Countries aren’t people though. And depending on language and context, this does happen, and used to happen even more. Finns might refer to a David as Taavi in Finnish. John Cabot’s name in Italian was Giovanni.
Comment on I felt so betrayed when I found out Germany isn't called Germany in Germany
JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 day agoNo… I have a name. Someone talking to me in a different language doesn’t make my name different. It’s intuitive to think country names are the same.
FishFace@piefed.social 1 day ago
JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 day ago
Never said we shouldn’t be translating the names of countries, only that there is a reason to think we shouldn’t. Because the comment I was replying to said “There’s no reason to expect them to be the same in different languages.”
Sheldan@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Other languages use different characters or might not even be able to pronounce the name as they don’t have the sounds. It might be simple to think that, doesn’t make it correct.
samus12345@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
You’d still expect to call them something similar to what they call themselves as best as another language can, but nope!
JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 day ago
But they specifically said “There’s no reason to expect them to be the same in different languages.” Which there absolutely IS a reason to expect that.
Sheldan@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Expectations end where knowledge begins, I guess.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 day ago
Never said it was correct to not translate country names. Only that there is a reason to think they wouldn’t be.