Why no Cyrillic?

Matthew Walker mpwalker at WISC.EDU
Thu Feb 5 18:44:00 UTC 2009


Incidentally, a rather amusing instance of this problem with French 
names and transliteration can be found in the opening pages of Vladimir 
Nabokov's 1944 monograph on Gogol, if anyone is interested.

Best,

Matt Walker

Kim Braithwaite wrote:
> Mr Goldberg raises an excellent point. The original spellings of 
> foreign names rendered phonetically (NOT transliterated) in Russian 
> articles can be terrifically hard to track down. This is especially 
> common in the case of French names. No problem if the name is included 
> in the References. If not, the translator, based on his/her knowledge 
> of French (for example), can only make an educated guess of possible 
> variants and google them until a match is found. It doesn't always work.
>
> The advantage of Roman is that it is not only used by so many 
> languages, each with its own spelling conventions, but it also serves 
> as a virtually universal tool of transliteration.
>
> Mr Kim Braithwaite, Translator
> "Good is better than evil, because it's nicer" - Mammy Yokum (Al Capp)
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stuart Goldberg" 
> <stuart.goldberg at MODLANGS.GATECH.EDU>
> To: <SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu>
> Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2009 9:12 AM
> Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Why no Cyrillic?
>
>
>> Russian doesn't transliterate -- Цхарлес (Сharles)?, and there is no 
>> way to accurately back-translate from a transcription of the original 
>> sound, so Cyrillic couldn't possibly be used to convey Latin 
>> bibliographic information in Russian publications.
>> In published English materials, it is a matter of aesthetics and 
>> tradition.  Block text in transliteration looks awful, but I 
>> personally prefer the look of transliteration to Cyrillic when it 
>> comes mid-paragraph.   Bibliographic entries could be in Cyrillic, 
>> but then would we use our own Western bibliographic format and 
>> punctuation standards?
>>
>> И простите, что ответил на Ваш пост по-английски. Так даже и не 
>> подумал. Тоже видно дань традиции, что американцы, пользующиеся этим 
>> форумом, пишут по-английски.
>>
>>
>> Valery Belyanin wrote:
>>> Небольшой оффтоп :-)
>>> я нахожу немного странным (если не сказать дискриминационным), что в 
>>> работах
>>> англоязычных русские публикации описываются транслитом, Вот пример из
>>> соседней ветки:
>>> 2.      Efimova, N.: Vetkhii Zavet v kontekste Bozh'ego mira geroev 
>>> romana
>>> Dostoevskogo "Brat'ia Karamazovy".
>>> а в русских публикациях вся библиография иностранная идет в латинице 
>>> или
>>> соответствующих шрифтах.
>>> В.Белянин
>>>
>>
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