Talk:Solovyov

The sound of ё

In Russian, ё is pronounced /jo/, like in 'York', and is always stressed (see [[1]]). So, Solovyev, Soloviev, Solovyeva or Solovieva don't seem to be good alternate transliterations. Shouldn't Wikipedia somehow reflect a better transliteration, regardless of the historical or usual one?

--Gradebo (talk) 10:37, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

The job of transliteration is to convey spelling, not pronunciation (to convey pronunciation, transcription should be used). Since the Russian letter "ё" is in a unique position of being "optional" (and oft-replaced with "е"), the other variants are also found in use and should be mentioned. As to your last point, the answer is a resounding "no". The job of Wikipedia is to describe and follow existing usage, not to promote one variant over another (and especially not to invent "best practices").—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); January 31, 2016; 22:00 (UTC)

Sorry for the confusion between transliteration and transcription; I'm a native Spanish speaker and was not really aware of these spelling conventions in English.

Of course all variants in use should be mentioned.

Regarding the point of promoting one variant over another, I see that the policy (or is it a "proposal"?) of Wikipedia (Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(Russia)#Names_of_persons) states that WP romanization of Russian should be used unless other spelling is "documented on the article's talk page or be readily apparent from the sources used in the article". Of all the articles listed that use the "-iev" spelling, only Dmitri_Soloviev and Yuri Soloviev meet this requirement.

I absolutely agree with that policy, but my real point is about at least reflecting a better (in my opinion) transliteration/transcription, and Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(Russia) states also that "The variant produced using the Wikipedia:Romanization of Russian must be mentioned in the lead in parentheses after listing the Russian name" (althoug later it says "Whether it is useful to include all three forms, and in what order, is an editorial decision"). This requirement is partially met only in Anatoly Solovyev.

Am I right? Thank you.

--Gradebo (talk) 12:30, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

The transliteration/transcription difference is true for all languages, not only English/Russian :)

On the point of "better" transliteration, while there are certainly ways to transliterate names incorrectly, there are also multiple/alternative ways (none of which is technically "better", although some might be more appropriate in some contexts than others) to do it correctly, especially when it comes to Russian. But you are correct on your main point—if a variant is not immediately apparent, or when multiple variants are used equally often, then the one matching (or closest to) WP:RUS should be used, as that's what the existing articles have been standardized on. In reality, however, checking all this can become quite tedious, with only marginal benefits, but it does not, of course, mean that articles cannot be moved around. For example, for Pavel Soloviev, for whom no English-language references/links are given, utilizing the default transliteration (i.e., WP:RUS) makes all the sense. Still, before starting to move things, it would be prudent to do at least a perfunctory search to see if a different spelling might be common in English. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 1, 2016; 15:40 (UTC)