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05:33 Feb 22, 2006
English to English translations [PRO] Art/Literary - Linguistics / Style/usage/convention
English term or phrase:Translating Addresses in source documents
I seek your advice on this problem which I repeatedly face.
Suppose you have a document to be translated, say from English to Japanese. It is a set of instructions to be followed, and there is an address in it with street name, Locality, city zip code etc., where one can write for further info. The question is which of these should be done:
1. Translate translatable portions of the address into Japanese (for example, if it contains a term like Post Office Box No xx, give the equivalent of Post Office Box in Japanese in your translation;
2. Keep the address as it is (that is, no translation), only transliterate it, that is, write the address in Japanese script;
3. Leave the address in English itself, as an English postman (who is the ultimate target group of this information) will not be able to make head or tail of an address written in Japanese; (The problem in this approach is, the person who is supposed to write the address may not know English at all, and would not be able to write the address in English!).
4. Do as in 1 above; and give the address in English below it in brackets;
5. Do as in 2 above; and give the address in English below it in brackets.
Explanation: I would say your option 5 is best, except I presume you meant give the adresss in JAPANESE in brackets.
It all depends what the intended use is; as you say, if it is a mailing address, one really ought to keep it in the form that will be understandable to the delivery postperson; the only exception I make to this rule is to adapt the COUNTRY into the language of the sending country (if feasible), just to make sure it gets on the right plane! However, in practice most international mail sorting offices will have lists of country names, so there's no real excuse for confusion, at least when using Western alphabets.
If, however, the address is for information rather than mailing, then I usually adapt it into a form most easily recognizable to the reader in the target language; for example (going into EN), I invert the order of the address so that it starts with the street, then the district, then the town, then country (as would be the usual order in a UK address), and I often bring the street number to the front too. I also translate town names, where a specific EN version exists --- for example, Bruxelles > Brussels, Wien > Vienna, Londres > London.
Oops, that should be "Dusty", extremely sorry, Dusty.
Thank you very much Can and Dina.
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Answers
1 hr confidence: peer agreement (net): +5
translating addresses in source documents
My rule of thumb
Explanation: I would say your option 5 is best, except I presume you meant give the adresss in JAPANESE in brackets.
It all depends what the intended use is; as you say, if it is a mailing address, one really ought to keep it in the form that will be understandable to the delivery postperson; the only exception I make to this rule is to adapt the COUNTRY into the language of the sending country (if feasible), just to make sure it gets on the right plane! However, in practice most international mail sorting offices will have lists of country names, so there's no real excuse for confusion, at least when using Western alphabets.
If, however, the address is for information rather than mailing, then I usually adapt it into a form most easily recognizable to the reader in the target language; for example (going into EN), I invert the order of the address so that it starts with the street, then the district, then the town, then country (as would be the usual order in a UK address), and I often bring the street number to the front too. I also translate town names, where a specific EN version exists --- for example, Bruxelles > Brussels, Wien > Vienna, Londres > London.
Tony M France Local time: 08:36 Native speaker of: English PRO pts in category: 128
Grading comment
Thank you very much, Dust, for your patient explanation.
The translation workplace 
peer agreement (net): +5