Wikipedija:Pjazza/Arkivju 2005-18

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[editja] Writing in Maltese

Do we have any guidelines yet about what to do with English proper nouns in Maltese text? e.g. "Studja fil-College of Origami and Creative Flower Arranging" - do we Italicise from "college" to "arranging", or just stick it in inverted commas, or what? I italicise expressions like programme manager but I'm not sure about proper nouns. Thanks. MaltaGirl 21:06, 24 Lulju 2005 (UTC)

For the first example, which is an institution, though not really being in the general canon of educational disciplines :P, I think I'd attempt to translate.. and then 'arranging' would be something like 'dekorazzjoni' ==> "Kulleġġ ta' l-origami u id-dekorazzjoni florali". What about 'direttur tal programm' for the 2nd? Maybe you could run a concordance on 'direttur ta*' with webcorpon the xandir malta webpage or radio station sites and see if you find something like that..if the word is already ot there catch it... if not ...... (does xandir malta still exist.??). --Joelemaltais 23:03, 24 Lulju 2005 (UTC)

http://www.ba-malta.org/ and best regards to everyone! Srl | lblb 06:11, 25 Lulju 2005 (UTC)

The thing is that I don't think the name of the college should be translated, because it is a name. If you were writing in English, you wouldn't translate "Haż-Żebbuġ" into "The Olive Village". Regarding something like "programme manager" I suppose it could be translated into "jieħu ħsieb li jmexxi l-programmi" or something like that, but on the other hand, "programme manager" is technically a name, in this case the job title, not just the job description. Ajma. MaltaGirl 06:50, 25 Lulju 2005 (UTC)

Hm .. I thought about this a bit. I can tell you how this is handled in German...There is no general rule.. except when there is :)). --> eg. Universität zu Köln i.e. 'University of Cologne' is always translated and that usually is the case with all other Univerities. However Freie Universität Berlin is not translated and there is a decree by the dean that it should always be writen in German. The fact is that some names really translate akwardly or could be ambiguous: 'Free University of Berlin' could imply paying no fee vs. being ideologically independent. Then there is Fachhochschule which is something between an 'advanced technical college' or 'university of applied science' however they don't really map 1:1 to anything in the British or American system. Some institutions put an approximate translation on their websites others stick to German.

I would distinguish between names and places, which should clearly be left as they are (if they don't already have a translation) and conventionalised items such as institutions and professions. IMHO, If the latter have entered the worldview of a society as a distinct or emerging category or canon, then then they should also be conventionalised according to the rules of the language of that society. --Joelemaltais 23:29, 25 Lulju 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! MaltaGirl 07:57, 26 Lulju 2005 (UTC)