Transliterations of Loughborough

I have just noticed that Google Maps transliterates Loughborough into Chinese as 拉夫伯勒 http://ta.gd/拉夫伯勒地图。 The transliteration I have been using and that is in common usage is 拉夫堡。 Considering Google is so influential I think that 拉夫伯勒 will become the standard transliteration for Loughborough.

LA & NYC

I am totally impressed by:

• Los Angeles ロサンゼルス.jp
• New York City ニューヨークシティ.jp

Not only do these sites have Japanese IDNs but also the pathnames are written in Japanese. Try navigating round the sites and you will see what I mean. So the whole URL is internationalized and not just the Domain Name.

Here are a couple of examples:

http://ロサンゼルス.jp/カテゴリー/ショッピング which I translate as
http://Los Angeles.jp/category/shopping

http://ニューヨークシティ.jp/カテゴリー/レストラン which I translate as
http://New York City.jp/category/restaurant

Alphabet

I have found several Japanese Companies that have Latin Alphabet acronyms. These acronyms are usually also transliterated into Katakana 片仮名. Frequently, the components of the Katakana acronym are separated by the katakana middle dot. IDC, for example, is written as アイ・ディー・シー As I find these transliterations I will enter into the table below. I am not sure how long it will take me to complete this table.

A	エー	B	ビー	C	スィー	D	ディー
E	イー	F	エフ	G	ジー	H	エイチ
I	アイ	J	ジェー	K	ケー	L	エル
M	エム	N	エヌ	O	オー	P	ピー
Q	キュー	R	アール	S	エス	T	ティ
U	ユー	V	ヴィー	W		X	エクス
Y	ワイ	Z

Kashi

Kashi is a recently opened Japanese Yakiniko restaurant in Leicester レスター. I received a leaflet about Kashi this week. The only Kanji on the leaflet was 川岸 which literally means River Bank. The romanization of 川岸 is kawagishi. Another Japanese word that means River bank is 河岸 and it's romanization is kashi. So there is some fascinating word play going on here. Both 川岸 and 河岸 are also family and place names.

I deduce that yakiniko is an anglicised form of yakiniku? The kanji for yakiniku is 焼き肉 or 焼肉

Next time I am in Leicester レスター I will visit Kashi and ask them about the origin of their romanized name Kashi.

Kashi Japanese Yakiniko Restaurant

84-86 Granby Street, Leicester LE1 1DJ

tel: 0116 285 8818

map: http://ta.gd/川岸

Acronym IDNs

Latin Script acronyms are common place. Much more interesting are acronyms in non latin scripts. Even more interesting is when non latin script acronyms are used for IDNs. Below, I list acronym IDNs I have found. I list both the full form and the acronym form.

1. Beijing University 北京大学.中国 北大.中国
2. Beijing University 北京大學.中國 北大.中國
3. HongKong University 香港大學.hk 港大.hk
4. Okayama University 岡山大学.jp 岡大.jp

DDN Co. Ltd, Japan, has an acronym as their Company name. They have an IDN which is also an acronym. Their IDN is a transliteration of DDN into Japanese Katakana where ディー is D and N is エヌ.

• DDN Co. Ltd ディーディーエヌ.jp

Languages

　There is a family set of developed Japanese IDNs that are intended for Japanese people who are learning languages. They are all hosted on the same server.

• Arabic ➫ アラビア語.jp
• French ➫ フランス語.jp
• Italian ➫ イタリア語.jp
• Portugese ➫ ポルトガル語.jp
• Russian ➫ ロシア語.jp
• Spanish ➫ スペイン語.jp

Samsung 삼성

 Samsung has a very interesting IDN. It is an acronym for Samsung. http://ㅅㅅ.com/ In the western world, we are familiar with acronyms for companies eg BT for British Telecom. The Korean for Samsung is 삼성. Take the initial letter/jamo from each syllable and one then has the Korean acronym for Samsung, ㅅㅅ.