OpenGeofiction
In order to comply with the new language rules of the (ex-) Commonian territories, I’ve “dravidianized” the names of a region I’ve been developing before I’ve got my own territories.
This region is AR923-01, and it had been left with no new edits for a while, so I made sure it didn’t impact on a new user’s mapping.
This area formerly had English or Quebec French names. I’ve kept those records under “name_en” and “name_fr” tags, and I used Google Translate according to the meaning of the names for example: Nouvelle-Mountréau => “Royal Mount” or “Royal Hill” => രാജകീയ മലയോര . Grande-Louisiande => “city of Louis” => ലൂയിസ് നഗരം Another example Quatre-rivières => “Four Rivers” => നാല് നദികൾ.
Maybe it will help get people to map in the correct language in those areas. I hope my edit was useful and not destructive.
N.b., I don’t speak dravidian languages at all, so I used Google Translate. Feel free to fix any weird names.
SC.
Discussion
Comment from Halvarda on 14 September 2020 at 17:06
I have a few things mapped in ex-Commonia (AR923-03) as well. Personally, I used a different technique in changing placenames from English to Malayalam.
Rather than translating, I kept some of the names’ phonetics and then stylised it to make it sound Malayalam. To know what sounds/looks Malayalam, I looked at Google maps as well as this database.
So, for example, Delverado became Deligallur Othley -> Otale Butcombe -> Batakunam
The database is also useful to check if you’re not using already existing place names.
I did use Google Translate also, but only to convert Latin script to Malayalam.
Comment from wangi on 14 September 2020 at 22:00
Thanks you both for your efforts here. I really can’t comment much on the technique, but it certainly helps to have the right script in use.
Thanks