This paper analyses some problems related to street names in North Macedonia, the necessity of their translation or adaptation into Albanian, as well as some issues related to the standardization of ...these names. Street names (odonyms) constitute a prominent feature of a city's linguistic landscape and they are associated with a particular nation in geo-linguistics. As a result, certain political regimes using their authority, influence/change/or do not accept changes in the existing street names and designations. Language itself is a marker of the identity of a group of people and as such carries a symbolic value, especially in cases where two languages are identified with two national communities, which due to several reasons may be in a "conflict". In such situations, state authorities tend to influence in favour of that group that constitutes the dominant part of the nation, giving priority to the language of this group. In general terms, this is also the context in which the Albanian language is found in North Macedonia, where, despite being recognized as the second official language, there are observed problems, especially in its implementation in various spheres of life. We have observed problems in the names of the streets, and we strongly emphasize the idea (which originally originates from the law on the languages) that they should be translated or adapted into Albanian according to the rules dictated by the Albanian language itself. On the other hand, the standardization of street names is as necessary for national and international communication as the standardization of street names. A series of normative rules and criteria are applied for the standardization of the countries’ names, which basically aim to guarantee the uniformity of these names. This means that they should only have one standardized spelling form. Even for the standardization of street names, it is applied the same criteria, but there are also respected some specific rules that apply only to these types of names, since often, street names come as a result of spontaneous actions of a certain speaking community. However, although the establishment of these designations seems like a natural process, it is usually, if not always, a process directed by the administrative or political authorities of a country, which makes their standardization difficult.
Received: 14 May 2023 / Accepted: 20 June 2023 / Published: 5 July 2023
In the poetic geography of Georges Gros, Nîmes occupies a central place. From the labyrinth of the streets of the Placette district, where childhood seeks its bearings, to the paths of the garrigue ...whose names evoke a world now lost, to the novelistic anchoring in the new districts of the ZUP, lights, smells, dreams and faces emerge vividly from memory or history.
What determines whether contested places of memory are kept or officially removed in a democracy? To answer this question, we look at Francoist street names in Spain to identify the effect of party ...ideology on the manipulation of lieux de mémoire. Using a regression discontinuity design, we analyze 5,500 municipalities over a period of 16 years. We find that mayors of the main right-wing party are more likely to preserve Francoist names, whilst mayors of the main left-wing party are more likely to replace them. Upon replacing, right-wing local governments are more likely to choose new names leaning to the right than left-wing governments. Our findings illustrate that, even within a democratic framework, the public space can be shaped beyond citizens’ preferences in favor of the ruling power. Additionally, we show that parties can be important actors in qualifying what is to be remembered, imprinting ideological biases in the landscape.
Abstract
The present study deals with the presence and role of the Sardinian language in the linguistic landscape of sixteen villages in the province of Oristano, Sardinia. Specifically, their entry ...signs and street name signs were photographed and analysed using both quantitative and qualitative approaches. In the entry signs, Sardinian was found to have a very strong presence, generating a high degree of bilingualism with Italian, as recommended by national and regional language policies. Systematic bilingualism could not, however, be observed in the street name signs, where Italian clearly prevails. Notwithstanding, the local language is visible in around a quarter of all street name signs. Complying with the provisions of national and regional legislations, Sardinian is used in the majority of street signs to recall the historical memory of the communities. Nonetheless, signs could be found where Sardinian is used in parallel bilingual texts to express exactly the same content as Italian, fostering a modern vision of the minority language. The present work shows how top-down language policies can be locally implemented or re-interpreted in the linguistic landscape; moreover, the article sheds light on how street naming can be exploited to influence society’s perception of minority languages and convey messages of local or regional/national identity.
The gender relations of power embedded within the urban landscape and materialized in street nomenclature remain an underexplored topic in place-name studies. This paper situates the gendered spaces ...of street names within the broader investigation of identity politics played out in the public space. Drawing on scholarship from “critical toponymies”, this article diachronically examines the gender patterning of urban nomenclature in a city from Eastern Europe (Sibiu, formerly Hermannstadt, Romania). For this purpose, a dataset was compiled from the entire street nomenclature of the city across seven successive historical periods, from 1875 to 2020 (n = 2,766). The statistical analyses performed on this dataset revealed a “masculine default” as a structuring principle underpinning Sibiu’s urban namescape for the two centuries investigated. As this analysis demonstrates, contrary to the overall democratization of the Romanian post-socialist society, Sibiu’s streetscape continues to tell a patriarchal story informed by hegemonic masculinity.
The topic of the study is the phenomenon of inflectional reinterpretation (which may be understood as a kind of folk etymology, more appropriately called etymological reinterpretation) in urban names ...(hodonyms). It leads to a change of the inflectional paradigm of the onym, e.g. na Matejkach, na Strugarce, na Karasiej instead of na (ulicy) Matejki, Strugarka, Karasia. The examples were excerpted mostly from the Internet and – to a lesser degree – from scholarly literature. Twelve types of such reinterpretation have been identified, exemplified by a total of over 40 onyms. Possible factors contributing to reinterpretation were analysed, such as the specificity of proper names, their frequency and developmental trends, as well as semantic and structural mechanisms (internal analogy, the ellipsis of the identifying element). Some similarities were also found between the effects of the most common type of inflectional reinterpretation and the formation of informal, unconventional urban names.
The gender relations of power embedded within the urban landscape and materialized in street nomenclature remain an underexplored topic in place-name studies. This paper situates the gendered spaces ...of street names within the broader investigation of identity politics played out in the public space. Drawing on scholarship from “critical toponymies”, this article diachronically examines the gender patterning of urban nomenclature in a city from Eastern Europe (Sibiu, formerly Hermannstadt, Romania). For this purpose, a dataset was compiled from the entire street nomenclature of the city across seven successive historical periods, from 1875 to 2020 (n = 2,766). The statistical analyses performed on this dataset revealed a “masculine default” as a structuring principle underpinning Sibiu’s urban namescape for the two centuries investigated. As this analysis demonstrates, contrary to the overall democratization of the Romanian post-socialist society, Sibiu’s streetscape continues to tell a patriarchal story informed by hegemonic masculinity.
Artiklis käsitletakse venekeelsete kohanimede (eelkõige tänavanimede) eesti keeles edasiandmise probleeme. Teema on eriti aktuaalne vande-, kohtu- ja politseitõlkide jaoks, kelle igapäevatöösse ...kuulub dokumentide tõlkimine. Uurimuse eesmärk on kõrvutada ühelt poolt erialakirjanduses antavaid juhiseid ning teiselt poolt tõlkijate endi seisukohti. Tõlkijatele saadetud küsimustikuga kogutud andmetest nähtub, et teooria ja praktika vahel on küllaltki suured erinevused, mis näivad olevat tingitud sellest, et puudub ühtlustatud süsteem Vene kohanimede edasiandmiseks eesti keeles, tõlkijad ei tea võimalike abistavate allikate olemasolust ning tuginevad vaid enda kogemusele ja keelevaistule. Seetõttu on vaja reegleid ühtlustada ja täpsustada ning hoolitseda selle eest, et need oleksid hõlpsasti leitavad ja kättesaadavad kõigile asjaosalistele. *** "On the transposition of Russian place names into Estonian" This article focuses on the problem of translating Russian place names into Estonian. The topic is relevant for legal translators whose daily work involves translating various documents that contain addresses. It important that place names (addresses) in the translated text be correctly “re-translatable” back into the source language. The aim of our study is to compare advice given in literature on the subject (theory) on the one hand to real translators’ strategies (practice) on the other. There exist recommendations from a variety of sources and these recommendations are different for different languages. The main idea is that one should translate the part of the proper Russian noun which includes the common name (with lexical meaning) and then “restore” the origin of the part which is derived from the proper noun and formulate it in Estonian. This means that the translator should find the place name used for composing the name of the district or other type of administrative division. These recommendations end with a suggestion to differentiate between the fundamental end goals of translating legal texts and fictional texts. To find out what happens in real translation practice we composed a set of questions in which we asked sworn, court and police translators to transpose Russian place names into Estonian. Our respondents demonstrated very different strategies: from total translation (площадь Энергетиков – Energeetikute väljak ‘Power engineers square’) to transliteration (the transposition of the letters, not the sounds: ploštšad Energetikov). Some examples of partial transcription were also to be found: Energetikov väljak ‘Energetikov square’. There were barely any examples of place names that translators had transposed identically. Data collected from the questionnaire showed that there are quite large differences between theory and practice. In order to improve this situation and reduce translator confusion we propose giving preference to the complete practical transcription (transliteration) of Russian place names in this type of text (legal documents) while keeping the original spelling in brackets afterwards, if possible. In future it could be useful to create an application which would automate the process of translating Russian proper nouns into Estonian.
PDF