Subject: RECORD: Another round on translating names

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2000 18:21:56 EDT

Or transliterating them at least.
The first rule, when possible, is to get the person involved to state a 
preference. A Mainer with my name might prefer <djon> (roughly, for him, 
jawn) to my <djan>, a
Southren Kim might prefer <ki,ym> to <kim> or <kem>, several British Roberts 
have
opted for <rabyt> or <robyt> over <rabrt> or <rabyrt>, the Midwestern US 
norms. 
Which brings up a second point, the syllabic consonants vs. /yC/. I'm 
sure there
are rules for these in our various dialects of English or whatever, but the 
Lojban
distinction is not very clear -- nor is how to apply it. I tend to use the 
syllabic consonant wherever possible: my last name is <klifrd>. Others 
prefer /yC/ virtually everywhere, using syllabic C only when it is the whole 
syllable. A third possibility is to use /yC/ only when it receives some 
stress, <XYRbrt>, "Herbert" -- a position I find attractive (stress shown 
because /y/ usually does not get it). Finally, most of us tend to think we 
can detect a difference between th two and write whatever we think we hear -- 
not always consistently.
The forbidden /la/ in names can either be shifted to another vowel, if 
that is
comfortable, or to /ly/ or hidden behind a dummy consonant, if one is 
acceptable (/x/ being about minimal, but hard for most of us to say before 
/l/). The /y/ solution seems the most common, opening more cases of stressed 
/y/.
Chinese names seem to cause more trouble than most, probably reflecting 
the
vagaries of the different romanizations floating around. The decision for 
names -- when the benamed is not available to have a say -- seems to be to 
follow the PRC pinyin system, with the following notes (py:lb) zh:(d)j, 
j:(d)j, q:(t)c, ch:(t)c, h:x, x:c, ng:n, sh:c, c:ts, z:dz, y:i. An i after a 
fricative or affricate or c or s tends to disappear, but no one seems to have 
a definitive answer about the choice between affricates and fricatives, as 
marked by the parentheses. The vowels are generally less reliable, but will 
do when a native speaker is not around.