Some of you may have an interest in this:
The Ministry of the Interior (MOI) has moved to speed up mail delivery by completing an Online Translation System of Place Names (placesearch.moi.gov.tw/) for the retrieval of Taiwan place names from the Qing Dynasty, the period of Japanese occupation, and present times, to facilitate administrative and research work.
See this: placesearch.moi.gov.tw/translate/
Mods,
If this would be more appropriate in another forum, please move accordingly.
It translates 台北市中正區徐州路五號七樓 (an address I found on that website) to either :
“Taipei City Jhongjheng District Syujhoulu NO.5 cilou” or
"Taipeicityjhongjhengdistrictsyujhouluwuhaocilou " depending on the option
Worked fine for my address though…
[quote]“Taipei City Jhongjheng District Syujhoulu NO.5 cilou” or
"Taipeicityjhongjhengdistrictsyujhouluwuhaocilou " depending on the option
[/quote]
Yeesh! How horrible!
Sheesh, they’ve already got it carved up into counties so it’s no good for translation (if you have no clue where the place is, are you going to click on every county until you get lucky??). So as that’s the case, why couldn’t they put the Pinyin engine on Taipei City and any other sensible, Hanyu Pinyin-usin’ locality, and leave that awful romanization for the remaining places??
Of course these aren’t really tranlsations of place names, but spellings. A translation of Danshui would be fresh water.
I always thought they should call 芝山 ‘Mount Sesame’ or ‘Sesame Hills’ or something cute like that…
Transliteration is the fancy word for it.