jerryfriedman wrote:

> If you were translating from Spanish or advising someone who was,
> would you favor calling a certain Iberian river the Douro or the
> Duero?

Maybe I should have said that the references would be to the part
of it that's in Spain.

--
Jerry Friedman

If you were translating from Spanish or advising someone who was,
would you favor calling a certain Iberian river the Douro or the
Duero?

--
Jerry Friedman

El Sat, 30 Mar 2024 01:43:35 +0000, jerryfriedman escribió:

> jerryfriedman wrote:
>
>> If you were translating from Spanish or advising someone who was,
>> would you favor calling a certain Iberian river the Douro or the Duero?
>
> Maybe I should have said that the references would be to the part of it
> that's in Spain.

More than half of it is in Spain. Surely in a translation you provide
both names? "The river Duero (Douro in Portuguese)..."

Unless it already has an English name. English speakers call Sevilla
"Seville", for instance.

Wiki favours the Douro version. I know not why.

--
Paul.

https://paulc.es

On 2024-03-30 01:41:00 +0000, jerryfriedman said:

> If you were translating from Spanish or advising someone who was,
> would you favor calling a certain Iberian river the Douro or the
> Duero?

If the text was primarily about Porto I would certainly write Douro,
but if it arose in a more general way, and especially if it was
concerned with the up-river part in Spain, I would probably write
Duero. It's a matter of which _feels_ right in the context.

Until I checked I though Salamanca might be on the Duero, but it isn't.
So Porto appears to be the only important place on the river. In
addition, a Spanish text would probably write Porto as Oporto, a
spelling not unknown in English.

--
Athel -- French and British, living in Marseilles for 37 years; mainly
in England until 1987.

On 2024-03-30 01:43:35 +0000, jerryfriedman said:

> jerryfriedman wrote:
>
>> If you were translating from Spanish or advising someone who was,
>> would you favor calling a certain Iberian river the Douro or the
>> Duero?
>
> Maybe I should have said that the references would be to the part
> of it that's in Spain.

Ha. I had already written my previous post before reading this one. In
this case Duero would be more appropriate.

--
Athel -- French and British, living in Marseilles for 37 years; mainly
in England until 1987.

On 2024-03-30 08:23:18 +0000, Paul Carmichael said:

> El Sat, 30 Mar 2024 01:43:35 +0000, jerryfriedman escribió:
>
>> jerryfriedman wrote:
>>
>>> If you were translating from Spanish or advising someone who was,
>>> would you favor calling a certain Iberian river the Douro or the Duero?
>>
>> Maybe I should have said that the references would be to the part of it
>> that's in Spain.
>
> More than half of it is in Spain. Surely in a translation you provide
> both names? "The river Duero (Douro in Portuguese)..."
>
> Unless it already has an English name. English speakers call Sevilla
> "Seville", for instance.

When I were a lad that was pronounced ['sevɪl] (stress on the first
syllable) but nowadays it's much more likely to be [sə'vɪl].

Apart from Saragossa (increasingly giving way to Zaragoza in English,
but still Saragosse in French), Seville and I suppose Córdoba
(sometimes Cordova in English), there seem to be very few Spanish
cities with specifically English names. A big contrast with Italy,
where just about every city one has heard of has an English name
different from the Italian. Milan, Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples etc.
are alive and well. Only Leghorn seems to have disappeared. Nearly all
the "English" names are actually French names.

>
> Wiki favours the Douro version. I know not why.

--
Athel -- French and British, living in Marseilles for 37 years; mainly
in England until 1987.

Paul Carmichael wrote:

> El Sat, 30 Mar 2024 01:43:35 +0000, jerryfriedman escribió:

>> jerryfriedman wrote:
>>
>>> If you were translating from Spanish or advising someone who was,
>>> would you favor calling a certain Iberian river the Douro or the Duero?
>>
>> Maybe I should have said that the references would be to the part of it
>> that's in Spain.

> More than half of it is in Spain. Surely in a translation you provide
> both names? "The river Duero (Douro in Portuguese)..."

That didn't occur to me--partly because I'm translating Antonio Machado's
poetry into verse. Some translators of his poetry use "Douro", which I
thought was strange. Anyway, I don't think you'd write "Duero (Douro
in Portuguese)" in fiction either.

> Unless it already has an English name. English speakers call Sevilla
> "Seville", for instance.

> Wiki favours the Douro version. I know not why.

I wondered about that too, though I now see that "Douro" has been more
than twice as common as Duero in English books almost continually since
1800.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Douro%2FDuero&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3

The Wikip article can have only one title, but if I wanted the title to be
"Douro", I'd have started the article "The Douro (Portuguese) or Duero
(Spanish) is..." I might have left out the Mirandese name, having heard
of Mirandese approximately one minute ago.

--
Jerry Friedman

On Sat, 30 Mar 2024 09:54:15 +0100, Athel Cornish-Bowden
<me@yahoo.com> wrote:

>On 2024-03-30 08:23:18 +0000, Paul Carmichael said:
>
>> El Sat, 30 Mar 2024 01:43:35 +0000, jerryfriedman escribió:
>>
>>> jerryfriedman wrote:
>>>
>>>> If you were translating from Spanish or advising someone who was,
>>>> would you favor calling a certain Iberian river the Douro or the Duero?
>>>
>>> Maybe I should have said that the references would be to the part of it
>>> that's in Spain.
>>
>> More than half of it is in Spain. Surely in a translation you provide
>> both names? "The river Duero (Douro in Portuguese)..."
>>
>> Unless it already has an English name. English speakers call Sevilla
>> "Seville", for instance.
>
>When I were a lad that was pronounced ['sev?l] (stress on the first
>syllable) but nowadays it's much more likely to be [s?'v?l].
>
>Apart from Saragossa (increasingly giving way to Zaragoza in English,
>but still Saragosse in French), Seville and I suppose Córdoba
>(sometimes Cordova in English), there seem to be very few Spanish
>cities with specifically English names. A big contrast with Italy,
>where just about every city one has heard of has an English name
>different from the Italian. Milan, Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples etc.

Yes, but there are lots of exceptions: Bologna, Trieste, Bari, Capri,
Sorrento, Palermo, Catania, Taormina, etc.

>are alive and well. Only Leghorn seems to have disappeared. Nearly all
>the "English" names are actually French names.
>
>>
>> Wiki favours the Douro version. I know not why.

Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:

> On 2024-03-30 01:41:00 +0000, jerryfriedman said:

>> If you were translating from Spanish or advising someone who was,
>> would you favor calling a certain Iberian river the Douro or the
>> Duero?

> If the text was primarily about Porto I would certainly write Douro,
> but if it arose in a more general way, and especially if it was
> concerned with the up-river part in Spain, I would probably write
> Duero. It's a matter of which _feels_ right in the context.
...

I agree.

--
Jerry Friedman