CZ:Proposals/Romanization

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Driver: John Stephenson Template:TOC-right

Complete explanation

Create a page called CZ:Romanization to deal with issues of how to romanize foreign words, place names and so on that are normally written in other scripts. Subpages for individual languages would be created, e.g. CZ:Romanization/Japanese. Initially, these pages would be forums for discussion on what romanization systems to adopt and precisely how to render (for example) individual vowels and consonants; subsequently, following a vote if no obvious consensus had been reached, these decisions would become CZ policy.

Reasoning

There is typically no one, simple way to render the words of another language into English; one system, and rules within that system, must be selected to avoid confusion. To take just one example, the Japanese word for a small police station could be written kouban, kōban, kooban or koban - four versions in the same 'Hepburn' romanization system. With pages imported from Wikipedia, their system has been introduced to CZ without discussion; and for original content, an author may well choose another system, leading to confusion as to whether two alternate spellings represent the same word or not.

Discussion would aim at striking a balance at what is culturally and linguistically accurate versus what is easiest for a reader to understand, where said reader is not a user of the language in question. Some romanization systems favour native speakers' understanding of the distinct sounds of their language, while others distort the rendering of the 'phonemes' to show equivalences with the sounds of English. For example, one form of Japanese romanization includes chi because the sound is similar, but not the same as English ch sound; however, to native speakers, the sound is more like ti, and is written as such in another system. Whether to render words strictly accurately or allow potentially misleading spellings if these make it easier for English users is a minefield that needs to be sorted out early.

Other issues might involve the practicalities or reading and contributing to CZ articles: readers might not know what diacritics such as the macron over an ō is supposed to indicate, for example, and complex symbols are often hard for writers to find.

In some cases, there might also be political implications to selecting one form of romanization over another - we need a forum where these issues can be anticipated.

Implementation

1. Create CZ:Romanization with a notice describing the purpose of the page and inviting people to add languages as subpages.
2. Create CZ:Romanization/Japanese as an example: several sections dealing with what romanization system to adopt and the specific ways of rendering certain forms within that system. Use 'for' and 'against' subsections in these to point out benefits and problems.
3. Use CZ:Romanization/Japanese to start the CZ:Romanization list.
4. Link to CZ:Romanization appropriately, e.g. at CZ:Article Mechanics.
5. Invite contributions from interested parties via mailing lists, CZ:International, and the forums.
6. Where an obvious consensus has been reached, or a majority agreement via a vote, the decision to use one set of conventions would be formally adopted, and/or another proposal would have to be drafted, this time naming the specific system to be used. [I don't know which is necessary - JS]

Discussion

The above proposal has been written by me as a solo effort, following Larry's suggestion that I turn this into a proposal. Please feel free to have your say - especially, I would like feedback on implementation and any other reasons why romanization policy is/is not important at this time. John Stephenson 03:07, 4 March 2008 (CST)

Not sure if this is the right place (if not, simply move it). It seems to me that IPA with the addition of the text in its original language should suffice. I admit that the IPA standard is only readable to experts (and is mostly represented with errors, in most places), but if we want to accurately represent the way a word is pronounced we will find ourselves soon enough going back to it. Ori Redler 10:02, 4 March 2008 (CST)

The IPA is, I think, a separate issue. I certainly agree that it needs to be used, but as it requires phonetics knowledge to understand it, it's not the same thing as romanization: for example, we can use the IPA to show the pronunciation of English words as well. John Stephenson 19:56, 4 March 2008 (CST)

I have to say that I agree with John on this issue. The IPA would be a good system if we were looking to represent the phonology of a given non-English word (or words within English, natch), but the issue is finding a system of romanization for each language that allows readers to transition relatively painlessly from other print media to CZ. Whether or not romanization as a general practice has had its day is another question, but one on which innovation will lose more users than it gains.

A further argument for romanization (or at least the adherence to normal practices of romanization) as against IPA transcription is the transliteration of ancient and archaic languages. A coherent scheme of romanization gives readers a word they can hang their hat on, but the rendering of dead language into phonetic/phonological terms leads too far afield.

It might be helpful if we could develop a subpage for help with romanized terminology (and maybe other related stuff too). My impression is that much of the scholarship on Buddhism (e.g.) is so balkanized in terms of romanization that it would be helpful if we provided a expert-endorsed guide to the terminology. Thanks, Brian P. Long 21:14, 4 March 2008 (CST)

I definitely agree that we should set standards, and I have a few opinions about some of them, though the only one I'd be able to usefully contribute to would be Modern Greek. I like the format proposed by Mr. Stephenson. Anthony Argyriou 15:43, 4 March 2008 (CST)

Thanks, Anthony. The idea is we would eventually have an extensive list of languages linking to pages that anyone could contribute to, so you could have your say at CZ:Romanization/Greek. John Stephenson 19:56, 4 March 2008 (CST)

Perhaps I'm missing something here. I can see three possible objectives for Romanization:

1. Englishization: to provide speakers of English with something to hang their hat on (as Brian P. Long puts it). That creates a problem, as English is ill fitted to many of the tasks at hand. You'll be hard pressed to find a way to Englishize the German ü or the French oe, let alone an Arabic R' (a mixture of R, Deep throated A, but not quite, and an airy G).
2. Real Romanization: which solves some problems (you can use ü or ö or é) but creates a new set of problems -- how is "ch" supposed to be read. Speakers of French and German will read this differently.
3. Semi-Romanization: i.e., giving most of the names in the most common languages without romanization (i.e., Müller or Reich or Armand will be written without Romanization), but with other languages there will be Romanization...

But that brings us back to where we've started -- how do you help pronouncing stuff that English is not built to help pronounce? For example, let's take a simple name like "Rita" in Brazilian Portuguese. The R is pronounced something in-between a "Sh" and a soft "kh" -- We can use "R'" or "Rr" or "Rkh" to denote this, but this doesn't help much because there are numerous other ways to pronounce R -- so we're forced to either create a complex system of Romanization (thus losing the hat hanger) or simply avoid this by Romanizing "Rita" as "Rita" -- just like in English, thus leading people to believe that Rita should be pronounced Rid-ah. Ori Redler 11:46, 5 March 2008 (CST)

I'm sympathetic to your concerns, Ori, and with your concern for giving people help with pronunciation. I am not trying to say that we should ignore the pronunciation of different terms-- indeed, if CZ is ultimately aspiring to be a vital resource for people living and working all over the world, help with pronunciation could be really useful (if someone was trying to discuss Capoeira with a Brazilian, for example, and trying to keep a handle on the Brazilian's pronunciation). While not perfect, IPA is the best thing out there for this, and I am in no way trying to discourage the use of IPA in Citizendium articles. I do believe, however, that we need to exercise care in romanizing other scripts, and I think this was the purpose of John's original proposal.

The purpose of romanizing is A) to allow folks working within the Western tradition to fake pronunciation most of the time and B) to help the lay reader with difficult-to-translate terms (the hat-hanging argument). As far as I know, the basic purpose is to consistently render one script or means of writing into another (and I have to confess ignorance when it comes to idiographic writing). The purpose of romanization is defeated if we were to scrupulously render different allophones (of course, we can give the linguistically-inclined reader help with different conditioning environments on articles about a specific language, but that is a different question).

I don't think that anyone today really wants to go back to either Englishization or Semi-romanization. Englishization seems awfully barbaric to me (I'm thinking of the antiquated 'Hindoo'). My understanding/educated guess is that Semi-romanization has also had its day, and is an artifact of people working on typewriters and old typesetting equipment. The argument for conscientious romanization is not an argument for returning to either of these methods. Am I addressing your concerns, Ori? Brian P. Long 12:26, 5 March 2008 (CST)

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