translating names

Uncommon Foreign Nouns and Names: To Translate or Transliterate?

Every journalist or writer who isn’t living in a bubble has inevitably come across a foreign name for a person, place, food, custom, or cultural concept that must be translated or transliterated into the target language. Often, it’s difficult to decide whether to leave the word in its source language and/or script, to transliterate it to fit (as closely as possible) the phonemes and letters of the target language and its script, or to translate it. Here’s an informal guide to the ins and outs of each of these methods.