Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 September 18

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September 18

Arabic or Persian transcription request

What is the Arabic or Persian of File:JordanImportedBakery.JPG and File:IRICIranianinHouston.JPG? Thanks, WhisperToMe (talk) 02:07, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Both are Persian. The first one is (سوپر و قنادی جردن) and the second one (بنیاد اسلامی و فرهنگی ایرانیان). Omidinist (talk) 03:46, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Thank you WhisperToMe (talk) 09:42, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Referring to a Polish husband-wife pair by a single surname

This article has had a few title changes, but I'm not sure we've got it just right yet. Originally it was Death and state funeral of Lech Kaczyński, then Death and state funeral of Lech Kaczyński and Maria Kaczyńska, and now Death and state funeral of Lech and Maria Kaczyńska.

The only mention of the surname is now the female version Kaczyńska, and that's only because Maria was mentioned last, being the spouse of the notable person. It seems odd for a male Pole to seem to be sharing his wife's surname, rather than the other way around. I don't know how the Poles would deal with this, but the real question is, how should English speakers deal with it? My hunch is to use the male version, if one has to be chosen. I think we'd be talking about "Vladimir and Lyudmila Putin", not "Vladimir and Lyudmila Putina", although Lyudmila Putina by herself of course takes the female version. I can't readily think of any similar cases for guidance. Any ideas? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 02:55, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

This doesn't help for English, but the Polish version uses the genitive plural, which is the same for both masculine and feminine. Once again, noun declensions solve everything. Adam Bishop (talk) 09:26, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Jack's position, bolstered by the Putin example. There are two principles that support using the masculine version in this case: 1) When people from Slavic countries migrate to English-speaking ones, their children almost always simply use the masculine form of the surname. It is the unmarked version. 2) In this case, the more notable of the two is Lech Kaczyński, and the article title should facilitate web searches. People are more likely to be looking for information on the funeral of Lech Kaczyński than of his wife. Therefore, the article title should use Lech's form of the surname. To avoid antagonizing people who think that agreement should be with the last item in a series, maybe the article title should be "Death and state funeral of Maria and Lech Kaczyński". Marco polo (talk) 13:25, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the support about using Kaczyński rather than Kaczyńska, Marco. I'm not wedded to your last idea, however. We generally have a "ladies and gentlemen" order thing in our culture, but when it comes to specific couples being mentioned, it's always the notable person/VIP first and then their spouse who are referred to. For example it would be "Barack and Michelle/Mrs Obama" but (before ennoblement) "Margaret and Denis/Mr Thatcher". It would seem odd to see "Death and state funeral of Michelle and Barack Obama", so I don't favour that order merely to satisfy a problem of incompatibility between Polish and English orthography. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:38, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

There are also the plural forms of the surnames: Lech and Maria Kaczyńscy, Vladimir and Lyudmila Putiny (Путины). I'm a native speaker of a Slavic language, and for what it's worth (it's probably not worth much), "Lech and Maria Kaczyńska" sounds awful to me even in English. --Theurgist (talk) 19:02, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

The plural form, "Lech and Maria Kaczyńscy", sounds best to me as well, but I'm a native Polish speaker. The only alternative reference that would be acceptable to my ears is a complete split: "Lech Kaczyński and Maria Kaczyńska". — Kpalion^(talk) 19:33, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, guys. In the meantime I've changed it to Death and state funeral of Lech and Maria Kaczyński, as discussed above. But I'll respond to your points. It didn't sit well with me either, as a formal student of Russian and having an appreciation of many features common to the main Slavic languages. But I felt it was important to not be too educated, mainly because, as I said above, the real question is not how the Poles would resolve the issue, but how anglophones would resolve it, this being the English version of WP. And given that the talk page would probably be dominated by polophones, I thought it better to seek a more general forum. If you feel my solution doesn't hit the mark, it's probably best to raise the matter on the talk page. Cheers. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 11:30, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

On Google, the masculine-only form gets the most hits, the split form is not far behind (and indeed, if the two surnames are different for whatever reason, it makes good sense to state them both), while the plural-only and the feminine-only forms are further behind. --Theurgist (talk) 15:48, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

Tibetan text transcription request

Is anyone interested in transcribing File:Restaurant for People, Shigatse. 1993.JPG? It has Tibetan text

Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 09:40, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

I think the Tibetan reads "མད་ཚོགས་ཟ་ཁད་།", though the third character might possibly be ཚཽ instead of ཚོ (i.e. have a long instead of a normal o-vowel sign). - Lindert (talk) 14:31, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Thank you! WhisperToMe (talk) 14:43, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Looks to me more like "མང་ཚོགས་ཟ་ཁང་།". The word "མང་ཚོགས་" means public, and "ཟ་ཁང་" means restaurant. --Amble (talk) 18:20, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

You're right, I stand corrected. - Lindert (talk) 18:40, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Formating Russian image files so that they appear in English Wikis

Hi, I've found lots of great images on the russian pages but I can't figure out how to format the image files so that they appear on English language pages. Here's an example Файл:Madamin-bek.jpg, I thought it should just be File:Madamin-bek.jpg but when I type this I just get this:

File:Madamin-bek.jpg

madamin-bey

Monopoly31121993 (talk) 18:34, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

You're doing the formatting correctly. The problem isn't in wikimarkup but in where the images are stored (and in licensing). Most images used in Wikipedia articles are stored in Wikimedia Commons so that they can be used in English Wikipedia, Russian Wikipedia, and all the others. Some images are instead stored directly in one of the wikis. The one you linked to, Madamin-bek.jpg, exists on the Russian Wikipedia at ru:Файл:Madamin-bek.jpg, but it doesn't exist in English-language Wikipedia or on Commons. That means there's no way to link to it from English Wikipedia. The file page on ru.wikipedia says that the source is unknown, the author is unknown, and additional information is needed for the public domain claim. This is probably why the image hasn't been moved to Commons; Commons has very strict requirements for licensing and doesn't accept any files that are fair use or uncertain. If you're able to find more information and sort out the licensing questions, you might be able to get it moved to commons. I'm not an expert on those issues but you might be able to get help at Commons:Village_pump. You could also just upload the file directly to English Wikipedia, although it could still get challenged for the same reasons. --Amble (talk) 18:52, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

If you can make a list of all the files you're interested and post on the Commons Village Pump, you should be able to get some advice on whether the files can be transferred there. --Amble (talk) 18:55, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Ok, thank you this is very helpful. I will post them there and hope for the best. Cheers!Monopoly31121993 (talk) 19:03, 18 September 2014 (UTC)