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Are there any guidelines regarding the translation of given names? I found some sentences where e.g. Luke in English was translated to Luc in French. It seemed a bit odd to me.
I don't think so. Mary is translated into Maria in German.
The only negative side I can see is that, when speaking, I wouldn't normally translate given names depending on the language I'm speaking. So, for instance, I wouldn't refer to you as Richard in English. And to use your example, the one German Maria I know still goes by "Maria" in English-speaking countries.
The positive sides are that it's a good way of introducing variety in the sentences, and of teaching names in other languages. I can also see names being translated in the context of example sentences given in language textbooks, and I have also read some translations of novels which also translated names.
> I wouldn't normally translate given names depending on the language I'm speaking.
Yes, agreed. I just mentioned what people who work on the German corpus do.
Ah I see, then it was probably one of their sentences which I saw. Is the idea that the corpus maintainer for a given language sets the guidelines for that language?
Actually not. There are debates to define which guidilenes we're going to follow like
- adding space for question and exclamation marks in French
- which "symbols" we're going to use to create dialogue
>> https://en.wiki.tatoeba.org/articles/show/main
How to Write Dialogues
>> https://en.wiki.tatoeba.org/art...riting-dialogs
I sometimes use the foreign names as is, and sometimes translate them - Tom as Tomi or Tommi, usually.
One can think of in terms of translating the original sentence, in which case the name usually would not be translated (though it might be modified a bit to make it pronouncable in the new language; when speaking of Bjørn in Finnish, we often say Bjørni, which is much easier to say).
Or one can think in terms of what would be the equivalent sentence in the other language. In this case, using a native name is better, if the original name is native to the sentence that one is translating.
Native names are also much easier to pronounce, should someone want to add audio.
I believe the thing to do here is to use either the names as is, or to replace them with a native name, and in any case not worry about it. The contributions will be useful to Tatoeba in both cases.