CZ:Proposals/Romanization

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For now, the proposal record can be found in the new proposals queue.

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)

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