Re: Lukashenka (jara: Country names still needed)

Andreas Johansson wrote:
> I don't know what a "copy editor" is, but obviously some sort of guy
supposed to
> catch mistakes in newspapers? That sort of people seems to've lost
popularity at
> an alarming rate since computerized spelling checkers came into use[1].
It's
> perhaps better in the Anglophone world, but here media people tend to have
quite
> hazy ideas of the non-western bits of the globe.
>
> [1] This is, of course, only my unscientific impression - I don't have any
> statistical proof that spelling and grammar mistakes in newspapers are on
the
> rise.
>
Mine too.  As a faithful reader of the NY Sunday Times, and Time Magazine,
since the 60s, I've noticed an increase in typos in both since about 1990.
Prior to that they were near-perfect-- the Times less so than TIME, but
that's understandable, since the magazine has a week to get things right.
Names in foreign alphabets are always a problem-- do you do a straight
transliteration? if so, which system do you use? or do you transcribe them
so as to be pronounceable by the average reader???

So the many spellings of Chinese names, the ruler of Libya, French/Spanish
names with/without accents, etc.  In the US I think we'd see Lukashenko,
assuming it's written with -o (= [@] or [6]?) in the original. For some
reason we use the German version of Tschaikowski mangled to [tSai'kawski],
along with my favorites ['prAkofajv] and [SO'st&kovItS]

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