Using Foreign Letters

[mharky]

Why is it that British clubs fail to be able to spell peoples names correctly. Take Øystein Kvaal Østerbø, for example. It was mentioned on here that he was upset that at the JK he was named Oystein Kvaal Osterbo. Damn right too. Maybe to our eyes o and ø are the same letter. But they are not, they are totally different letters, look in a dictionary. Calling him that is the equivilant of Matt Crane going to Spain and being called Mott Crone. It's ignorant, rude and lazy.

Another thing is club names. For some reason in Britain we love to use acronyms instead of real club nams. E.g. EUOC, BUSA Champions, rather than Edinburgh University OC, BUSA champions. Not only does this encourage people to come up with stupid club names in the attempt to get a bad pun. (SLOW, SOFA, LOG, EWOK and SOS, which doesn't even make sense). This means that our results only seem to have enough room for perhaps 5 or 6 letters. So when Dids ran the JK he was running for IFK Go. Which is wrong on 2 circumstances. Firstly, they can't even get IFK Gö correct, and secondly it's IFK Göteborg.

When Brits go abroad they tend to enter as EUOC or whatever, rather than the full name. However this doesn't edvertise your club at all. It's nice for people to know where you are from and it advertises your club.

It also poses a problem for newcommers. Someone asks me who I run for, I say Edinburgh University, but lots of people would just give their acronym an expect the person to understand. Also if they stuble across a fixture list and they see an even organised by ESOC, the name of a forest is given (but they don't know where that is) and a grid reference. They don't have the map and they can't be arsed to look up where it is, so don't go. However, if it said Edinnburgh Southern OC, then they would know it's around Edinburgh, so more likely to look it up.

[Kitch]

are we allowed to use French letters ?

( well someone had to...)

nice rant,
agree, by the way

[Adventure Racer]

Then again, Harlequins isn't a lot more informative than HOC

Good point about the names, but noting the emergence of China in orienteering, should we be writing their names correctly too?

[DIDSCO]

Agree, especially with the usage of real club names rather than acronyms. One important way to raise the profile of orienteering is for people outside of the sport to associate themselves with a runner or club through a place name.

[Stodgetta]

We ran as "Chasers" in Italy - sounded great in an Italian accent, but didn't do much to advertise our origin.
Walton Chasers would have given a location very close to home, but how many people could point to Walton on a map?





Couldn't resist posting - wanted to see what my new avatar looked like (Brooner will be pleased, it's the end of my Robbie Williams tour top )

[mharky]

Nice try.

Obviously for Chinese, and all other languages which employ different alphabets, there are english versions of their names. e.g. Кирил Ð?иколов is Kiril Nikolov. With Chinese names people often confuse the order of names. There family names comes first, then their given name e.g. Sun Yat-sen, Sun being the family name. Or 孫逸仙 as you implied.

[jondub]

I agree. The use of acronyms is just another way in which we mystify our sport to newcommers.

[jkjuggler]

Hang on mharky, if Kiril Nikolov is OK for Кирил Ð?иколов, why exactly isn't Oystein Kvaal Osterbo OK for Øystein Kvaal Østerbø? Those letters aren't in the english alphabet either last time I checked.

By the way, I do agree with your point. It seems reasonable when possible to reproduce people's names (and clubs) as they choose to write them when entering. So you can be from IFK Göteborg or IFK Gothenburg, whichever you choose to write on a UK entry form (obviously this is much easier with online entries).

It amazes me that Sun Yat-sen found time to orienteer while helping lead a revolution in China!

[mharky]

It's a common name.

Кирил Ð?иколов is written using the cyrillic alphabet, Kiril Nikolov is written using the Latin alphabet, not the english alphabet which is what you are using when you say Ostebo is ok. Norway uses the Latin alphabet, just a different one to english. We don't have words that use them, but they should be used where needed, for example é is used freely, café and élite. What about æ in archæology?

[Ant W]

There are accepted substitutes for foreign characters e.g. oe for ø. So you could have Oeystein Kvaal Oesterboe. The excuse for not using foreign characters was that they often came out wrong when printing etc. With global hardware and global printer drivers, is this still an issue?



Ant Walker
Coventry & Warwickshire OC / Oxford University ex-students OC

[mharky]

What exatly is a droober?

[Ant W]

Ted Norrish

[awk]

Maybe to our eyes o and ø are the same letter. But they are not, they are totally different letters, look in a dictionary. Calling him that is the equivilant of Matt Crane going to Spain and being called Mott Crone. It's ignorant, rude and lazy.

I looked in my dictionary. Couldn't find ø and as for finding it on the keyboard.....(which I think is as much part of the problem as anybody being rude: not everybody knows how to handle the extra letters).

Actually, I do have sympathy and do agree. It's a bit like having one name, and always being called another (I was christened Andrew, but it's amazing how many call me Andy without checking - an abbreviation I abhor).

Totally agree with you about club names - something that when I was responsible for Route Choice 5 I tried to eliminate as much as possible.

It's not just club names though:

E.g. EUOC, BUSA Champions, rather than Edinburgh University OC, BUSA champions.

Even better if you talk about Edinburgh University OC, British University champions (or similar). We do love our acronyms!

When Brits go abroad they tend to enter as EUOC or whatever, rather than the full name.

If you are able to use the club name at all, given that sometimes you can't use the club name if somebody has already entered using it (I know the reasons why, but it can still be awkward).

By the way, we are a bit unusual in that our acronym "Aire" is probably more easily identifiable geographically than "Airienteers" (and our next door neighbours, Claro, their proper name is just that, Claro - it's not an acronym but their full name!).

[mharky]

It's not just club names though:

E.g. EUOC, BUSA Champions, rather than Edinburgh University OC, BUSA champions.

Even better if you talk about Edinburgh University OC, British University champions (or similar). We do love our acronyms!

You got me there!

I think it's because us modern day people are lazy, and using acronyms makes us sound like we know what we are talking about.

I agree that it can be a bit tricky to get the right letters up if you don't know how.

alt + various 4 digit codes (using the num pad) will bring up all the european letters we could use. I know most the the scandi ones by heart now, but you can work out others as they are in alphabetical order

alt+0228 = ä
alt+0229 = å
alt+0246 = ö
alt+0248 = ø

etc.

[jkjuggler]

Kiril Nikolov is written using the Latin alphabet, not the english alphabet which is what you are using when you say Ostebo is ok.

I wrote it using the English alphabet. How do you know it's in a latin alphabet? I still don't think you can have it both ways. Certainly not by declaring which alphabet you were using after the fact.

What about all the other variants on latin alphabets? Do you suggest that British events to use Þ and � in Icelandic names, just because the Icelandic alphabet is descended from latin (that's all being a latin alphabet means), but to substitute letters for Russians and Greeks because those aren't? A detailed knowledge of the history of the alphabets in use in different countries seems a lot to ask of event organisers.

The reasonable choices seem to me to be:
1. 'Translate' everything into the language of the host country. If there's a standard substitution, then use it: we can agree that Ostebo is incorrect anyway, but Oesteboe could be acceptable.

2. Let people use whatever characters they like and use those wherever possible.

Perhaps we should define the alphabet as 'all those characters I can type without changing fonts in Microsoft Windows'!