Thursday, April 11, 2013

Place names: Atlas Survey - request for help

http://www.proz.com/forum/translation_theory_and_practice/246707-place_names:_atlas_survey_request_for_help.html

Dear All,
I am conducting some research into the naming conventions used by cartographers from 1900 onwards and I wondered if you might have 5 minutes to help me with it? What I am looking at is how place names have been handled by different mapmakers over the preceding decade. Take München for example: a British team might simply leave it as München or use the English version, Munich, or use both München (Munich) or the other way around. For Kaliningrad they might use something like Kaliningrad (formerly Königsberg) and so on. 
I'm basing my small study on a handful of place names and one river name commonly rendered in different versions throughout the ages and from country to country, and so far I have been able to include about 16 atlases in the survey. What I would need you to do, if you are interested in helping out, is to grab any atlas you may have to hand, note the title and year of publication as well as the name of the publisher or author/editor, and crucially the country in which the volume was published, and then make a note of how they have treated the following proper nouns:
München
Karl-Marx-Stadt
Nürnberg
Köln
Hannover
Hameln
Blindheim
Braunschweig
Kleve
Schlesien
Wien
Königsberg
Kraków
Gdańsk
Poznań
Śląsk
Warszawa
Wisła
Wrocław
Łódź
Wałbrzych
Gorzów Wielkopolski
Kyiv
Lviv (L'viv)
Roma
Milano
Genova
Firenze
Napoli
Torino
Venezia

I know it might occur to you that I need to get out more, but I can assure you there is method in my madness.
Remember, the diacriticals are important, so please include them if you can or else just make a note, e.g. Lodz 
Thanks in advance.
request from the part of Steven Jefferson 

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