hillbillypie
Breeder in Training
Tomato Growing Nutjob
Posts: 210
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Post by hillbillypie on Mar 13, 2011 12:35:10 GMT -5
I recently came across a Russian word that had been Anglicized. By that I mean that the original Russian word had been transcribed to English characters phonetically. i.e.. the sound it made. The result is a word that is difficult for English speaking people to say and impossible for a speaker of Russian to look at the word and give a definition. The end result is a meaningless transformation of a word. There are way more of these than I could ever count. For example, there is a tomato called Shokoladnyi. It has also been transcribed to Wokoladnyj because that's what the Cyrillic text looks like. Whoever did this incorrectly assumed the "W" looking character in the Cyrillic alphabet was the same as the English "W". If we simply did a translation of the original Russian word then we would, and should I might add, call this tomato "Chocolate". If you were trying to get a definition of shokoladnyi by going through a translator it would be difficult at best. Trying to define Wokoladnyj would be impossible. Some of the names are so obscure and distorted when Anglicized that it is impossible to ever figure out what they mean. I recently had a Russian friend of mine look at a couple of these "converted" words and they found it impossible to tell me what the original definition was. Why is it that we (whoever the "we" is) translate some names of tomatoes into English and not others? Shouldn't we ALWAYS make a translation in order for it to be a usable name on both sides of the equation? I could say a lot more about this and in some ways this is connected to earlier posts and how easy it is for one cultivar to end up with lots of names. From here on out I am going to use translations. Both Google and Bing/Microsoft have great translators and it just seems pointless to continue such a silly practice of renaming a tomato with a meaningless Anglicized name. The name "Pervaya Lyubov" in the written form would not make sense to a Russian speaker unless they could sound out the words. However, if we translate it to "First Love" then it is easy to translate it back to the original Russian. This works for everyone. This keeps things in order and prevents confusion. Just like so many things associated with this hobby, it is going to take some time, effort and solidarity to make this transition work. Remember back in the day when the Internet was young? When you were given a web address they would say doubleyou doubleyou doubleyou dot "website" dot com. Now we just say "yahoo" or "Ebay" or whatever and everyone knows how to get there. I like to propose we start using translated names. We can start doing this with the mangled English transposed words in parenthesis. i.e. FIRST LOVE (Pervaya Lyubov) with the hope that eventually the name in parenthesis will just drop off.
Do you think this is a good idea?
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Post by blane on Mar 13, 2011 13:04:35 GMT -5
I have no problem whatsoever with this Steve, in fact I have several russion types that have names I cannot pronounce, or understand, etc.. Is this one? Sibirskiy Skorospelyi
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hillbillypie
Breeder in Training
Tomato Growing Nutjob
Posts: 210
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Post by hillbillypie on Mar 13, 2011 13:16:33 GMT -5
Siberian Early ("precocious" is the older word that the translator gives, but keeping with how we name plants, "early" would be the word used for this tomato) Then when it gets translated back it would be Ñèáèðñêèé Ñêîðîñïåëûé and both parts of the world would understand it.
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hillbillypie
Breeder in Training
Tomato Growing Nutjob
Posts: 210
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Post by hillbillypie on Mar 13, 2011 13:18:04 GMT -5
oops. Looks like this message board doesn't support the Cyrillic alphabet. Again, this is a good reason to just translate the dang word instead of trying to sound it out.
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Post by blane on Mar 13, 2011 13:21:08 GMT -5
Thanks...what about this one? Vladivostoksij
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Post by soren on Mar 13, 2011 13:50:34 GMT -5
I do agree with some of your points, however - at least the "weird" names will keep people from creating wrong histories. For example: It would be hard to convince people that a tomato named Shokoladnyi, was named by Maya indians ;D
At lest we get a hint of the variety's origin with "Shokoladnyi", "Chocolate" suggest that the variety is from a english speaking country.
Also, imagine the confusion if all tomato varieties was translated into different languages? (just look at the confusion with the pink oxheart's). Please notice that non-english speakers almost never rename or translate english named varieties, even if the name would be easier for us to pronounce in Danish, German, French, Italian ect.
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hillbillypie
Breeder in Training
Tomato Growing Nutjob
Posts: 210
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Post by hillbillypie on Mar 13, 2011 15:53:28 GMT -5
Please notice that non-english speakers almost never rename or translate english named varieties, even if the name would be easier for us to pronounce in Danish, German, French, Italian ect. That has not been my experience. I can think of several Russian, French and an Italian seed company that translates English names into their languages. From what I have seen it seems to be a pretty standard practice in most places. I'm not sure why it would matter if something "sounds" like it came from a non-English speaking country or not. I do however appreciate the sentiment behind that statement. A translated name can always be translated back to the original. Creating the name in any other way just leaves it open for mistakes. In fact, just look into one Blane mentioned, the Siberian Early and you will see how easily it got messed with.
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Post by oneoftheearls on Mar 13, 2011 16:07:13 GMT -5
I think we should start with translating Arkansas and Mississippi words....not really just funning with ya'all. I've been purposefully shying away from oriental varieties just because the translated name has no meaning for my brain. I can understand variety names like Red Barn and Fuzzy Peach
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Post by reubent on Mar 13, 2011 21:42:17 GMT -5
yep, if I can't pronounce it and have no idea of the meaning, what's the point? An actual translation would make a lot of sense. A tomato named First Love gives me the idea that someone may have picked it as their favorite. Or Chocolate, tells me what color it might be. Actually with russian varietys I'd be in favor of putting "Russian" in front of the translated name.
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hillbillypie
Breeder in Training
Tomato Growing Nutjob
Posts: 210
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Post by hillbillypie on Mar 15, 2011 10:17:36 GMT -5
I think we should start with translating Arkansas and Mississippi words... You mean like "fixinta" or "djeetyet"?
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hillbillypie
Breeder in Training
Tomato Growing Nutjob
Posts: 210
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Post by hillbillypie on Mar 15, 2011 10:52:23 GMT -5
I was just thinking about this "name" thing again. It occurred to me that one variety has already been "translated" from the original "Arkansas". Indian Stripe was renamed. It had been grown in South Arkansas under the name "Indian Zebra" but for some reason the name was changed. Why is that? This tomato was NEVER known as Indian Stripe as is claimed.
After just scrolling through a list of varieties I would like to bring up this point again. Some names get translated while others do not. We translated Aladdin's Lamp but transposed the Cyrillic for Arbuznyi? That makes no sense. Why would we not call this one Watermelon which is what the Russian name means?
Am I the only one that sees a pattern in some of this naming stuff or am I just the only one that cares?
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PVP
Tomatophile
head spellerer
Only an Amateur
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Post by PVP on Mar 15, 2011 11:44:33 GMT -5
I grew "Russian Chocolate" in 2007. Only time and only plant in my garden to ever get TSWV. Came from a commercial pack printed and packed in Russia. Wonder if it's the same tomato y'all are using as an example.
As the story goes, Indian Stripe was named as a result of Donna Nelson telling Carolyn Male that the tomato was known around south central Arkansas alternately as Indian Zebra and Indian Stripe. Ms. Nelson grew up down the road from the Clyde Burson, Sr. family in Strong, Arkansas, and got the seeds from the elder Mr. Burson.
Clyde Burson, Jr. told me he never heard his dad refer to the tomato as Indian Stripe, only Indian Zebra, which is what was hand written on the pack of seeds he retrieved from Sr.'s freezer and sent to me in 2008. Still got that pack here. HillbillyPie has some of those old seeds now. But it's too late now to change the name I guess. It's been on the commercial market via Victory Seeds and Sandhill Preservation as Indian Stripe for about 8 or 10 years.
Only God knows how many tomatoes are runnin' 'round with a half dozen or more names, especially Beefsteak, aka Crimson Cushion, aka Red Ponderosa, aka Chapman, aka Delicious, aka Turkey Chomp, aka Richardson, aka, aka, aka, etc., not to mention the pink or the potato leaf variants of the same damn thing, aka Brandywine ...
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Post by willyswoodpile on Mar 15, 2011 18:35:53 GMT -5
This is turning out to be an interesting thread.
And I also noticed from reading other threads on other sites that "The Name Game" really irks some people, but not others. I guess when one has been in the Mater growing/breeding business for a long time that he/she sees "The Big Picture" that others cannot see. You can tell when someone is new to mater growing because they are much less affected by a myriad of factors except, buy 'em, plant 'em, and water 'em, [and eat 'em]. "The Name Game"-thing just rolls off their backs. Yes, the mater world is full of all types and as Spanky would say "And how!" In fact, that sounds like a good name for a mater, "And How!"
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maf
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Post by maf on Mar 15, 2011 20:51:18 GMT -5
The name that has always bothered me is Japanese Black Trifele. If you go to the website of the Russian company that supposedly introduced it, locate it by its picture, and copy and paste the Cyrillic name into a translation program it comes back as Japanese Black Truffle. (Not really a surprise to me as I had previously seen the name translated into French and German). So where does the "Trifele" come from? Not the Russian word for truffle, that is usually transliterated as "trufel". I asked at another forum and someone was kind enough to point out that the Latvian word for truffle is "trifele".
So, "they" translated two of the words from the name into English and one into Latvian...?..?.. what's that all about?
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Post by darthslater on Mar 15, 2011 21:06:12 GMT -5
Names to me in this game are as bad as the color mixups, why get one right and not the other. I used to care about getting the names correct, but, again WHY? If someone can call a pink tomato "Purple" Or an orange or yellow tomato "Gold" or "Golden" Whats the use? We are probably calling the tomatoes by the wrong names anyway. Plus as mentioned in previous threads, fairy tale histories do nothing to create common ground. EXAMPLE: My family used to raise a tomato that was a beefsteak, and pink. How many others raised that same tomato and called it sometthing else? And was it Purple? Dark? Pink? etc etc......
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