Talk:Ōta River Bridge

Comments

Bridge sign in Hiroshima at the Ota River Bridge

Otagawa Ohashi Bridge would be wrong. gawa = river hashi = bridge (or chopsticks)

Ota river bridge

Spacecowboy420 (talk) 10:56, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

@Spacecowboy420: Not sure what you're trying to say here. Hiroshima prefectural government wrote it that way. – Brianhe (talk) 11:23, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

They are wrong then. Bad translation on their part. Otagawa ohashi bridge is a bad mix of Japanese and English - in English it means Ota River Bridge Bridge or Ota River Chopstick Bridge, both of which are silly. Local government in Japan often rely on their "English expert" (in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king) or google translate. Spacecowboy420 (talk) 11:27, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Translate the Japanese directly = 太田川大橋 = Ota River Bridge. Never trust Japanese government translation or signs. Spacecowboy420 (talk) 11:35, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

I was asked to comment, sorry for the late reply. I don’t really check my Wikipedia account that often.

As stated, translations made by Japanese officials are often not professional, self-consistent or good English. That said, there’s often no clear right or wrong in these matters, but matters of preference and convention.

Most Japanese geographic names contain a part that signifies the type of the feature in question, such as Fujisan for Mt. Fuji, and Ōtagawa for Ōta River here. These are integral parts of the name in the sense that one cannot, in general, omit them in Japanese speech – simply saying "Ōta" would not be appropriate to refer to the river, even if the context is understood. Yet, as a matter of convention, these parts of the names are usually translated in English usage – e.g. we generally talk about "Mount Fuji", not "Fujisan". When the name is very short, this sometimes feels a bit awkward in cases where the part before the place type identifier does not really feel like a proper noun standing on its own, like in the case of the Naka Ward in Tokyo (and other Japanese locales), which literally means ”Middle Ward”. This is only apparent to a person familiar with Japanese, and for the most part the results feel satisfactory and natural. At least to me, "Ōtagawa River" would feel as odd as "Mount Fujisan", as it repeats the place type information, so I’d avoid such translations.

Regarding "ōhashi" here, it literally means "grand bridge", and adding a further "bridge" to it feels weird on grounds similar to those stated above. One might consider Ōtagawa to be the name of the bridge, but this would be misleading and contradictory if we still call the river "Ōta River". Note that "ōhashi" is not a generally-used common noun in Japanese, but appears almost exclusively as a part of bridge names. Despite this, I would still either translate everything (preferably) or nothing, talking either about "Ōtagawaōhashi" or the "Great Ōta River Bridge", but not "Ōta River Ōhashi Bridge", or something like that. Note also that there are several other bridges called simply Ōtagawabashi (太田川橋), Ōta River Bridge, so this one should be differentiated from those. --Bakuryuu (talk) 11:15, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

Wow, thanks Bakuryuu for the comprehensive answer (and lesson). I propose we move this article to Great Ōta River Bridge accordingly. Brianhe (talk) 11:23, 11 May 2016 (UTC)