure about "Petr Leschenko", it just seems popular to me, but I didn't deep enough into that. But if I should deep, I, as earlier, should analyze each of sources, not simply count Google hits.

As a side note, I think, that a discussion would be more constructive, if each claim is backed by cited sources, not just by somebody's personal experience. Cmapm 15:35, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Belarusian language

It seems User:Kuban kazak prefers "revert wars" to normal disput. He has changed this page recently to:

1. . Where that spelling is established in English, the established English name is used.
2. . Elsewhere is transliterated using a modified BGN/PCGN system. Lacinka is NOT to be used.

Why?

1. First of all, what's wrong with Lacinka? It's for sure the only one "one-to-one" transliteration system, which can provide direct transliteration from cyrillics and back without loss of information; it is established and widely used. Diacritics are not problem any way - French, German, Polish names and so on use diacritics and there are no objections.

See reasoning above. --Kuban Cossack 09:38, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

2. If there are problems with Lacinka, don't forget about state supported transliteration system (so called NSR). Even it, while it is much less clear and accurate than Lacinka, is many times better than US BGN/PCGN system.

That is a POV --Kuban Cossack 09:38, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Those points 1 and 2 are rather sort of thing, which well-wishing, but very, very uninformed person would utter.

The "state supported system" is: 1) non-mandatory outside of Belarus 2) non-recommended by UN 3) impossible to use with strictly English alphabet 4) redundant, as the "one-to-one transliteration" is already handled by ISO 9 since 1968, and English transcription is handled by BGN/PCGN romanization of Belarusian since 1979.

The "Lacinka" is: 1) quasi-orthographical, not transliterating, system 2) never codified properly (ref. to Tarashkyevich's 5th edition) 3) breaking Belarusian language traditions (chiefly with rules on "L" and "Ł", which, thankfully, the "state supported system" dares not do) 4) used by virtually nobody 5) redundant even for Polish WP, as there are already codified Polish rules of the rendering of the Belarusian names (ref. to the archive of the discussion).

That's why Belarusian names in English WP should be rendered in BGN/PCGN. ---Yury Tarasievich 12:47, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

That's why I PROPOSE next changes:

1. . Where that spelling is established in English, the established English name is used.
2. . Elsewhere is transliterated using Lacinka (preferred) or NSR system (where Lacinka could not be used).

Please speak and vote. --Monk 09:06, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Your absence has already gained my proposal to become law, now unless you want to start a new one, then it already established rules--Kuban Cossack 09:38, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes Kuban kazak I really have something to do in except sitting in wikipedia 24/7 as you can. Do you really think you can establish your POV as rules just while someone isn't watching? No way. We have established rules and those say we should use Łacinka. --Monk 10:25, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

The proposal has been there for a month. I too just took a lengthy break to shoo off the Nato ships in Feodosiya btw, but that does not change anything, the discussion is above and it is now settled, there was consensus based on people who have been involved. I can't be blamed for your absence. Start a new proposal. However breaking the rules, and I will ask the admin to take sanctions against you. --Kuban Cossack 11:50, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

User:Kuban kazak is well known for trolling and other wikipedia rule violations. In particular, this is not the first time he uses a starategy of intoducing a controvercial change by claiming imaginary consensus, and then asking others to jump over the head in order to return to the status quo. (see User talk:Rydel, Talk:Maładečna). The discussion over Belarussian Naming convention is far from over, and this is clearly indicated above. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.84.5.47 (talk • contribs)

Please discuss relevant issues than insults. --Kuban Cossack 10:02, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand what's there to discuss at all. This is English WP, not political meeting. There exists BGN/PCGN system for Romanisation of Belarusian language (BGN/PCGN romanization of Belarusian) since 1979, which seems to be the only system internationally recognised. At very best, we could ponder the possibility of the Belarusian state system but to what purpose? And Latinka is just a non-issue here, actually. See my June 17 post several paragraphs before for more details. ---Yury Tarasievich 08:31, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

The proposal was there for a month, Kuban Cossaks put notices on all possibly related forums. I personally begged for feedback on Belarussian anouncement board and on the talk pages of many involved people. The only people answered were Yury Tarasievich and Ezhiki. All people participated eventually came to the consensus - Lacynka should go, BGN/PCGN should come. I think the company was reasonably qualified. Yury Tarasievich seems to be an expert in transliteration, Ezhiki is the author of the Russian wiki system, Cuban at least speaks Belarusian. Anyway nobody else cared to participate. Now in a month the talks start from the very beginning. I personally do not care about the outcome, if you want to use the system that shows for Belarusian towns as less represented on internet than Ethiopian villages of the same size - go ahead abakharev 10:52, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Period of discussing

There seems to be a discussing here (at last) about the Belarussia places. Please not apply the convention to move any article related to Belarusian places. Lets discuss rather than revert war. abakharev 10:59, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Well the message is out to the people who insist yet do not participate in discussions, and break WP rules. I put a note on Portal:Belarus a month ago, so far I have seen no objections to my proposal (apart from insults from Rydel and Krysa). So what was I to do, wait for a year? Молчание знак согласия, I acted on instinct and the policy has been changed you can't unchange a policy just because you don't like it. There are rules to wikipedia. If you had any objection you had a month to raise them. Getting into an edit war is not going to help you. Because in such a case the admin will follow the rules, and defend the existing policy (even if it is only a week old).

Now the only way you can change the policy back is to start it out anew, put a disputed tag on the text and restart the discussion. However before you do so, please see the relevant notes that were discussed between me, Yuri and Ezh above. --Kuban Cossack 11:07, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

I've edited the Belarusian section of the rules somewhat, removing the bits that could lead to ambigousness and bad feelings. What do you think? ---Yury Tarasievich 14:15, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

I've further amended the Belarusian section. I hope this would conclude the dispute on the Belarusian section constructively. ---Yury Tarasievich 10:40, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Page Moves

Is there a thought on whether it would be right to use wp;cyr to justify page moves. Yuri Luzhkov to Yuriy Luzhkov for example? --Spartaz 08:44, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Can't see why not --- as long as all the valid alternatives have their entries. ---Yury Tarasievich 10:42, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

You mean Yury Luzhkov as well as Yuriy Luzhkov ;)? I suppose we should we make sure that all the possibilities link to the main article? --Spartaz 21:38, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Category:User Cyrl

use ISO 15924 script codes [1]

• Category_talk:User cyr
• Template_talk:User cyr

Tobias Conradi (Talk) 23:20, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Just for clarity Tobias has proposed moving the above to his version. Surely we should be discussing this first? Unless there is a clear policy on using ISO naming conventions it strikes me as pointless moving these given that they are perfectly understandable as they are. --Spartaz 06:16, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

three letter can perfectly be mistaken as language related, which it is not. It is script related. Don't make it personal with "his" version. It's not mine, it's ISO. And certainly we do not need for every little thing a policy, but hey, write one if you like. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 09:15, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Kyrgyz

I just updated Romanization of Kyrgyz. How about making the BGN-PCGN system the recommended way to romanize Kyrgyz names? One problem I see: Kyrgyz last names like Akayev are actually Russifications, I don't think the "ае" combination exists in real Kyrgyz words. Markussep 18:36, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Italics in Cyrillic characters

Is there any agreement on whether to italicize or not Cyrillic characters ? If not, I propose to adopt a guideline advising against the use of italics in these cases:

• Italics are not necessary, since the difference with "normal Latin text" is obvious.
• Italics hinder readability, at least for those of us not used to those funny characters :-)

Of course, there would be exceptions, as for the "Bibliography" and "References" sections, where italics in these scripts do tend to make sense.

I imagine something very simple, along the lines of:

Do not use Italics for the following cases:

• Foreign language words and texts in Cyrillic characters, such as Кириллица.

I'm posting this in Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (text formatting)#Italics in Cyrillic and Greek characters & Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Greek)#Italics in Greek characters too. - - Regards, Evv 03:16, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Usually, to denote the "alien" word quote signs suffice, and yes, italics looks not very legible in typical computer display sans-serif, no matter what script. Yury Tarasievich 06:33, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I concur. Furthermore, in most cases in the body of an article Latin transliteration is preferable to Cyrillic letters anyway, because it is more accessible to English Wikipedia's audience. Some specific problems with Cyrillic italics:

• Accented Cyrillic letters fail to display on some systems when they are italicized, due to a lack of precomposed characters in available fonts (this affects Safari on Mac OS X, but it appears that Firefox/Mac creates the characters by superimposing accents). This particularly affects an article's first line, where accents are often used to show stressed syllables.
• In some cases, a limited range of Cyrillic characters will render correctly, but less common characters will not, also depending on available fonts (e.g. the latest version of the Gentium multilingual font has Russian letters, but not letters for other languages. Most fonts lack many of the characters necessary for non-Slavic languages or early Cyrillic).

 —Michael Z. 2006-10-12 07:38 Z

I guess that the main discussion will be in Manual of Style (text formatting), regarding all scripts other than Latin.

At the same time, it may be a good idea to add a simple "on Cyrillic characters only" guideline to this project page, in a last section titled "Style recommendations" or similar (providing there a link to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (text formatting).

Best regards, Evv 04:09, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable. Couple more things:

1. There was some relevant discussion and a vote at Template talk:Lang-ru#Italicizing Cyrillic text
2. The style manual of the Slavic and East European Journal recommends not italicizing Cyrillic text, as the visual appearance of the alphabet already emphasizes or distinguishes it from surrounding text in a Roman font.

As far as I'm concerned, italicized Cyrillic text looks beautiful (at least with Mac OS X's antialiasing and a good font), but unfortunately browser/OS/font support is too poor to display it reliably. —Michael Z. 2006-10-13 06:15 Z

Evv wrote: "Italics are not necessary, since the difference with "normal Latin text" is obvious."

Is it, really? Fact is that the Cyrillic alphabet has a number of letters common with the Roman alphabet i.e. graphically identical with Roman letters (including lower case ones), making it impossible in some cases to know if a certain word is from one alphabet or the other. If you encounter say 'Tacex' in your English text, you wouldn't know whether it's the Roman 'Tacex' or the Cyrillic 'Тасех' (that would read 'Taseh' if transliterated). Whether and how often such confusion may appear in Wiki texts I cannot say, what's certain is that without italicization one cannot certainly tell Cyrillic words in the text. If not italics, then quote signs or something else would be needed to guarantee differentiation, but the arguments against italicization given above seem less than convincing to me. Apcbg 19:46, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

If Tacex (or Cyrillic Тасех) was italicized, that would not help. It could well be an unfamiliar English word, a word from another Latin-alphabet language, or a transliterated word (e.g., Тацех, Tacex, in scientific transliteration). Italicizing does not resolve ambiguity on its own, because it is used for emphasis, to define new terms, for citing titles, for foreign terms in both the original alphabet and transliterated.

Recognizing the alphabet can occasionaly be a problem in very short words or word fragments in isolation, but then it should be dealt with by careful formatting and thoughtful writing. But for most words, the alphabets are different enough in character that they are easy to spot. —Michael Z. 2007-07-04 06:51 Z

The purpose of my example was to refute Evv's claim which it did. That italicizing is used for several purposes does not imply it should not be used for Cyrillic words; such reasoning might be employed to infer that italicizing should not be used at all. You start with 'emphasis' which however competes neither with the other uses you mention nor with italicizing Cyrillic words, but is part of them all. Apcbg 07:42, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Russian/Cyrillic toponyms

Here is my $0.02 on translation of Russian toponyms (i.e. place names). Right now it's a total mess, and I think Wikipedia needs a policy for consistent representation of geographic names in English. I propose something like:

1. If there's already an established name in English - use it. Good places to look up established names are English dictionaries (i.e. Webster's, Encyclopedia Britannica, etc.) and atlases (e.g. National Geographic Atlas of the World). One can also use Google test, but the name shouldn't be treated as established unless there's at least a few thousand hits. Examples of established names that don't follow regular transliteration rules: Moscow, Red Square.

2. If there's no established name, transliterate the name.

3 Do not translate words that belong to a proper name. This applies to common words like улица (street), набережная (embankment), мост (bridge), гора (mount/hill), верхний/нижний (upper/lower), etc. E.g. translate здание на улице Кузнецкий мост as a building on Kuznetskiy Most street (not Kuznetskiy Bridge street or Blacksmith Bridge street), but здание на Улице 1905 года as a building on Ulitsa 1905 Goda street, because in this case the word "улица" (ulitsa = street) is a part of the street name. Include literal translation when appropriate, e.g. Kuznetskiy Most (literally, a blacksmith bridge) - a street in Moscow.

This is a rough draft and needs much more work - or at least many more examples - to clearly communicate the idea. Azov 02:51, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Why Kuznetskij rather than Kuznetskiy? Spartaz 05:53, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, there are many transliteration systems, but most transliterate й as j. Azov 08:26, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Most? The suggested transliteration table for en here suggests 'iy' or 'y'. Spartaz 08:57, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Allright, I don't really have a strong opinion on which particular table to use. The one you linked to sounds fine, so I changed it to "Kuznetskiy" in my example. I also linked the romanization article in the main namespace to the Wiki guideline you quoted. Azov 10:29, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

<deindent>Thanks. Your proposal makes sense. Spartaz 15:53, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

It's not really within the scope of these naming conventions, that are IMO about the preferred way to render names, that are written in the Cyrillic alphabet, in the Latin alphabet. Still, this is an interesting point. Proposals 1 and 2 are completely OK with me. I have some trouble with proposal 3. Especially "Ulitsa 1905 Goda street" looks very silly to me ("street of the year 1905 street"), that's like "Lake Chiemsee" or "Rio Negro River". Some street names in other countries are not translated at all ("Friedrichstraße", "Paseo del Prado", "Prinsengracht", "Avenue d'Iéna", "Rådhuspladsen"), for some only the generic part is translated ("Omonoia Square", "Taksim Square", "Andrássy Avenue", "Andriyivskyy Descent"). Category:Streets and squares in Moscow suggests that the latter method is used for Russian streets, which I think is OK since it's not so likely that the average en.wikipedia user speaks Russian. Markussep 23:48, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, parts 1 & 2 are sort of commons sense, it's the third part that I actually try to bring up. Yes, this translation may seem redundand, but it's useful and often neccessary redundancy. Take your example with Rio Negro River. I don't speak Spanish, so if you just said "Rio Negro", I wouldn't know you're talking about a river. From the oteher hand, if you just said "Black River", I wouldn't know which river you're talking about (as I won't be able to translate the name back to Spanish - or, perhaps, Portuguese. See, I won't even know which language to translate it to!). So, for me Rio Negro river is actually the best variant. Of course, if you use the name somewhere where it's clear from the context that you're talking about a river - the word "river" can and should be left out. However, translating generic part of a common name is practically always a bad practice. Again, take, say, Bolshoi Kislovsky Drive from your example. I'm fluent in both, Russian & English, but I have no idea what this name refers to. Is it Большой Кисловский проезд? Or maybe Большая Кисловская улица? Or, perhaps, Большой Кисловский переулок?.. And, by the way, why they translated 'переулок', but didn't translate 'Большой'?.. There's no way to tell. Or take "Yauza Boulvard". What this refers to? Бульвар Яузы? Яузинский бульвар? Яузовский? Яузский?.. This translation is useless unless you already know the original name, and this is what we want to avoid.

A tricky part is figuring out whether a common word is a part of the proper name. Sometimes it's obvious, e.g. the word "Most" in Kuznetskiy Most is clearly part of the name (as it is, after all, a street, not a bridge), but one can argue that in "Bagrationovskiy Most" the name is just "Bagrationovskiy", so Bagrationovskiy bridge (note capitalization!) would be a better translation.

As to the argument about average Wikipedia reader not speaking Russian - well, that's exactly why proper names should not be translated. The main purpose of the name is to identify the subject. I.e. let the reader find it on a map, recognize the name mentioned in some other context, etc. Classifying the subject - i.e. explaining that the name refers to a street, a bridge, etc. - is secondary to that. Azov 10:23, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Russian has the additional feature (as do many other languages, but not English) that it modifies the object the street, lake etc. is named after. For instance Nevsky Prospekt - Neva Avenue, Ploshchad Lenina - Lenin Square. I don't know what's best, I'm inclined towards translating as little as possible. The translations can always be mentioned in the articles. Markussep 17:31, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Mongolian again

The current discussion on Talk:Aymguud_of_Mongolia#Transliteration motivated me to reanimate my old proposal further up on this page. Comparing the current useage trends in WP, existing maps from Mongolia, and other sources, as well as leaning on the naming conventions for Russian to some degree, the following seems to make the most sense to me:

Cyrillic	Latin	Latin, alt.
А,а	A,a
Б,б	B,b
В,б	V,v
Г,г	G,g
Д,д	D,d
Е,е	Ye,ye
Ё,ё	Yo,yo
Ж,ж	J,j
З,з	Z,z
И,и	I,i
Й,й	Y,y	I,i
К,к	K,k
Л,л	L,l
М,м	M,m
Н,н	N,n
О,о	O,o
Ө,ө	Ö,Ö
П,п	P,p
Р,р	R,r
С,с	S,s
Т,т	T,t
У,у	U, u
Ү,ү	Ü,Ü
Ф,ф	F,f
Х,х	H,h	Kh,kh
Ц,ц	Ts,ts
Ч,ч	Ch,ch
Ш,ш	Sh,sh
Щ,щ	Shch,shch
Ъ,ь	(omitted)
Ы,ы	Y,y
Ь,ь	(omitted)	Y,y
Э,э	E,e
Ю,ю	Yu,yu
Я,я	Ya,ya

There are three open questions:

• Й,й is written I,i on some mongolian Maps, but Y,y almost anywhere else (including usually on WP).
• Х,х is written either H,h or Kh,kh randomly on WP, apparently with a slight trend towards the former. Phonetically, sometimes one spelling makes more sense, sometimes the other. We'll probably just have to take a random choice here.
• Ь,ь is sometimes written Y,y, sometimes omitted (not sure about the criteria, or where it is used in Mongolian anyway)

A few characters are only needed for Russian loan words, so they appear as in Wikipedia:Romanization of Russian.

Unless someone is going to present an entirely different concept, we only need to establish a consensus on those three questions, until we can define a final naming convention for Mongolian. What do the language experts think about it? --Latebird 12:13, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

ь is sometimes represented with a ', too (as in " Dundgov' "). IMO that is still better than representing it with a vowel. Й -> I makes sense as it makes ий compatible with the other double vowels (aa, oo, ee etc). What transscription do Mongolian passports use? Yaan, 217.188.99.115 10:56, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure if an apostrophe would be helpful for the average reader. One argument to omit it (and to use "kh" and "y" in the other two cases) would be that they are then handled the same way as for Russian, reducing the potential for confusion. The double ii is an interesting point. On the other hand, it makes it impossible to differentiate betweeb the two characters when they appear alone. --Latebird 16:55, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I early 1980's were officially in use different transliteration rules: Ш - Š; Ч - Č, Й - J, Ы - Y, Ц - C, Ь - ' I think it was only Russian style transliteration. Ь is transliterated "i" and "ĭ" too (in WP aymguud table). Naturally it is wery possible the official passport transliteration can be reasonable decision. But in Mongolia are unofficial transliterations used in computer and SMS: Х - X. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bogomolov.PL (talk • contribs) --Latebird 09:12, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Official where and defined by whom? The examples you give look like a scientific transliteration. We need something that makes sense for english language readers. Are the mongolian passports actually transliterated consistently?

Out of practical considerations, I must say that I'd prefer the following:

Cyrillic	Latin
Й,й	Y,y
Х,х	Kh,kh
Ь,ь	(omitted)

This is simple to use, easy to remember because it is similar to what we use for Russian, makes sense phonetically in most cases, and probably requires the least amount of changes to existing articles. --Latebird 09:12, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

May be Russians omitte ь? Gov intead of govi or gov'? OK, I remember proposition to use wellknown names in traditional latin forms (coming from Russian usually). But this transliteration project needs traditional names list creation. And I am sure: if Mongolian word was transliterated and after that is possible to transliterate it back to Mongolian cyrillic - it is good transliteration system. In WP article about transliteration was good transliteration instance - traditional transliteration for Japan words. It is not in Japanese sound SHI (ŠI) or JI(ŽI) but SьI and ZьI (using Cyrillic softsign), but the aim was to create direct correspondance betveen Japanese syllabary and its latin form. Is softsign in use in native Mongolian words? Хонь - sheep, Морьт - horse, for example. This words don't look be loan... Bogomolov.PL 15:03, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

In the WP Transliteration system for Russian, the soft sign is omitted in most situations. For Mongolian, it can be omitted in all cases, because it never specifies a phoneme of its own. The sheep can be pronounced correctly as Khon, and the horse (Морь) as Mor.

Говь is a special case, because there is an established english (and german) translation: "Gobi" (compare Gobi Desert). We kan skip the transliteration in such cases, which will result in Dornogobi, Gobi-Altay, etc. The other example I'm currently aware of is Ulan Bator instead of Ulaanbaatar.

Back-transliteration is explicitly NOT required for WP. We need a system that makes the most sense phonetically (transcription), and is easy to use and understand. --Latebird 15:51, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

But why Americans use i instead of ь on their military maps http://geoengine.nga.mil/geospatial/SW_TOOLS/NIMAMUSE/webinter/muse_webinter_output/roamoutput1171299403_11371.png ? Russian transliteration style transliteration exists un WP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_language , but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Romanization_of_Russian idea is to use ONLY ENGLISH Latin alphabet (no unlauts etc). Bogomolov.PL 17:31, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

You'll have to ask the military types about their reasons... We can't *exactly* follow the system for Russian, only just as closely as reasonable. Russian doesn't have the extra vowels that Mongolian has. And those are most conveniently, and closest to correct pronounciation, represented by ü and ö. --Latebird 01:39, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

If we clame it have to be clear as possible for ENGLISH reader we need avoid umlauts: umlauts are absent in Enlish alphabet and common English reader need be informed about Ü and Ö pronunciation. For me, for example, difference between Mongolian "У" and "Υ" is too subtle, I don't hear the difference. May be Russians are rigth in "Υ" transliteration like simple "У", but it will be too close to the transcription, too far from transliteration. Russians also ignore Ö, they replace it with У and Э (Мурэн). And double vowels they ignore - for common person (like me) it is only emphasis, long ONE vowel, not TWO, but it will be too close to the transcription, too far from transliteration, isn't it?

About soft sign omitting in Russian transliteration. It is omitted only in two situations: at the word's end and between consonants (but my Mongolian examples are exactly for the fist and second, it happens). We are discussing not in empty space but in real situation: it is Google Earth/Google Map, the most common map source (WP supports Google, you know). This maps are based on American military maps (1: 1M), where its own transliteration system in use. And softsign is respected as "i", and Х is H (not KH) etc. Do you remember this system? If we will change transliteration system it will not be changed on maps (not our hand made), atlases etc. May be we neeed to realize fully: will we try to change the world? Bogomolov.PL 09:16, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

The military maps don't seem to use any really consistent transscription (or -literation) system. Or at least not from Mongolian written in cyrillic letters. Or more than one. Otherwise they wouldn't mark Erhel nuur as Erhili nuur or Tsagaan burgasnii (or -niy or -yn) hüree as Tsagaan burgasanii huryee (both between Mörön and Hatgal). Google earth isn't terribly authorative when it comes to geographical names in Mongolia either.

Since this isn't only about geographic (where probably no really definite system exists) but also about personal names, I'm all for going after the transscription the passports use. Yaan 13:32, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Otherwise, it's of course always possible to create redirects from other spelling variants.Yaan 13:36, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Proposal: Wikipedia:Romanization of Mongolian

I've created Wikipedia:Romanization_of_Mongolian to give the discussion a more solid basis, and to better present my proposal in context. Maybe it will be easier to discuss individual details on the talk page there. I'm also trying to attract broader attention to the topic somehow. --Latebird 17:28, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

It seems that the participants at Wikipedia talk:Romanization of Mongolian have reached a reasonable consensus and I've adapted the proposal to all the good suggestions made. Now are there any formalities necessary to promote this to an official policy? Or can I just declare it as such? --Latebird 13:44, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I've been bold and declared Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Mongolian) an official guideline (after renaming to the more conventional title). I hope the lack of objections so far reflects actual agreement and not only the obscure nature of the topic... --Latebird 09:13, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Accents

What about accents?
As in "Колмогóров" goes to "Kolmogorov" versus "Kolmogórov", say??
(Posted also at Talk:Romanization of Russian.) —DIV (128.250.204.118 08:48, 15 November 2007 (UTC))

As far as I know those accents are used only as a pronunciation guide, you will never find them in a normal Russian text (except in dictionaries), probably that's the same for other languages with the cyrillic alphabet. I think it's helpful to put an accent on the first appearance of the cyrillic form (like in the Andrey Kolmogorov article). They should definitely not be used in article titles. Markussep ^Talk 09:32, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

I didn't realize this question was cross-posted in two different places, so for the sake of cross-referencing the two threads, here is the link to my answer to this question.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:06, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Markussep, this makes sense I think. :-)

—DIV (128.250.204.118 00:02, 16 November 2007 (UTC))

Romanization of Russian proposal announcement

This is a formal announcement to inform the community that a proposal to redefine the criteria of conventionality in the Russian language romanization guideline has been submitted and to solicit the community to review the said proposal and vote on it. The proposal is available at Wikipedia talk:Romanization of Russian#Proposal to re-define the criteria of conventionality. Thank you for your attention.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:35, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

The proposal has passed.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:04, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

"Kohuept"

User:Biruitorul moved the Billy Joel album Концерт to Kohuept following an RM request that it be moved to Kontsert; a number of users them proposed the current formulation. While this article, along with Снова в СССР, raises a broader WP:NAME issue of what to do with titles of works that were named in a foreign language and alphabet for effect, the use of similar-looking Latin letters is silly and embarrassing, even if it is often encountered (Rolling Stone and other music magazines have used this term). Perhaps a more explicit policy is also required here. ProhibitOnions ^(T) 10:12, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Naming of biographies to be created

If any of the people lurking here would be up to having a look at User:Jao/List of Olympic shooting finalists without articles, I would be thrilled – having correct names before creating the biographies and avoiding unnecessary moves seems like a good idea. Many of the athletes listed have names from the Cyrillic alphabet (especially the Soviet Union and its successors have been dominant in this sport), and I think there are people here better suited for fixing the namings than I am. Thanks in advance, Jao (talk) 21:49, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

G. E. Grumm-Grshimailo

Can someone see what the right spelling should be here and do the needed merge. Shyamal (talk) 03:33, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Merged both to Grigory Grumm-Grzhimaylo; as per WP:RUS. Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:36, April 22, 2009 (UTC)

Macedonian transliteration

We the serbo-croatian letters are used instead of the Macedonian? There is a standardized Macedonian transliteration and we should use that one. So, the letters ḱ and ǵ should be used exclusively. --MacedonianBoy (talk) 16:01, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Could you provide a link to this standardized transliteration? Fortunately the ḱ and ǵ (in my browser they show as squares, I can only see them if I use the IPA template: ḱ and ǵ) are rare, I only saw one occurrence in the Category:Villages in the Republic of Macedonia: Voǵani. Unfortunately, I only see a square in that title, and I can't change that with a template. There must be other languages with similar problems, but for instance Vietnamese (double diacritics, see for instance Trần Đức Lương) works fine in my browser. Markussep ^Talk 18:50, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

The letters can be found if you use Arial Unicode MS, Segui, Microsoft Sans MS and other unicode fonts. Vietnamese uses latin alphabet and thats why those letters can be found anywhere, where as the primary alphabet of Macedonian is Cyrillic, the latin is used for transcription only. The letters ḱ and ǵ are taught in school in Macedonia.--MacedonianBoy (talk) 19:53, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

The MonoBook skin overrules fonts I choose, so no go. Anyway, what's important for Wikipedia is what's the common way in English to transliterate Macedonian names. Could you name some people or places with a ѓ or ќ in their name, and that might be reasonably known in the English speaking world? Markussep ^Talk 20:27, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

One of the most famous with that letter is Srǵan Kerim. --MacedonianBoy (talk) 20:35, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

His name is apparently usually rendered as Srgjan Kerim in English, see for instance this UN press release. Actually, a Google search for the version with ǵ gives only 5 hits. Could it be that ǵ has fallen into disuse? Markussep ^Talk 21:03, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

That's why the article says Srǵan Kerim or Srgjan Kerim. Gj is unofficial digraph where as ǵ and ḱ are taught in the schools in Macedonia for Cyrillic transcription. Reg--MacedonianBoy (talk) 21:18, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

But if ǵ and ḱ aren't used in English transliteration of Macedonian (except in wikipedia clones), I think it's strange to make it our default transliteration, even though it's more correct (I see it's the ISO 9 transliteration). After all, wikipedia should reflect English usage, therefore the transliteration of Russian we use also deviates from ISO 9. We should mention the spelling with ǵ, but not as the title IMO. Markussep ^Talk 07:58, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

So there basically four possible ways to transliterate ѓ: ǵ (ISO 9), gj, dj and đ. I searched Google Books (more reliable for English usage than raw Google) for Sr#an Kerim, using "Macedonia" as a filter for English language. The results: gj 51 hits, dj 17 hits, many duplicate with đ, đ 15 hits, many duplicate with dj, ǵ 0 hits. I think it's safe to say that in English the "ѓ" is usually transliterated as "gj", and I think our article titles should reflect that. Probably the same goes for "ќ" and "kj". I suggest we change the transliteration guideline and the affected article titles accordingly. Markussep ^Talk 08:04, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Changed the preferred transliteration to gj or đ, resp. kj or ć. Markussep ^Talk 20:18, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

But why? Because it is more common it does not mean it is more correct? MacedonianBoy was correct when stating that we are not learning gj and kj at school... --Kirev (talk) 07:45, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Mark as guideline or merge?

Is this page active? Is there any reason why it shouldn't be marked as a guideline like the other naming conventions pages? Or perhaps it could be merged with WP:Romanization of Russian?--Kotniski (talk) 12:35, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

It is actively used AFAIK, and I agree it's more than what the intro suggests: not only a documentation of usage, but really a guideline of how names are transliterated in Wikipedia. WP:Romanization of Russian is a sub-guideline, the rules given there certainly don't apply for e.g. Serbian. Markussep ^Talk 07:42, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

So the two pages could be merged, as long as the section on Russian remained only a section (separate from the sections on Serbian etc.)? (I'll mention this at the other page too, see what people there think.)--Kotniski (talk) 11:20, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

The intent of this page was to serve as a place to document existing romanization practices for languages using the Cyrillic alphabet with a hope to eventually create one guideline. This never went far enough, so now the page serves both as a reference to the guidelines located elsewhere (such as WP:RUS) or as a genuine guideline (for Belarusian, if I am not mistaken). I'd be in favor of turning this page into a list of pointers to applicable guidelines for every language that uses Cyrillic.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:27, September 22, 2009 (UTC)

But if it successfully documents current practice, and there are no proposals to change that practice, then surely it ought to be marked as a guideline, right? Or is there some controversy about it?--Kotniski (talk) 15:04, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

I'd say there's little debate about most languages. Macedonian needs attention, because there are several possible systems. Looking at Macedonia-related articles, I see mostly the Serbian/Croatian type transliteration, in which e.g. Љупчо Јордановски becomes Ljupčo Jordanovski. There's debate (see above) about how to transliterate ѓ and ќ. And I haven't seen any standard transliterations for Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Tajik, Chuvash, Bashkir etc. yet. Markussep ^Talk 15:53, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

I am not aware of any current controversy, but I'd be hesitant to mark this as a "guideline" without at least checking back with the affected WikiProjects to see if they are even aware of this page. I know that for Russian we always follow WP:RUS and ignore this page, and for Ukrainian I believe the consensus is to use WP:UKR. As for everything else, I have no clue, sorry.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:32, September 22, 2009 (UTC)

That would seem consistent with what this page says: it basically just refers to WP:RUS and WP:UKR for those two languages.--Kotniski (talk) 16:54, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Russian text: Buggy stress marks

Had user Ëzhiki revert several edits and claim there was an established consensus that Russian text (for example, the Cyrillic text in the lede of the Vladivostok article) should include buggy stress marks. I cannot find this consensus on any of the Cyrillic or MOS pages, but thought I should note my opposition to it here. If there's another, better, locale, kindly copy my remarks there and place a link here.

The foreign text is intended to show the spelling in the native language. The Russian vowels are spelled unaccented. The marks are intended as a pronunciation guide to stress. Pronunciation on the English wiki is handled by IPA (Sometimes an American might use a substitute system since IPA is uncommon there, but Cyrillic text isn't really a valid alternative.)

So there's no legitimate reason to include the stress marks.

However, it seems the Russian wiki prefers to note stress marks on the first appearance of placenames in its articles. If this Russian convention is brought over from habit, it's important that the pages either

use a plaintext marker for stress instead of the buggy script currently employed

or

similar to pages with Chinese script, have large displays on every page where the text produces these errors linking to enabling support.

I understand this will vary from system to system, browser to browser, but the aim should be compatibility with the widest range of English-language browsers, computers, and scripts and easy-to-find support for those whose systems need adjustment. Currently, the Russian text for Vladivostok is Владивосток but the page displays only к​ with no sign there is anything else to it or that the Russian characters used require any more support than a Cyrillic character set. In deference to Ëzhiki, I'll leave it like that, but it really shouldn't be acceptable. -LlywelynII (talk) 17:13, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

I'll leave this to more knowledgeable people to answer, but would still like to point out the following:

1. It is quite [common] to indicate stress in Russian words in dictionaries and encyclopedias, and Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. The practice was adopted not "out of habit", but quite consciously and involved discussions.
2. The stress mark is not produced by some "buggy script" but is a valid Unicode symbol (code 769) devised specifically for this purpose.
3. Using a "plain text marker" is a wrong approach from the point of view of accessibility (and yes, I see the irony with this argument).
4. I am unable to replicate the problem Ll[y]welyn is having on any of the computing platforms I have access to, so I strongly suspect the bugs are on his side.
5. Per previous consensus, there is no problem with removing the stress marks from pages where an IPA transcription is given, which is why I did not reinstate it on pages like Khabarovsk.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 27, 2010; 18:11 (UTC)

Regarding (1) marking stress is non-standard orthography; it is standard in Russian encyclopedia headings; therefore it is being included here out of habit, as it is non-standard to mark stress in English encyclopedia headings.

Regarding (3) it's always unpleasant to say this, but I do fail to see the irony. WP:Access doesn't support your point but refutes it, as does the pointed lack of (ok, admittedly, "potentially") buggy stress marks in the Russian text provided at WP:Lead, linked as part of that page. Of the 3 mentions of unicode on WP:Access, all three are attempting to format the page to avoid potential problems with unicode characters. Nowhere does it support unicode in preference to plaintext.

The bug, such as it is, is certainly on my side. The problem is that I have newish American hardware and software and the page should be but is not displaying correctly. When it does fail to display correctly, the page does not produce unicode boxes or gibberish which might alert me to a problem, but instead simply blanks text. The pages themselves fail to note their use of non-standard unicode or link to enabling support.

Again, I fail entirely to see the purpose behind retaining extraneous dictionary information because of a habit non-standard for English usage. Lon'don, Par'is, and Wa'shington do not mark their stresses as part of their encyclopedia entry; that information is entirely left to wiktionary or the IPA pronunciation guide. I understand stress can be irregular in Russian and marking it may be helpful to English students of Russian. To me, that seems too small a subset of Wikipedia users to justify a non-standard and (potentially) buggy method.

But regardless, the approach here should not be "Russian users already have this support and everyone else will get it in the next 5 to 10 years, so f*** 'em. The problem is on their end." It should be to make the text clear to everyone (via IPA or plaintext) or to display potential problems and the way to fix them (again, cf. the approach to Chinese characters, which are also "valid unicode.") -LlywelynII (talk) 01:49, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Personally I prefer to remove the stress signs altogether, and adding IPA transcriptions when necessary, because I believe that Russian spelling should show nothing but how the word is spelled in Russian, and its pronunciation should be shown in transcriptions.

The main problem with the stress marks is not the buggy browsers, but the fact that non-Russian speakers, who don't know what the stress marks stand for anyway, blindly copy them, and later I see such accented spellings in aboslutely inapropriate occurances, even in anime. And it's difficult to convince people that the use wrong Cyrillic spelling — they say "that's how it was in Wikipedia, therefore it's correct". Hellerick (talk) 02:49, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

I think this issue is best to be discussed in WP:Village pump (technical). Actually I don't see any problem with the stress markon my end. This should be welcomed becuase one stress mark can definitely help the reader to interpret the pronunciation presicely. As long as this is not executed on Latin alphabet, I don't really see any disadvantage here. (Previously the stress mark would hinder the Google search result, but now it knows to ignore it.) -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 03:13, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Just for the record, I agree with Hellerick above and fully support the (mass) removal of the stress marks if (but only if) this removal is accompanied by the addition of the proper IPA transcription. If I were comfortable enough with the IPA for Russian, I'd be doing it every time I needed to edit a page containing stressed Russian words.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 28, 2010; 13:58 (UTC)

Example convention

Please see the Slavic and East European Journal's Style Sheet for Authors, sections about transliteration, translation and names. Notably:

Whenever possible, please use transliteration instead of Cyrillic, since this broadens the potential readership of the journal and is less expensive to set. However, for poetry, long quotations, and especially when a point can be better made by reference to the Cyrillic, Cyrillic may certainly be used.

—Michael Z. 2006-02-07 05:15 Z

Link moved to http://www.aatseel.org/publications/see_journal/contributor_info/  —Michael Z. 2011-06-18 00:15 z

Doesn't Unicode obsolete the preference for transliteration over Cyrillic? AFAIK, Wikipedia supports the Cyrillic sections of Unicode quite adequately, and since when is typesetting an issue here? Also wouldn't someone with adequate ability to make sense of a transliterated title be able to understand it in Cyrillic too? Granted, there are Croats and Serbs, Romanians and Moldovians, but their alphabet problems aren't necessarily ours.

Titles can be cited in the original writing system, in transliteration and in translation, but by the time you have two of the above it ought to be enough. Why not cover the extremes: original and translation, letting the middle choose one or the other? Here's some evidence that the original writing system even works better for those who haven't learned a language yet: [2] This might not hold for Chinese, Japanese and Korean, but they aren't in play here.LADave (talk) 02:20, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

I should have mentioned that I'm mainly concerned with bibliographic references here, not article text. Writing a title in Cyrillic, then in transliteration, then a third time in translation equals citation bloat IMHO. However personal names I think should be given in Cyrillic and then in transliteration. I'm not one to say Иванович should be translated into Johnson!

So here's an example:

Волков, Александр Мелентьевич (Volkov, Alexander M.) (1939). Волшебник Изумрудного Города (in Russian). Moscow: Детская литература (Childrens Literature). {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

I'm avoiding literal transliteration to some extent. Александр=>Alexander. Patronymics get abbreviated. If you understand patronymics, you probably know the actual language too! Горкий=>Gorky, Белинский=>Belinsky. I also gave the widely known English title instead of a literal translation; likewise На Дне=>"The Lower Depths" instead of "On the bottom".

Comments? LADave (talk) 23:06, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Doesn't Unicode obsolete the preference for transliteration over Cyrillic — Well, not Unicode, but rather Google and numerous online services.

Transliterations were necessary because they helped to seek for a book in a traditional library. But in the contemporary digital world it's easier to seek for a book when you have its original title.

And yet it's desirable to provide the translation of the title, so that the readers would have an idea whether they need this book.

So, I agree that the format described by LADave seems the best. Hellerick (talk) 23:51, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

It's probably true that you can find more material in Russian online than in a university library even. Samizdat' is very much alive on the Internet! Anyhow it seems traditionial libraries are switching to Unicode catalogs too. It may take them a while to fill in the boxes for Cyrillic etc., but Unicode-aware cataloguing systems seem to have provided the boxes.

Meanwhile the main problem could be libraries using different transliteration schemes. Perhaps your chances of finding a book are better if you take the reference in Cyrillic and figure out how that particular library transliterates before looking something up. (See the link above for evidence of this.) LADave (talk) 00:27, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Today all English libraries use LC. In many cases only LC.

Which library has replaced transliteration with Cyrillic? —Michael Z. 2011-06-18 00:39 z

Unicode doesn't change the game, whether we're talking about bibliographic citations or article titles. Mainly because most readers of English-language Wikipedia can't read Cyrillic letters. They can't distinguish the letters, write them down, retype them, read them aloud, look them up in another source, or search for them.

Also, LC transliteration is used in catalogues in English-language libraries, including authorities like the Library of Congress and British Library and in bibliographies in virtually all English-language references. Unicode and Google translation don't help English-language readers use these titles' and authors' names in any of these contexts. —Michael Z. 2011-06-18 00:39 z

Mzajac asks, Which library has replaced transliteration with Cyrillic? It isn't necessary that ALA-LC be replaced, only that they add Cyrillic to their catalog. Many are doing so. Nevertheless the standing recommendation is to seach in ALA-LC transliteration because use of Cyrillic prospectively doesn't mean it's being done retrospectively to existing catalog records.

However you won't find many transliterated titles in online catalogs in Russia such as Российская государственная библиотека [3] or on the websites where you can download complete text in Cyrillic. Depending on where you live, there can easily be more Russian language material online than in convenient libraries.

If you have Cyrillic but not transliterations, you can paste Cyrillic title into a converter [4] and get the transliteration. Theoretically you can go the other way. In practice this depends on the sources you rely on to adhere strictly to LC guidelines. Especially not dropping diacritics, and as Romanization_of_Russian#ALA-LC notes, these are, often omitted in practice. So then you might lose soft/hard signs or the distinction between и and й. These deficiencies are not easy to spot in words you only know in passing. I suspect even native speakers might not always notice them in uncommon words, but someone on your dissertation committee might!!!

Mzajac notes, most readers of English-language Wikipedia can't read Cyrillic letters. They can't distinguish the letters, write them down, retype them, read them aloud, look them up in another source, or search for them. Then what good does it do to look up a transliterated title, leading to material in Cyrillic? Can they read further on the topic? No! Can they verify that a citation actually supports a particular statement? No way! You can serve these readers by helping them find something in English, a translation, or at the very least give them a translated title. Readers with some ability to read the language are better served with bibliography in the language, avoiding the quicksands of transliteration as much as possible.

Mzajac claims, LC transliteration is used in catalogues in English-language libraries, including authorities like the Library of Congress and British Library. However the British Library didn't start using LC consistently until 1975.

To sum up, of the three possibilities for bibliographic information: Cyrillic, transliteration and translation, transliteration seems the most optional when there are cut-and-paste engines to convert Cyrillic. LADave (talk) 22:20, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

The transliterated titles I have seen in Wikipedia did not use the ALA-LC system. Everyone uses a system of their own, and you can't watch over all the titles to check whether they comply with the ALA-LC system. The only way to avoid this chaod is to use the original spelling.

As for helping non-Russian speakers, that's why we have to provide translations of the titles. How spelling words they don't understand anyway could be useful? And who in the contemporary world has to "distinguish the letters, write them down, retype them, read them aloud"? Copy-pasting the title solves the problem. Hellerick (talk) 01:37, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I'd guess if someone can't distinguish the letters, write them down, and retype them, then the actual source isn't going to do that someone much good either. Anyway, Wikipedia does not require the transliteration of the non-English source titles. The original spelling should be present for obvious reasons, and we ask for a translation so the readers have an idea of what kind of source is being cited (even if they can't read the actual source themselves), but including a transliteration seems to be of little use. If it's included, fine; if not, no big deal.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 20, 2011; 13:24 (UTC)

References in en.Wikipedia should fulfill these requirements:

1. Be readable (by a reader of English)
2. Identify the original source (precisely and unambiguously, for a reader of English)

The Library of Congress transliteration fulfills both. Cyrillic text fails to satisfy the first criterion, translation the second. Although either or both could serve as a useful supplement for some readers of en.Wikipedia, I put forward that transliteration is the most important. —Michael Z. 2011-06-21 04:41 z

You might want to consider putting it forward on some other page then :) As long as WP:NONENG is mum on the subject of transliteration, a discussion on this page is going to be pretty much moot. I can't say I observed many (any?) citations where all three parts (original, transliteration, and translation) had been present, which probably means that's not the usual practice. In fact, I was getting crap from people complaining that including the original and the translation is too much, never mind the translit! (The question on whether it is the original that's redundant or the translation usually remained open, though).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 21, 2011; 13:17 (UTC)

Let's put ALA-LC to the test by applying Martin Podolak's transliteration engine[5] in Cyrillic=>ALA-LC mode to problematic letters. й => ĭ. So far so good. Then я=>i͡a and ю => i͡u. Podolok's result window showed the correct "umbrella" diacritic, but mystery boxes appear when I paste his results into Wikipedia, which is where the incompatibility lies. Not very readable nor does it precisely identify a source -- without a leap of imagination. I have no idea which font fixes the problem and I'd venture that most readers are equally at a loss.

We should not overlook non-Slavic languages throughout the ex-USSR. They were given extensions to Cyrillic which LC's transliteration experts have duly addressed.[6] After LC's documentation runs on some 17 pages, I wonder if Unicode includes all or even most of their special characters? In any event LC seems to "reinvent the wheel" in ultra-esoteric form for a few scholars throughout the English-speaking world, where the underlying extensions to Cyrillic would be used by populations that are larger by at least three orders of magnitude. At what point does LC's overextended scheme collapse?LADave (talk) 00:13, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Proposed change for Macedonian

One editor, AL3X TH3 GR8 (talk · contribs) has proposed (and begun to implement unilaterally) a change to our treatment of Macedonian personal and place names, in accordance with a new standard system of transliteration that the Macedonian state has apparently been applying since 2008 for names in official travel documents. Basically, it's a system that does away with the traditional diacritics (ž, š, č, dž) in favour of English-style digraphs (zh, sh, ch, dzh). The law can apparently be found here, and it refers to a standard defined in an ICAO document here. It is not quite clear at the moment whether the Macedonian state intends to make this system official for all other purposes too, similar to what Bulgaria did, and to what extent the old legislation which prescribed an official transliteration system along the lines of the scientific transliteration of Cyrillic will be repealed.

For now, I've asked the editor to wait for more discussion. If we were to implement this, it would mean:

pros

1. A somewhat more "English-reader-friendly" system
2. A system more compatible with the one currently used for Bulgarian

cons

1. A departure from the traditional scientific transliteration common to most Slavic languages
2. A departure from the system currently used for Serbian

The change would have a positive effect on a few Wikipedia-internal naming disputes between Macedonian and Bulgarian editors (who have sometimes made the "š"-versus-"sh" thing a point of symbolic national territory marking, for names that are otherwise identical in both languages, e.g. Goce Delčev vs. Gotse Delchev), and to some extent also for similar Macedonian-Albanian disputes (Šar Mountains vs. Shar Mountains), but note that the Bulgarian and Macedonian systems would still differ on "c" vs "ts" and "j" vs. "y". Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:33, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

At this stage I am yet to be convinced. The law is only in relation to travel documents, presumably to benefit non-Macedonians who may be unfamiliar with š, ž, etc. If this is the rationale behind the introduction of the new law then that is no reason to change a naming convention. Lunch for Two (talk) 14:21, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I guess that's more or less how I see it too, personally. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:04, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I also agree with Lunch for Two. No reason for change.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 20:39, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I believe that the English Wikipedia must implement the new way of naming for several crucial reasons:

1. The government of Macedonia is not using diacritic letters for more than 6 years. You can check this publication from the Ministry of Local Self-Government (Ministry that regulates the municipalities/cities/villages) and you will see that every Macedonian city/village/municipality is written with English-friendly latinic letters that exclude the diacritic letters. [7]

2. The Macedonian Mappers from Google Maps have consensus about naming the cities/villages without diacritic letters because It's clearly easier for English speakers to read and pronounce the names of the cities approximately correct.

3. What's the reason of having an old writing system that apparently nobody use except Wikipedia when the new system is so much better for the Englsih citizens? I mean, the transliteration/romanization of Macedonian is still not very English-friendly because of the letter "j" which may lead to incorrect pronounciation to the city of Skopje (Skop-ye) and other examples. The transliteration of Macedonian language is made for the non-Macedonian citizens because Macedonian citizens don't need latinic transliteration, we use cyrillic alphabet. I'm sure that 99% of the Americans, British, Australians etc. cannot read the letters: š, ž or č.

So, I think that I have very good arguments why the new system should be applied. I hope that you will agree on this. The benefit of this change would suit the English speakers. - Macedonicus (talk) 01:24, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

I would support the proposal, and find valid the arguments advanced by Macedonicus. There might be no consensus for a change at this point, but it’s bound to happen at some point I reckon.

Let me briefly consider the two alleged ‘cons’.

(1) “A departure from the traditional scientific transliteration common to most Slavic languages.”

Well we do not discuss past traditions here but actual transliteration usage. None of the other Slavic languages uses scientific transliteration nowadays. Languages like Croatian, Slovenian, Czech and Polish use Roman script in the first place, not transliteration. Russian, Ukrainian and Bulgarian use Cyrillic alphabet like Macedonian, and their transliteration systems used indeed to be based on scientific transliteration (basically the Croat alphabet) in the past, but no longer. So I cannot see a valid point here in seeking to keep commonality with suspended transliteration practices.

(2) “A departure from the system currently used for Serbian.”

The Serbian language has no transliteration system but a second alphabet instead and, as pointed out by Macedonicus, an alphabet is primarily intended for those who speak the language while a transliteration system is intended for those who don't. So it’s one thing to change your transliteration system and quite another to change your alphabet. Furthermore, the Serbians have a good reason to keep the Croatian alphabet along with their Cyrillic one because of the commonality of their language with Croatian and Bosnian. Apparently the Macedonians are not motivated by such considerations; no reason why they should be, as theirs is a different language.

In any case it’s none of Wikipedia’s business to consider good (“pro”) or bad (“con”) the evolution of Macedonian transliteration practice closer to or shifting away from Serbian or Bulgarian usage. Apcbg (talk) 06:26, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

I have no opinion on the proposal, this is just a comment from a passer by in the street...

Hi Macedonicus, re ISO 9:1968 you said "I'm sure that 99% of the Americans, British, Australians etc. cannot read the letters: š, ž or č." That might have been true in the past, but 100% of Americans, British, Australian can read the letters: š, ž and č, it's just that many will read incorrectly as "s" "z" and "c/k", and only some as "sh" "zh" "tch". But increasing numbers of British can read š and č - the BBC now writes "Janáček" in its music magazine, not "Janacek" and certainly not "Yanachek." But of course that's Czech. The only really difficult letter for English speakers in Gaj's Latin alphabet is the Đ, which like the ł in Lech Wałęsa will be too unfamiliar. Otherwise they can read ISO/R 9:1968.

I just looked to see what does Chicago MOS say for Macedonian names? Answer, nothing apparently http://www.amazon.com/Chicago-Manual-Style-16th-Edition/dp/0226104206#reader_0226104206 In ictu oculi (talk) 09:09, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

ISO 9:1968 uses diacritic letters for every cyrillic equivalent (Bulgarian, Russian, Ukrainian etc.) but the ones who count are BGN/PCGN that use system from 1981 (but in that time Macedonia was in Yugoslavia so the latinic alphabet of the Serbo-croatian was used for the Macedonian too). I sent proposal to the BGN/PCGN institute for updating the system for Romanization of Macedonian and they replied that they should consult some linguists first. Nevermind. Anyway, I wouldn't agree that Americans can pronounce diacritic letters, I speak to many Americans and they have no clue how do we pronounce a city or village. British might be exception because of their richer contact with Balkan people but still. The Czech example is fine, but once again - Czech alphabet is based on the latin script. Macedonian is cyrillic and it cannot be changed, but the latin transliteration CAN be changed based on the best phonetic pronounciation. Because Macedonia has no official law for transliteration we should use the most "official" source for now and that is the transliteration used in the passports (directly from the Government - Ministry of Interior). Diacritic letters for Macedonian names shouldn't and won't remain. Macedonicus (talk) 00:10, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

It's time to implement the diagraphic transliteration to the Macedonian names. The Macedonian names, cities, geographical places etc. are transliterated with diagraphs from the officials. Every English version of the government web sites are no longer using the diacritic letters like: č, š, ž, ḱ, ĝ but ch, sh, zh, kj, gj instead. Therefore I don't see a reason why Wikipedia should go against that. I strongly believe that there is no reason for postponing the obvious thing. The Macedonian ID cards explicitly show the "new" way of transliteration that became a practice since 2008 and since the government does that, every personal disagreement about that is irrelevant. I will start changing the names soon and I expect support from the rest of the team. Thank you. Macedonicus (talk) 13:27, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

RM at Talk:Delčevo and when/how/if to revert Macedonicus' page moves

We have one pdf, the English section of which does use the new romanization, http://www.mls.gov.mk/data/file/PUBLIKIME/ENG/Broshura%20e%20Rajoneve%20te%20planifikuara.pdf but the pdf doesn't tell us anything about why. I don't yet see anything in the above discussion offering proof of a government-wide decision to consistently use the new romanization on road signs, official contexts. The ID card alone is not enough for the reasons already given. Which means "since the government does that, every personal disagreement about that is irrelevant" is not a helpful attitude, neither is "I will start changing the names soon and I expect support from the rest of the team. Thank you" To be honest I think Macedonius should go round and clean up the mess that he has made, as a sign of good faith to the other editors. Then present clearly some actual evidence here. If there was evidence I'd be in favour. Doing the moves first and then presenting evidence isn't the way to do things. Macedonicus, can you please supply some official government evidence that this romanization and only this romanization is used? In ictu oculi (talk) 06:50, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

In ictu oculi, I previously said, there is not "official" document (law) for transliteration of the Macedonian and because of the lack of that official document I presented evidence to show you that the government doesn't use diacritics. You are all negative about the transition to the "Bulgarian alike transliteration" (I wouldn't call it Bulgarian because diagraphic transliteration is common for Russia, Greece, Ukraine and other countries too). Instead, I presented many sites directly from the government that show the usage of diagrahps. Do you think it's okay if the website of the Municipality of Kochani says "Kochani" and wikipedia says Kočani? About the roadsigns, in order to post them here I would have to take pictures of them and that would be difficult because I don't plan to travel soon. PS. It's clearly that I cannot provide an official document because the new transliteration may not be established with a law or special document but it de facto exists and it is used by the government. In addition to that, here is the site of the government agency for cadastre that shows the transliteration Katastar.gov.mk. I do have more arguments for supporting this transition than you have for denying it. In fact, who agreed on adding diacritic naming in first place where such official document for transliteration (that you keep asking from me to provide) from the government does not exist? Macedonicus (talk) 14:09, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Actually the opposite is true. Personally I am not at all opposed to the new system, if there is one, I am well aware that Macedonian is in the Bulgarian language family and like Future Perfect can see considerable advantage of a romanization of Macedonian system that is consistent with romanization of Bulgarian. But the point is, here at wp all we have to go on in terms of WP:RS are the many 100s of documents, books using the old system. See WP:CRYSTALBALL. 1000s of articles cannot all be changed simply because you give us your word and have provided a road sign to Rečica (in Croatia?) and a pdf which doesn't clearly state its origin or authority. It is not possible that there could be an official change without an official document (law) being made. Please find a source, or you will have to revert the moves you made. In ictu oculi (talk) 03:39, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Actually Rechica is a village in the Municipality of Kumanovo. I would like to say again, the documents I provided are published by the government (not some third party site), websites with .gov.mk domain are only reserved to government institutions so their publications are reliable. So far (I think) we can agree on one thing: Diacritics are completely out of use in Macedonia (the new road sign, the transliteration with the ID Cards, Driver License, Passport, the Statistics department of Macedonia, the Cadastre Agency of Macedonia, English version of the governmental websites etc.) The only thing we need is an official document from the government. I will look forward to search for such and if it doesn't exist i'll try to suggest something as alternative. Reverting the pages is out of question. Thanks Macedonicus (talk) 06:01, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

I would not support a reversal to the old transliteration system. The question, how has the new system come into being, is secondary. What matters is that there is a new practice of transliteration with a new system officially used by government and local authorities alike. Whether that is the result of one single decision or a series of particular decisions, and whether these are publicly available and quotable is quite irrelevant I reckon. The new practice is here and we better accept that. Apcbg (talk) 12:17, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Macedonicus, reverting the pages is not out of the question. The RM you have on some of the pages looks (rightly or wrongly) certain to fail, mainly because you have not provided any primary evidence of an official name change. If you had done so there are some editors like myself who would have supported the RM, there are also some, citing Lonely Planet, who would not. But as it is, no one can support, and this is entirely due to you having not provided any primary evidence of an official name change. Please do so while the RM is still open. You only have 2 days left I think? If that fails then certainly the moves you have already made will be reverted. You may wish to ask Fut Perfect about that. In ictu oculi (talk) 01:52, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Apcbg, fine, no problem, so someone please go to the nearest library (if by any chance someone is editing from Macedonia) and ask the librarian to provide a copy of any government guidance / information about this new romanization system.

i. What is it called?

ii. When did it start, who first published it?

iii. when was it adopted by any body?

Information like that. Cheers In ictu oculi (talk) 01:52, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

That decision (or decisions) may or may not have been publicised. However, I suppose that there would be a relevant instruction at the offices (or police stations) issuing ID cards and passports, possibly part of the forms filed when applying for such documents. Perhaps Macedonicus could scan and upload here a copy, which would do I reckon. Best, Apcbg (talk) 08:13, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Even if such a decision exists, the issue is whether and how fast common English usage will pick up the practice. We follow educated use in reliable English sources. If and when English use will widely begin to follow such a new norm, we will follow suit. Not before that. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:23, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Regarding the mass practice of English usage, this is what my Google yields:

Delchevo Macedonia -Delčevo -Delcevo -Делчево -Wikipedia (97100 hits)

Delčevo Macedonia -Delchevo -Delcevo -Wikipedia (66000 hits)

I wouldn't know about 'educated use', but when counting it please make sure your sources are not dated before the new system, say not before 2004. (According to this source, the new transliteration standard was introduced in 2004 by an amendment to Passports Law.) Here is the Law. Its Article 28 stipulates that Romanization should be done according to the ICAO DOC 9303 standard. QED Apcbg (talk) 18:05, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

mk:Транслитерација на македонското писмо has a table for:

• Училишно (Ж becomes Ž) - [2][3][4] footnotes [1] Училишна книга од прво одделение, [2] Victor Friedman, "Macedonian", in: B. Comrie (ed.), The Slavonic Languages, [3] Читаме и пишуваме латиница, училишна Книга
• ISO9 (Ж becomes Ž) - [4] Macedonian Latin alphabet, Pravopis na makedonskiot literaturen jazik, B. Vidoeski, T. Dimitrovski, K. Koneski, K. Tošev, R. Ugrinova Skalovska- Prosvetno delo Skopje, 1970, p.99
• Документација (Ж becomes Zh)- [5] Се користи за документи во меѓународна употреба

From the sources given it appears that Училишно/ISO9 (Ж becomes Ž) is still in majority use according to the editors on mk.wp. while Документација (Ж becomes Zh) is only used for e.g. passports. In ictu oculi (talk) 01:24, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a source, and from sources published in 1970 (Vidoeski et al.) and 1993 (Friedman, second edition 2003) it could hardly 'appear' what "is still in majority use" in 2012. Apcbg (talk) 06:00, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Apcbg, Friedman's 2003 book is still giving the Uchilishno, school, system is a source. With respect you are not a source. That's the point. What about this? In ictu oculi (talk) 09:29, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Please note that the quoted ICAO guidelines remove all diacritics in order to make passports machine readable. This includes French, German, Italian, Czech etc. etc. diacritics (á, ü, ò, ř). Do we have any evidence that this system is widely used other than in passports? Markussep ^Talk 08:07, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

2003 is still before 2004. While French, German, Italian and Czech use Roman script and the ICAO merely removes diacritics, for landuages that use Cyrillic script it gives transliteration, which is something different. The various fields of application of the 2004 Romanization system for Macedonian are discussed above with sources etc. Apcbg (talk) 16:18, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

ID cards, driving license, official web sites of the Municipalities (Cities), Macedonian's Government publications in English (1, 2, 3) - page 54 GIS, partially new road signs, new vehicle license code for Shtip (former code ŠT, new code ST which shows that diacritics are out of usage) and the English version of the official website of the City of Skopje where we can see information about the population in the municipalities:

NUMBER OF INHABITANTS (Census 2002)

   Skopje - 506 926
   Aerodrom - 72 009
   Butel - 36 154
   Gazi Baba - 72 617
   Gjorche Petrov - 41 634
   Karposh - 59 666
   Kisela Voda - 57 236
   Saraj - 35 408
   Centar - 45 412
   Chair - 64 773
   Shuto Orizari - 22 017

Macedonicus (talk) 00:30, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Romanization of Tuvan

Please join a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Central_Asia/Tuva_task_force#Transliteration_of_Tuvan_Language. Thanks. --Stacey Doljack Borsody (talk) 22:46, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Conventional naming examples

It has been proposed that the notes about "conventional names" at Wikipedia:Romanization of Russian should be moved up to this guideline, to serve as an example for all the affected languages. Please not that this is not a change to the convention, merely the addition of some cases which illustrate the principle.

If there are no objections, I'll move that section into this guideline. We could make the examples a little more international—proposals welcome. —Michael Z. 2006-06-08 21:25 Z

• Michael, look at the edit. JLincoln (talk) 14:54, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Conventional names

Conventional? O'k, where are these conventions fixed? For example, in the text you're saying that [gorbachov] must be "Gorbachev" — so that English speakers won't have difficulties, aren't you? Excuse me, what difficulties, when the name is "Горбачёв" – the last syllable is stressed – which gives us non-alternative pronunciation with the last, stressed, vowel being [o]! When Americans are evidently trying to propagate the language they use and which is good, why don't you let others to preserve their languages from decay? While Russians often even don't know the proper spelling and pronunciation of a word containing "ё", there are people – either linguists or not – trying to reconstruct, rescue a lot of words in the Russian language, the cause of the decay is certain ignorance and inaccuracy of multitudes of us, you English-speakers seemingly spit at our almost hopeless toil. JLincoln (talk) 15:14, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

This page is a guideline and must be compliant with (higher-level) policies. The applicable policy dealing with common (conventional) names is WP:UCN, which, I should note, has been adopted with the needs of readers in mind. Wikipedia merely follows conventional usage; it is not a tool to promote "proper" or "correct" spelling. At any rate, if you disagree, I suggest you post your grievance on WT:AT. Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 3, 2012; 15:27 (UTC)

Thank you for the answer. Yet I'm afraid those links given are about titles, aren't they? Titles – of articles? JLincoln (talk) 15:41, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, they are about (article) titles, but it is the article titles which are used to link to the articles, and overall approach to "common usage" is pretty much the same.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 3, 2012; 16:05 (UTC)

:D Thus I had checked for the redirecting page Gorbachov:P JLincoln (talk) 15:47, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

• Thereby, I mean, there's no evident convention on the issue. There was no harm. No donts, no cons, weren't they? Only the good to enlighten English speakers about the exact name, mm? JLincoln (talk) 15:58, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Redirects aren't really covered by this guideline and can be created for pretty much any plausible reason. There are, for example, redirects which are basically common misspellings of a term; their existence does not validate the misspelling, but saves those readers who mistyped a term (or simply are horrible spellers) the hassle of figuring out why they can't find what they are looking for. All in all, the only unwelcome redirects are those which are misleading (intentionally or not) or make absolutely no sense (redirecting something like "thntpwwoethoechgch" or "reinforced concrete building" to "Mikhail Gorbachev" would be an example of that:)).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 6, 2012; 15:07 (UTC)

Still — he is Gorbachov – I insist8) JLincoln (talk) 10:49, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Not in English he isn't.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 8, 2012; 12:00 (UTC)

But it's not an English name. And he is still alive - to compare with ancient Romans or so. Josh, linguist (talk) 10:46, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Alive or dead really doesn't matter, nor does the language of the origin. What matters is that the variant used the most in the English-language reliable sources is "Gorbachev". Even if this variant were completely wrong and mangled from the native Russian speaker's view (which it isn't), we'd still be using it. As far as human names go, the "conventional names" paradigm in Wikipedia is guided by the actual real-world usage first and by everything else (including linguistic purism) second.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 12, 2012; 12:12 (UTC)

* Josh, linguist (talk) 13:07, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

That's hard to argue with :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 13, 2012; 13:29 (UTC)

Kazakh

Where is it? Aren't there conventions vor the Kazakh alphabet?--31.17.92.168 (talk) 21:07, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

There isn't an established convention for Kazakh, unfortunately. In practice, however, BGN/PCGN romanization of Kazakh seems to be the system most commonly used on Wikipedia. I've added a section to this page accordingly.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 14, 2012; 21:28 (UTC)

Added Putin lead as model

Per WT:RUSSIA#Using accent marks to indicate stress. In ictu oculi (talk) 11:30, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Proposing an update for Macedonian

I propose updating the Macedonian Romanization convention to the one used by the Government of Macedonia in the official documents (ID cards, passports, driver license, road signs etc). The system adopted for digraph transliteration is ICAO Doc 9303 which uses gj for ѓ, zh for ж, kj for ќ, c for ц, ch for ч, dj for џ and sh for ш. The system is widely used in the Cadastre of Macedonia, the new road signs etc. The National Register of Municipalities and settlements uses the same system with one difference, they use "ts" for ц when ц is found after the first place and "c" for ц when ц is found on the first place (eg. Centar; Strumitsa). The Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts also stopped using diacritic romanization and that can be seen in the English version of their web-site. They have specialized convention for their own purposes. Since there are three different variants of the diagraph transliteration, I suggest using the official one - ICAO Doc 9303 but if there are other valid arguments we could consider applying the one used in the National register of Municipalities and settlements. Macedonicus (talk) 19:44, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:Romanization of Macedonian Androoox (talk) 10:05, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
• For the record: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Cyrillic)/Archive 2#Proposed change for Macedonian. Androoox (talk) 20:58, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Nj digraph again

I have added comment on non-use of nj digraph here. See current Talk:Ulcinj and previous RMs. In ictu oculi (talk) 23:04, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Scientific transliteration

New article: Scientific transliteration. —Michael Z. 2006-02-07 06:01 Z I do support scientific trl, because it is accurate. Manaviko (talk) 19:32, 8 November 2015 (UTC)