However with your other village pump example Marshrutka, a combination of translation and description comes up with Routed share taxis, which gets across the majority of the concept to English users without being too ugly or unwieldy. Personally I would summarise things as use English where possible, if it translates easily into English use the English, use the transliterated name if it has become or is in the process of becoming an accepted import into the English language, if the concept can be described easily use a description, use the transliterated version if none of the above apply. I think that a stricter category naming discipline and a keyword/topic database would be sufficient to enable two-way multi-language category naming for 98 % of the cases, the few exceptions could be held in a “key expression database”.
Both of them can by used in an English text. There are many cases that an un-English word (a local name or local online installment loan MN term) is cited or mentioned in an English text in the original form. Sometimes beside the English form as instrument to identification, sometimes because the English equivalent don’t exists, sometimes because the foreign word is more locally specific (marshutka is the special term for the Russian form of shared taxi. E. g. That’s why many foreign local terms and names are more predicative and more suitable than an universal English word). Notre-Dame patrocinium is a similar example. It is necessary to consider every individual case and every type of name. It is suitable to recognise whether and when the category name should have rather an identifying function and when rather an explanatory function.
Original proper names and other stable local names should be always taken into consideration and their advisability should be compared with advisability of eventual English exonym or translation. Albert Einstein should be not translated as Albert Onestone, although its very easy to translate. Proper names of streets or train stations or regional nature reserves can be seen in similar way. In medieval times, it was usual to translate nearly all proper names. Nowadays, proper names are more often used in the original form. The question is whether an international project as Commons should rather follow this way of internationalization (i. But nobody doubt that categories of general worldwide themes should by named generally in English.
Fantasies about “keyword/topic database” and “stricter category naming discipline” can be interesting but don’t hide by them the fact that the text you twice removed accords with the current policy
As regards “Umgebindehaus”, I generally don’t support some English semi-translations of established foreign terms and some English neologisms or periphrases. The German “Umgebindehaus” can be literally translated as “round-bound house”, the equivalent Czech term “Podstavkovy dum” is derived from cs:Podstavka (a special term for such house base – pod=under, stat=to stand), the Polish equivalent “Dom przyslupowy” is derived from the word “Slup” (a column). It’s pointless to borrow a half of the term from one foreign language and complete it by some English word. There is an essential distinction between terms and some common description. It’s evident that some of the foreign terms should be used as the category name, only the problem with a plural form remains. Foroa, now you are admited that there are thousands of terms which haven’t an English equivalent.
The sentence “Categories are in English” cannot be the ultimate arbiter of such dilemma at all
There exist consistent and established way how treat such category names and I described it in the text. But you twice reverted it without any realistic alternative. A chimerical vision of some relational database will don’t solve the problem which category name should be the prie don’t exist. What I am blocking on (would be) official pages is the addition of wide open and unprecise rules that can only lead to even more discussions. Before starting any such discussion, we have to define what character sets, diacritics and scripts are allowed. Once we have an agreement, we can bring that “on-line”.