Talk:Zagreb Glavni kolodvor

title

Google Books searches indicate that "Zagreb railway station" is likely the most common name, but it's mostly used as a generic phrase and it's ambiguous (it may refer to both Glavni kolodvor and Zapadni kolodvor). Discuss. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 11:34, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I agree it is ambiguous. Realistically Zagreb Glavni is going to be the only Croatian station many English speakers will ever need to know about (a curse on whoever closed the railway to Dubrovnik!), so Zagreb station would be enough for most real-world use. But I think it makes sense to distinguish between the different stations, as eventually someone will make articles on the other one(s).

Something like Zagreb Glavni [railway] station would probably be common unambiguous English usage (to the limited extent that mentions of Croatian railway stations could ever be considered common in English!). Zagreb Glavni kolodvor is rather cryptic for English speakers, and would need an explanation. In Croatia(n), is "Zagreb" implied by just "Glavni kolodvor" (in the way that many people within the UK would probably understand a reference to "New Street" as referring to Birmingham)?

Personally I'd say something including Zagreb Glavni is the optimal name, as it is unambiguous and reflects usage. The direct translation Zagreb Main [railway] station might be OK (an upper case S on Station is weird), but seems a little pointless and also we use the real names for almost every other station in Wikipedia (see articles on stations in CZ, DE, FR, etc). "Zagreb Central Station" is plain wrong - the article appears to have been moved to "Zagreb Central" (which will no doubt appear on various Wikipedia-derived websites now!) in the past to support a strange campaign to devise "English" names for Wikipedia pages about German stations, which consensus is now clearly against.

Has anyone got a suitable copy of Today's Railways to hand? Wheeltapper (talk) 11:58, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure why using a Croatian word verbatim (Glavni) would be good, with reference to WP:Use English. Also, the verbatim official name (Zagreb Glavni kolodvor) is clumsy in Croatian, it was shortened in the interest of expedience I suppose, which doesn't really make for a good encyclopedic title. I guess we could say that this is the primary topic for Zagreb railway station and just use that. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 12:07, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

On a side note, I'm surprised how this clumsy verbiage has entered the Railway Museum's vocabulary - [1]. Doesn't really have much to do with English either way. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 12:08, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

WP:Useenglish is about using the name which English sources use, not about avoiding foreign words at all costs. For exmaple, English speakers usually talk about Roma Termini railway station, Gare du Nord, Amsterdam Centraal railway station and Praha hlavní nádraží, rather than devise "English" names for those stations. At a glance, the museum's English is fine. I'll get round to visiting it one day; I went when it was shut. I'll have a go at stub article for Zagreb Zapadni railway station.

But that's exactly it. Glavni is not mostly in use by English sources. The translation that omits it - is. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 18:25, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Seat61 is pretty much the go-to source for English language European rail travel information, and has "Zagreb's main station (Glavni Kolodvor)". Bradt uses "Glavni Kolodvor". I'm not sure leaving out the name (whether we opt for Glavni or Main) really helps anyone. In particular, it makes the history tricky to explain ("Zagreb station was called Zagreb station until Zagreb station was built, at which point Zagreb station became Zagreb station (and later Zagreb station) to avoid confusion with Zagreb station..."!) I suspect 99% of English references to stations in Cologne will probably be about Köln Hauptbahnhof, but we still spell that one out unambiguously. Are there any "named" stations in Croatia outside Zagreb? Wheeltapper (talk) 16:30, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

If you opt for a verbatim copy, then you have to copy both words - combining "Glavni" and "station" is not only clumsy, it's a WP:SYNTH violation.

I don't think this ambiguity needs to cause such a confusion in the text - the lead section should list all the applicable names (usually bolded, per WP:R#PLA), and the history section will use one of those unambiguous names as appropriate.

To answer your question about named stations, I went to look at the Croatian Railways web site, http://www.hzpp.hr/voznired where there's a drop-down list of all kolodvors - there are numerous examples of more than one station per unique toponym. At the same time, when you just type Zagreb into their front page quick search engine, it gives this station, as "ZAGREB GL. KOL.", it doesn't even offer the three alternatives (that the aforementioned page does). The primary topic is fairly clear. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 17:07, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Is kolodvor part of the name, or is it just Croatian for "station"? Polish station articles are named in the form "Poznań Główny railway station", without a "Dworzec".

So what does this give us?

• Zagreb [railway] station - ambiguous (and so personally I'm not keen on this), but does follow sources, and we could assume people don't need to know about the others.
• Zagreb Main [railway] station - direct translation. Appears in sources.
• Zagreb Main Station - direct translation with strange capitalisation, but might reflect kolodvor possibly being part of the name.
• Zagreb Glavni [railway] station - what an English-speaker might expect, follows general Wikipedia usage, but sources include kolodvor and it apparently sounds wrong in Croatian.
• Zagreb Glavni kolodvor - follows sources but unclear for an English speaker.
• Zagreb Glavni kolodvor [railway] station - unambiguous, but tautology (people weren't keen on "XXX Hauptbahnhof station" when it was suggested)

I'm slightly concerned that whatever this page is called will be copied and become the future source for English usage, so we ought to get it right! Wheeltapper (talk) 20:53, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

kolodvor is the croatian word for station; it's part of the name only in combination with Glavni. Glavni kolodvor is about the same as Hauptbahnhof in German and hlavní nádraží in Czech. I am not a native speaker of English, but a frequent user of EN-WP. In my opinion this article should be named either Zagreb Glavni kolodvor or Zagreb Main Station. For many reasons I do definitely prefer the first one, but could live with the second one as well. What we need to avoid is a mixture of english and croatian words (or any other language), such as Glavni station or Oberer station (see at Plauen (Vogtland) Oberer station), this is pure nonsense. Let's stick to a straight pattern, having everywhere the local/native language names will definitely be least misunderstandable. Greetings, Kleeblatt187 (talk) 21:28, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

What English readers would expect "Zagreb Glavni [railway] station"? What would they base this expectation on? --Joy [shallot] (talk) 09:35, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

But is Glavni kolodvor not basically the same as Victoria station or King's Cross station in English? While I've not been through the British Library checking every source, as a native speaker "(local name) + station" is what in my experience tends to happen with "named" stations; in English we would treat the word "station" as a description to be used if the context is not obvious, rather than as part of the proper name. We wouldn't usually use "Gare" when talking about a French station or "Dworzec" when discussing a Polish one. Obviously the compound word complicates this for German Hauptbahnhofs, but we would probably say "Berlin Zoologischer Garten railway station (or more likely just Berlin Zoo station) rather than "Zoo Bahnhof". English happily accepts and mangles words from any language, so I don't think mixing is automatically bad. I agree that local names are certainly less open to misunderstanding (see the confusion caused by Wikipedia previously calling a Hbf "Central Station" in places which have both a Hbf and a central station), so I'd happily go along with "Zagreb Glavni kolodvor" if others think that makes the most sense. Wheeltapper (talk) 12:58, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

The main point is that we can use any, even a mangled English name iff such a name exists in English sources. "Zagreb Glavni station" just wouldn't make sense because that doesn't appear in practice. It would be like "Berlin Haupt station" or similar - it's just not done. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 15:42, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

From an English-speaking perspective it wouldn't seem to be comparable to "Berlin Haupt station", because "Hauptbahnhof" is the name of that station. Instead it would be comparable to, say, Manchester Piccadilly station (it is called Manchester Piccadilly, and it is a station). Is there really a requirement that every combination of words has to have been published elsewhere, and not just the name of the thing itself? Wikipedia has article titles like British Rail Class 70 (diesel), which are utterly meaningless outside the internal 'logic' of Wikipedia. Shall we go for Zagreb Glavni kolodvor then? Wheeltapper (talk) 22:23, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I would support it. From my point of view it's definitely comparable to Hauptbahnhof and hlavní nádraží, we have had discussions about those. Kleeblatt187 (talk) 22:43, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

It doesn't seem to want to move to Zagreb Glavni kolodvor. Can someone else give it a try? Wheeltapper (talk) 21:20, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

The redirects had (trivial) history, so it required administrator intervention - I did it now. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 06:21, 17 October 2013 (UTC)