Talk:Baishazhou Yangtze River Bridge

Name

Hi ShakyIsles, just saw what you have done to this page. The full and official name of this bridge is Wuhan Baishazhou Yangtze River Bridge, not just Baishazhou Bridge. See [1] in Chinese. Baishazhou (zh:白沙洲) is a common name in China, referring to any island with white sand. If you have contradicting source, please provide them here. Otherwise please undo what you have done. Same thing goes with Wuhan Junshan Yangtze River Bridge and any other bridges you have renamed to a shorter one. See [2]. Howchou (talk) 04:50, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi, sorry I took a while to reply. I moved the discussion here so it is more transparent. I disagree with the extended name as I believe it is unnecessarily long. Wikipedia:PRECISION says "Usually, titles should be precise enough to unambiguously define the topical scope of the article, but no more precise than that". I understand Baishazhou maybe a common name in Chinese however at there are no other notable bridges named Baishazhou. I believe "Baishazhou Bridge" is sufficient to define the article and the rest is superfluous.

You have also noted that "Wuhan Baishazhou Yangtze River Bridge" is an offical name. From Wikipedia:Official names "Official names used only in other languages often have no relevance at all." As this is a direct translation of the Chinese name and I don't believe it is relevant. There are minimal mentions of the bridge in English literature and many of these aren't relevant as they are straight translations from Chinese.

Finally there is no real guidance at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Chinese) other than the fact that many articles don't use direct translations of official Chinese names.

The above arguement applies to Baishazhou Bridge, Junshan Bridge, and Tianxingzhou Bridge. I believe they should all be changed.ShakyIsles (talk) 00:54, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

It is quite for the reason of "precision" that I insisted on using the full names. Those are above all, Yangtze River bridges, not just some random bridge but bridges stretching miles across the longest river of China. That is why all the other bridges are just "Bridges," but these are "Yangtze River Bridges." I don't believe that your understanding of precision is sufficient enough to omit the name of the river from the names of those bridges. The omission in the names made the names less precise than they could be.

For the reason you gave on official name, I don't think the names mentioned in English are just direct translations, i.e. [3], [4], [5]. I didn't find any proof to support your belief that those are merely "direct translation of Chinese." Therefore, these are not just names used ONLY in other languages, but used in English as well. Unless you can prove to the contrary (such as how these bridges are commonly called by the shortened name in English, otherwise I don't see any real problem of "direct translation"), I don't think you should change the names.

I have also taken a look at some other Yangtze river bridges and I see you have removed "Yangtze River" from most of their names, which has caused such a confusion, and some of them are even against the sources you cited, such as Zhongxian Bridge. Some of the bridges are named after the city or town where it crossed the river such as Anqing Yangtze River Bridge. If you just call it the Anqing Bridge, it would be like calling the Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge or Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge just "Wuhan Bridge" or "Nanjing Bridge," while those cities and towns have dozens of other bridges named after them not crossing the Yangtze river. Such a name would not only violate the "official name" but also the "precision" principles you mentioned above. I suggest you not omit the "Yangtze River" at least when the bridge is named after the cities or towns unless reliable source indicated otherwise. --Howchou (talk) 02:47, 15 March 2013 (UTC)