Olden but golden
There’s a good value-add in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph today – a free map.
One side is of Australia, the other the world.
But Dr Mumbo wonders just how old it is?
How long is it since Dubai was known as Dubayy or Abu Dhabi as Abu Zabi?
They probably followed their own error-riddled style guide.
Does it have Rhodesia on it?
“Dubayy” and “Abū ẓabī” are still current legitimate transliterations of the cities’ Arabic names, أبو ظبي and دبيّ, respectively. “Dubai” and “Abu Dhabi” are the Westernised spellings.
That said, a better markers to consider the map’s age are things like whether it has the Czech Republic and Slovakia (from 1993) rather than the older Czechoslovakia or, as Andrew points out, Zimbabwe (from 1979) rather than Rhodesia.
It’s too early in the morning for me to think of any others. Surely there must be a list somewhere.
Does it have East and West Germany on it? Was all of the Hoff’s hard work in vain?
Actually, the map is just using alternative (possibly more accurate) transcriptions of the Arabic names. So in a sense the map is more up to date than we are.
I think a few people need to do a quick lesson in geography. No issue with map being out of date (it includes very new nations like Kosovo). In fact I put this up on the wall for the kids because it is one of the few world maps I have seen which uses accurate local spellings rather than the old anglicised translations from England’s imperial past. While recent years have had most of us learn how to spell Kolkata (rather than Calcutta) and Mumbai (rather than Bombay) this map has simply extended it across the globe. Just glancing at Europe should have been enough for most people to work it out: Roma, Wien, Lisboa, Athina, Bucuresti and Moskva. Surely it’s just common decency to use the local spelling for place names.
“Common decency”, Mountainman? “Politeness”, maybe, and I’m all for a bit of cultural awareness. But there are practical limits, and transliterations of the local pronunciations into the Roman alphabet is still a bit of cultural imperialism, albeit the Roman Empire rather than the British.
I don’t quite see us switching to writing about their holiday in กรุงเทพมหานคร (Krung Thep Mahanakhon, or “Bangkok” as we generally know it) or 東京 (Tōkyō, or “Tokyo”).
A point well made, and I would be most content if my kids grew up with the ability to go the whole hog and use the appropriate language, but for the time being making some attempt, however small, will still be a vast improvement.
No disagreement there, Mountainman!