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

["Dillon, Chris" <c.dillon@xxxxxxxxx>]

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@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 14 January 2014 16:59
To: gnso-contactinfo-pdp-wg@xxxxxxxxx; 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@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:c.dillon@xxxxxxxxx>>
Date: Tuesday, January 14, 2014 7:15 AM
To: 
"gnso-contactinfo-pdp-wg@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:gnso-contactinfo-pdp-wg@xxxxxxxxx>" 
<gnso-contactinfo-pdp-wg@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:gnso-contactinfo-pdp-wg@xxxxxxxxx>>
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