Talk:Gerd von Hassler

Name

In the original German Spiegel article his name is Gerd von Haßler, also in the German Wikipedia. I guess that should be the English article name also? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:06, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Not really, no; the name rendered into English is Hassler, as the two sources given demonstrate. Swanny18 (talk) 19:45, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Did you look at the source in German? He was born Haßler, if you want consistency, take it from there. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:46, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

And presumably that’s how he spelt his name all through his life. The point here is if you want to render it into English, it comes out as Hassler. (Or you could italicize it as a foreign term, your choice). Also, the consistency I’m talking about is with the article as it was originally written. Swanny18 (talk) 14:26, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

The only thing that the two sources demonstrate is that Google Translate replaces ß by ss. The two sources are both German, piped through Google Translate, and write his name correctly as "Gerd von Haßler". (There is also a third source that doesn't mention him at all and looks as if it could be be part of some fringe POV pushing or something. It certainly doesn't look like a reliable source.) For names which originally use a Latin-based alphabet, our general practice is to use the original spelling unless there is an established English spelling. For someone who isn't even known well in his country of origin it's extremely unlikely that such an established English spelling exists. Hans Adler 21:35, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Well it demonstrates if you want to render the “B” thing into English, you should use “ss”, which is the usual convention.

And I’m not disputing it is correct in German, I’m saying Hassler is correct in English.

Also, it is not "general practice to use the original spelling unless there is an established English spelling" at all; It is when we have a choice between anglicized and local spellings we to follow English-language usage.

So I think before we go much further you need to come up with a reliable English–language source that uses your spelling in preference to following the standard convention on the subject, and we can go from there. Swanny18 (talk) 14:33, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

The relevant guideline is WP:DIACRITICS, which states: "The use of modified letters (such as accents or other diacritics) in article titles is neither encouraged nor discouraged; when deciding between versions of a name which differ in the use or non-use of modified letters, follow the general usage in English reliable sources (for example other encyclopedias and reference works). In general, the sources in the article, a Google book search of books published since 1980, and a selection of other encyclopaedias should all be examples of reliable sources; if all three of them use a term, then that is fairly conclusive. If one of those three diverges from agreement then more investigation will be needed. If there is no consensus in the sources, either form will normally be acceptable as a title. [...] It can happen that an otherwise notable topic has not yet received much attention in the English-speaking world, so that there are too few English sources to constitute an established usage. Very low Google counts can but need not be indicative of this. If this happens, follow the conventions of the language in which this entity is most often talked about (German for German politicians, Turkish for Turkish rivers, Portuguese for Brazilian towns etc.)."

In the present case it's not even clear that Gerd von Haßler is notable in the first place. There is a German Wikipedia article, but I am not sure it would survive a deletion discussion, and in an English-language context there is even less reason to have an article about him. Therefore the last clause about using German for Germans etc. clearly applies, i.e. the correct original spelling is by default the correct English spelling.

The problem with the transliteration from ß to ss is that it loses information because both spellings are conceivable in German and nowadays only one is correct for each living person. In the case of his ancestor Hans Leo Haßler it's different because at the time spellings were not standardised to that point. And there is also the special issue that the German spelling reform would have transformed the name Haßler into Hassler if it were applicable to names, which it is not. Hans Adler 18:34, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

The relevant guideline? So WP:TITLE, and MOS, and NAMINGCONVENTIONS are all irrelevant? The spirit, and the letter, of those guidelines are that we follow English-language usage, so a legalistic interpretation of WP:DIACRITIC is not going to trump that. I also note that WP:DIACRITIC says, in the bit you omitted, that "German proper names should be treated with care, and attention to English practice". Nuff said?

Besides, that is talking about diacritics, ie. standard letters with modifying accents, etc; the “B” is a ligature, a distinct letter that doesn’t occur in English (in fact it doesn’t occur in any language other than German german) and english usage with the “B” is always (always!) to render it as an “ss”; it would never be used in plain text as if it was an english expression, as you seem to want to do here. The only time you would see it is in italics, as a non-english term, alongside an english equivalent (as, in fact, it does here, in the very first sentence.)

As far as "loss of information" goes, that's a pretty tenuous reason to be thumbing your nose at the usual conventions in English; the format "Gerd von Hassler (or in German Gerd von Haßler)" gives all the information that would otherwise be lost (as well as being a requirement; it should be on the HL Hassler page also)(just done it!)

And I can’t believe I’m about to go 15 rounds over spelling the name of some joker whose chief claim to notability seems to be that he thought Noah discovered South America! Swanny18 (talk) 19:01, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

You wouldn't believe it from this POV pushing article, but his main claim to notability is popular audio plays for children. You can see two of the covers here. Otherwise I totally agree with your last sentence.

You may be glad to hear that the German orthography reform of 1996 has made this letter much rarer. Of course they should really have abolished it; instead, of switching to Swiss practice, in which ß basically does not exist, the committee agreed to a stupid compromise.

You are right that ß is a letter nowadays, although it started as a ligature of ſ, i.e. long s, and s. But in that it is no different from æ and œ: Not excluded by the explanation of scope in WP:DIACRITIC – "modified letters (such as accents or other diacritics)" –, and the latter even explicitly included: "One recurrent issue has been the treatment of graphemes such as ae and oe." The reason why DIACRITIC is more relevant here than the other rules is that it is explicitly concerned with a very fine point of spelling, while the others are about much more fundamental aspects of titles, and interpreting them as saying anything at all about transliteration where they are not explicit about it is rather risqué (not: risque).

In general, I feel much less strongly about the ß -> ss transliteration than about the transliteration of umlauts. Hans Adler 20:32, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

PS: There is no specific MOS section on German[y]-related articles, but it's easy to guess what it would say if you look at those for French ("French proper names and expressions should respect the use of accents and ligatures in French. These are: [àèùéâêîôûëïÿçœæ]"), French names in Canadian (see MOS:CA#French names), Irish ("The Ó in surnames always takes an accent and is followed by a space e.g. Tomás Ó Fiaich, not Tomas O'Fiaich.") and Japanese ("For transliterations from kanji and kana, long o and u are written with macrons as ō and ū respectively."). (Polish merely reiterates what WP:DIACRITICS says, and Hawaiian erroneously extends WP:TITLE#Special characters to accented letters such as ō which are clearly not in that section's scope as there are no technical problems with them.) Hans Adler 20:56, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

(outdent)

I noticed in the article it said he was a composer; I found some references to concert pieces in the Times archive, but they turned out to be by Hans Leo, not this fellow. It raises the question whether some subject that is notable in one WP is automatically notable on all the others, but I don’t necessarily want to get into that one just yet.

The main difference I can see between specialized letters like the eszett, and modified ones like diacritcs is that modified letters are still recognizable (just with a pronunciation guide); an "ö" is still recognizably an "o" even if it is sounded different. The same goes for "æ" and "ae". The problem with an eszett (or a thorn or an eth) is they don’t look like anything (or worse, they look like something else entirely ) certainly not what they are supposed to represent. Which is why, I reckon, that English is more tolerant of modified letters than specialized ones. And for my part, I find the "B" more of a problem in articles than umlauted letters.

I don’t know that the 1996 changes don't make it more complicated; there’s presumably a raft of words that used to use the “B” but now don’t; ie. that would be spelt differently in pre- and post- 1996 sources. Plus older (or more conservative) editors who don’t like, or don’t want, to change. It seems a bit of overkill to have a separate letter for such a slight difference ("sz" as distinct from "ss"?) particularly if "cz" is represented by two letters without much grief. I understood the Swiss don’t bother with it (and AFAIK neither do the Austrians, but I could be wrong about that); are there any regional differences within Germany itself? And there seems a fair amount of uncertainty even within Germany over the correct use (I may be wrong about that. too). As far as WP goes, finding the “B” in articles always seems like an affectation to me (and not necessarily by German editors, either!). But I should assume good faith…

As for country-specific MOS pages, I could have some sympathy with the problems Canadian or Irish editors have rendering stuff into English; I can’t see any reason to have special rules for Japanese articles or anyone else’s. Writers in English on Japanese matters don’t routinely pepper their stuff with Japanese characters, and I fail to see the justification for doing it here. Just more special pleading (or worse, some national interest agenda). And any such guidelines would have to agree with the general ones (not the other way round). But that, I suspect, is also another argument.

It may well be French usage to use special letters just as they are but English usage isn’t like that; that’s why the French WP will do it their way, and here it is different. And English usage is inconsistent (for example, the Spanish "ñ" is always transliterated, to "ny", while the "ç" isn’t (though English readers will assume it is a soft "c" rather than a "th") but that doesn't mean it's wrong. Swanny18 (talk) 18:19, 5 June 2011 (UTC)