[gnso-contactinfo-pdp-wg] Examples of addresses

Wed Jan 15 13:41:41 UTC 2014

Dear Yoav,

This raises some interesting issues:

-       Is there a Romanization (=official transliteration) in common use for Hebrew? I happen to know there is for Yiddish as I’m doing some work with UCL’s Yiddish Dept at the moment. That name would be Kheym, although individuals may transliterate it differently.

-       Is the Hebrew alphabet used with or without points in addresses, or do both things happen? (Yiddish has to use points; as letters like a and o are only distinct if they have - or  a little T under them.)

Regards,

Chris.
--
Research Associate in Linguistic Computing, Centre for Digital Humanities, UCL, Gower St, London WC1E 6BT Tel +44 20 7679 1599 (int 31599) ucl.ac.uk/dis/people/chrisdillon

From: Yoav Keren [mailto:yoav at dtnt.com]
Sent: 14 January 2014 23:19
To: Dillon, Chris; Volker Greimann; gnso-contactinfo-pdp-wg at icann.org
Subject: RE: [gnso-contactinfo-pdp-wg] Examples of addresses

All,

I totally agree with Volker. This is a big problem. Same thing happens in Hebrew. There are different ways people transliterate to other languages.
A simple example is the name חיים, which can be transliterated by people as Chaim or Haim (btw- it is  also the word for "life").
There are many other similar examples.

Best,

Yoav

Yoav Keren
CEO
Domain The Net Technologies Ltd.
81 Sokolov st.         Tel: +972-3-7600500
Ramat Hasharon     Fax: +972-3-7600505
Israel 47238
[cid:image001.jpg at 01CF11F7.1056EC00]

From: owner-gnso-contactinfo-pdp-wg at icann.org<mailto:owner-gnso-contactinfo-pdp-wg at icann.org> [mailto:owner-gnso-contactinfo-pdp-wg at icann.org] On Behalf Of Dillon, Chris
Sent: Tuesday, January 14, 2014 7:18 PM
To: Volker Greimann; gnso-contactinfo-pdp-wg at icann.org<mailto:gnso-contactinfo-pdp-wg at icann.org>
Subject: RE: [gnso-contactinfo-pdp-wg] Examples of addresses

Dear Volker,

I should have made up a contact person at NII! During my first part-time job in a Japanese department store there was a Mrs Nakashima upstairs and a Mrs Nakajima downstairs – both written 中島. The only sure way to know is to ask the person. This reminds me of the name authority situation in a library, where in the past, libraries used to write to people and ask them what they were called if their names appeared in more than one form on title pages of their books. On the front of one book I wrote, the publisher put Christopher Dillon. Admittedly I was born Christopher James Dillon. In the US I’m sometimes Chris J. Dillon or Christopher J. Dillon. Actually I’m Chris Dillon. The same would be true for readings like 研究所 as mentioned below. It is often kenkyūsho, but NII seems to use kenkyūjo.

Saitoh is a lovely point. That is so common with all names ending in what should officially be –tō according to Hepburn.

There is an interesting distinction between an official Romanization such as Hepburn or Pinyin for Chinese and what one actually sees. I have a suspicion that there may also be languages with no common standard Romanization. A challenge for us on this list to find them!

Regards,

Chris.
--
Research Associate in Linguistic Computing, Centre for Digital Humanities, UCL, Gower St, London WC1E 6BT Tel +44 20 7679 1599 (int 31599) ucl.ac.uk/dis/people/chrisdillon

From: Volker Greimann [mailto:vgreimann at key-systems.net]
Sent: 14 January 2014 16:59
To: gnso-contactinfo-pdp-wg at icann.org<mailto:gnso-contactinfo-pdp-wg at icann.org>; Dillon, Chris
Subject: Re: [gnso-contactinfo-pdp-wg] Examples of addresses

Hi Chris,

you raise an excellent point.

Do not forget Japanese personal names where one Kanji (chinese character) combination can have any number of possible different readings. There is a reason why there is special dictionaries for possible name readings.

One further common transliteration of longer vowels is with by adding an "h" at the end, so Mr. Saitou could also spell himself as either Saitô, Saitō or Saitoh. In Japan, I have seen all kinds of different transliterations commonly used and mixed. There does not seem to be an "official" transliteration that is commonly used or more correct than another.

Just one example why I think that transliteration may be impossible to do well, and that is just one language of many...

Volker

From: <Dillon>, Chris <c.dillon at ucl.ac.uk<mailto:c.dillon at ucl.ac.uk>>
Date: Tuesday, January 14, 2014 7:15 AM
To: "gnso-contactinfo-pdp-wg at icann.org<mailto:gnso-contactinfo-pdp-wg at icann.org>" <gnso-contactinfo-pdp-wg at icann.org<mailto:gnso-contactinfo-pdp-wg at icann.org>>
Subject: [gnso-contactinfo-pdp-wg] Examples of addresses

Dear colleagues,

I would like to start a collection of international addresses on this list. Many will be in non-Latin scripts, but some may be using the Latin alphabet perhaps with lots of diacritics (accents) or in some other way.

I hope the following Japanese example, taken at random, makes this suggestion clear:

The address is how it appears at the bottom of the organization’s website,  www.nii.ac.jp<http://www.nii.ac.jp> :
国立情報学研究所　テ101-8430　東京都千代田区一ツ橋2－1－2

On English pages of the same site, for example, www.nii.ac.jp/en<http://www.nii.ac.jp/en> , it appears as:
National Institute for Informatics
2-1-2 Hitotsubashi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 101-8430

Notes
The name of this organization has a well established English translation and acronym (NII). It is not always clear whether an organization prefers its long name or its acronym. Many/All of the divisions and other parts of the organization also have established English translations. What should the policy be when an organization name has no established English translation?

The rest of the address is transliterated using some form of Hepburn Romanization. Strictly speaking Tokyo should be Tōkyō. See here for further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepburn_romanization
Japanese addresses are not normally translated. I shall translate this address to illustrate the point and for your amusement:
2-1-2 One Bridge, Thousand Generations Field Ward, East Capital Metropolis, 101-8430
Each speaker of Japanese would probably produce a different rendering.

It is interesting that the ku in Chiyoda-ku is not usually translated as “ward”. Note also the hyphen.
The order of the address is more or less reversed. Literally in Hepburn it would be: Kokuritsu Jōhō Kagaku Kenkyūjo 101-8430 Tōkyōto Chiyodaku Hitotsubashi 2-1-2
I have added spaces and capital letters. テcomes before the Japanese postcode.
研 究所 may be romanized as kenkyūjo or kenkyūsho. NII prefers the former, but machine transliteration would produce two possibilities if it did not know this specific organization.
There are some other Romanizations in fairly common use in Japan e.g. Kunrei-siki and these cause confusion. One may see, for example, Hitotubasi instead of Hitotsubashi and frequently an address in Hepburn may have a couple of spellings borrowed from another system.
I am not aware of a Romanization that officially spells out long ō vowels as in e.g. jōhō as ou, but one sees this frequently e.g. jouhou. The officially Hepburn way of doing it, if one has no access to macrons is joohoo. One also sees jôhô (borrowed from Kunrei-siki).

I hope this will be a good way of discovering current practice and issues.

Regards,

Chris.
--
Research Associate in Linguistic Computing, Centre for Digital Humanities, UCL, Gower St, London WC1E 6BT Tel +44 20 7679 1599 (int 31599) ucl.ac.uk/dis/people/chrisdillon

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