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Accents on Indian place names in Fr:En translation
Thread poster: n15hma
n15hma
n15hma
United Kingdom
Local time: 20:09
French to English
+ ...
Jul 31, 2010

I am currently translating a French text on a subject regarding India. When referring to regions of India, the French has added in accents (i.e. Gujarât, Punjâb, Râjasthân). However, in English, I have never seen accents used on Indian place names. Any idea why this is done (besides the obvious i.e. pronunciation), and am I wrong to not maintain them in my English translation? Thank you.
 
Michael McCann
Michael McCann
Ireland
Local time: 20:09
Member (2008)
Spanish to English
+ ...
No accents Jul 31, 2010

I would suggest no accents. They would look odd in both English and French to my mind, as the French accent would normally be on the last syllable anyway.

I suppose they were originally inserted in your text to ensure tonic pronunciation on the last syllable, as opposed to the voice accent on Delhi - i.e. the penultimate.
Kind regards,

Michael J McCann
 
wsetters
wsetters
Local time: 21:09
French to English
They're just other words to translate Aug 13, 2010

n15hma wrote:

I am currently translating a French text on a subject regarding India. When referring to regions of India, the French has added in accents (i.e. Gujarât, Punjâb, Râjasthân). However, in English, I have never seen accents used on Indian place names. Any idea why this is done (besides the obvious i.e. pronunciation), and am I wrong to not maintain them in my English translation? Thank you.


When you translate "Moscou" from French to the English "Moscow", you change the spelling. This is no different - you need to use the English name for the place, even if the only difference is the accents. I recently translated a text with about a hundred Arabian place-names translitterated into French, and in the English text many of them were very different. So beware - in some cases, it may not only be the accent which changes.
 
philgoddard
philgoddard
United States
German to English
+ ...
. Aug 13, 2010

It sounds like the text might have been written for reading aloud. Is that possible?
 
Werner Maurer
Werner Maurer  Identity Verified
Canada
Local time: 12:09
Spanish to English
+ ...
accent Aug 23, 2010

Accent marks are pretty much nonexistent in standard written English. A few diacriticals other than accent marks turn up on very rare occasions. Sometimes an acute or grave accent mark is used instead of the internationally-more-standard dierisis (aka trema aka umlaut), to mark a normally silent letter, usually a vowel, as "to be pronounced". Also sometimes the diacritical is preserved in loanwords, e.g. the trema in übermensch, or the cedilla in French and Portuguese words.
 


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Accents on Indian place names in Fr:En translation







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