Category talk:Cossack House (Tehran)

Hi @Orijentolog: , we don't have such a place (Cossack House) in Tehran. As far as I know we should never translate names in different languages! Therefore, as we cannot have a double standard, either let Ghazzaghkhaneh (Ghazzagh-khaneh) be as is or we should translate all the places from their original names in English (and other languages) into Persian when it comes to the Persian Wikipedia! I have already some suggestion for "Golden Gate Bridge" to be translated to "Pol-e darvazeye zarrin (talaee)" (پل دروازه زرین (طلایی)) Or in case of [ساختمان امپایر استیت] we can translate it into "Sakhteman-e Keshvar-e (Iyalat-e) Emperatory" (ساختمان کشور (ایالت) امپراتوری) or even "Buckingham palace" into "Kakh-e mardoman-e boz-e nar" (کاخ مردمان بز نر)!!! [wiktionary.org/wiki/Buckingham] FaraM 00:23, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

@Iranianson: well, it depends if names are common in English-language literature. You can find "Cossack House" in scholarly articles [1][2], on the university website [3], tourism organization websites [4], etc. For the same reason, I did not fully translated "Shahrbani Palace" into "Police Palace", because in literature the former one is more common. However, we can put term "Ghazzagh-khaneh" into infobox as native name, deal? :) --Orijentolog (talk) 00:34, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

@Iranianson: P.S. some cases are exceptions, for example Pol-e Dokhtar bridges should stay like they are, because such name is more common than "Daughter Bridge" or "Maiden Bridge". --Orijentolog (talk) 00:40, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

@Orijentolog: I couldn't find any reference to "Cossack House" in [1] and only found the reference to "Cossack Brigade" in [2] (I didn't have access to the full-text of the second article and just read its abstract). In these two website: (3 & 4), naively and ingeniously ALL THE NAMES have been translated into English! With this ridiculous approach I'm pretty sure if there was a mention of the "Azadi Tower" it would have been translated into the "Freedom Tower" or the "Liberty Tower". Even to make the ridiculousness of this approach bolder, if there was a name of "Haft'e Tir Square" it would've most likely been translated into "Seven of Arrow Square"! or even (to make it more odd) into "Twenty-Eighth of June"!!! Therefore, I would suggest that we stick to the widely and universally accepted rule of not translating the names, otherwise it's going to create numerous hassles here in Wikipedia and Wikimedia! FaraM 01:45, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

@Iranianson: perhaps you did not open the correct link, inside it clearly says: “The Cossack House” (or Qazaq Khaneh in Persian) was a military organization that developed in later years and changed from a brigade to a division (Mirzaei, 2017: 17&23). It was in the early 1890s that the building constructed.... In the JSTOR article, the complex is called as "Cossack barracks". Luckily we de don't have ridiculous approach here on Commons, regarding to Iran, because Milad Tower is not called neither "People's Tower" nor "Borj-e Milad". The latter cases (fully original terms) would include above-mentioned Pol-e Dokhtar bridges, Si-o-se Pol, Tarikhaneh, as well as few others. It's like that because they're more common in English-language literature, and of course I understand that renaming Tarikhaneh to "Old House" would be simply dumb. However, Wikimedia Commons use English and if term exist in serious literature, it's better to use it. Furthermore, the article above use "Qazaq Khaneh" as Persian term, now imagine how many possibilities you can make: Ghazzaghkhaneh, Ghazzagh-khaneh, Ghazzagh khaneh, Ghazzagh Khaneh. Or with one "z", four more. Or with "Q" instead of "Gh", 16 in total!

There's also another problem. Some people claim Commons is Anglo-centric, but I think it's an advantage. Take a look at one random example: Category:Blumenstraße 14 (Esslingen), it has German description and category Cultural heritage monuments in Esslingen am Neckar. Now, what's Blumenstraße? 14? Esslingen? Where's Esslingen am Neckar? A cultural heritage monument for sure, but of which function, period, date, purpose? As non-German speakers, we don't know anything. Imagine the same principle used for Iranian sites, for example "Darvazeh-ye Kakh-e Marmar". Again the same issues for majority of Common (non-Persian) users: what's darvazeh? Kakh? Marmar? Ye and e? Luckily you named it "Marmar Palace Gate", despite that there's yet another Marmar Palace which has its own gate. Imagine also that category contains only this file File:Marmar Palace view.jpg which shows two different gates. Person don't know which one it is. After all, at least we would know it's a gate in Tehran (in German case you don't get even that). The big difference between Iran and most other countries is that virtually all buildings (which I passed) have an infobox. See Category:Marble Palace Gate (Tehran). There's a name, photo, eight different informations, and coords. If someone does not speak English, there isn't a problem, he can select his own native language and infobox will provide all info again. Persian box, Malay box, any box. Thus, there is no any practical issue if some category has English name (and cats) instead of native one. Keep also in mind that I did not cherry-picked some nice example, all Category:Gates in Iran have infoboxes with info, as well as related categories. --Orijentolog (talk) 14:10, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

@Orijentolog: I appreciate your time and efforts and I understand your point; Yet, I still don't think it is best practice to literally translate the native name, especially those that are written in standardized Latin characters (I didn't know that "Marmar Palace" also has been translated to the "Marble Palace"! With the same standard now we need to translate "Golestan (Gulestan) Palace" into the "Rose Garden Palace"!!! It doesn't make sense whatsoever! :| ). You probably know it better than many Iranians that "Ghazzaghkhaneh" was technically a "Garrison House" Not simply a "Cossack House" and by literally translating it into a "Cossack House" we miss the true meaning of the site and building. I know that if we finalize this name (and other disputed names) here in Wikipedia (and Wikimedia), from now on this term will be taken as a reference other sources. Regarding the different English variations of a single Persian name, this is not the first word, it could be the case with majority of Persian names such as Shahriar or Qasr-e Shirin or Ghaemshahr (Qaem Shahr) just to name a few. I think that's not a valid reason to literally translate the original native names into different languages.

By the way, Milad (in Milad Tower) is not a Persian name and does not mean "People". It's an Arabic name meaning "Birth"; It's a government chosen name supposedly after the centennial birthday of Ruhollah Khomeini FaraM 15:44, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

@Iranianson: I know, that's why I took "People's Tower" as an example, like I did with "Maiden Bridge" (from Pol-e Dokhtar, i.e. wrong translation). As I said two times, there are differences between specific terms: Marble Palace is widely used in English-language literature, while Rose Garden Palace is not. I can make numerous contrary examples, like is it normal that we rename Persepolis to Takht-e Jamshid? Answer is clear, no. But it also doesn't imply that all Persian sites should be translated. Regarding technical issue, things are becoming even more complicated. For example, Tughrul Tower is common English name for a site which is actually a mausoleum, and scientists have proved it was not built by/for Tughrul I, Tughrul II, nor Tughrul III. Renaming it to something like "Seljuk mausoleum at Ray" would be technically correct, but still bizarre. There are also many Shah Abbasi Caravanserais which are not related to Abbas the Great or other Safavid namesakes. On the other hand, as you complained before, "Khorheh Temple" is indeed common name in Persian language, but luckily in English it is not, thus Parthian mansion at Khorheh can stay as technically correct name. As you can see, there are always exceptions and I'm fully aware of it. --Orijentolog (talk) 16:23, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

@Iranianson: P.S. One very important argument in favor of common English terms would be this one: imagine if you're a non-German researcher, tourist, Wikipedist or anyone else interested in (for example) architecture of the above-mentioned German city of Esslingen am Neckar. You enter Category:Cultural heritage monuments in Esslingen am Neckar, and what do you get there; among 135 listed monuments, how many types of buildings can you recognize? Personally, only three, an aqueduct and two villas. On the contrary, if someone enter Category:Cultural heritage monuments in Isfahan Province, a non-Persian speaker will recognize over 90%. Houses, shrines, mosques, mausoleum‎s, etc. If we have many cases like Ghazzaghkhaneh, Pol-e this, Masjid-e Jameh of this, Gonbad-e this, we would get the same issue as on German categories. No one would understand anything. Thus, IMHO having cat names as Ghazzaghkhaneh or Kakh Shahrbani, despite that common English names for it exist, is a very, very bad idea. --Orijentolog (talk) 18:32, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

@Orijentolog: For something like "Persepolis", it's long been known with this name so there is no point (and no need) to change it to its native name, though as you may know, "Ray" has been recorded as Rhágai (Ῥάγαι) and Rháges (Ῥάγες) in Ancient Greek and as Rhagae and Rhaganae in Latin but none of these names are now used to name the current city of Ray. Moreover, the sites such as "Ghazzaghkhaneh" or "Shahrbani Palace" (which technically is not a "palace", so maybe the term "kakh" (in "Kakh-e Shahrbani") is more descriptive as it's more considered as a compound noun and not an adjective to "Shahrbani") or "Negarestan Garden" are not widely known in the western European languages (including English). That is the reason I'm asking to use their native names. Perhaps to avoid any ambiguity with various spelling (or even in relating the English name with Persian native name) we could create redirect link.

To back up my argument, I'll give you a hypothetical example. Imagine a non-Persian (and non-English) speaking visitor (say from Japan) visits Tehran. In his search of the Tehran tourist attractions he finds "Cossack House" really interesting. He has no clue what "Cossack" means but writes down the name on a piece of paper and the next morning while two streets away from the site asks locals for help to find his destination. Not even one individual would be able to help him with and guide him to the site considering the site's awkward name. They (people from Tehran) don't even know that "Cossack" is the correct name for "Ghazzagh"s! (and it's not important either since this name has been used since the formation of "Cossack Brigade" in the 19th-century Persia and it's not basically sensible to correct it now!). Now, in another example, imagine an English speaking scholar is interested to learn more about the site. Since he is truly interested to learn all aspects of the site, it wouldn't bother him and wouldn't be such a difficult task for him to learn the native name of the site.

Unlike German characters, when we translate the native names from a non-Latin script into the English script characters, we keep the standardized characters of the English language, therefore it's highly unlikely that someone finds it difficult to pronounce, read and/or understand.

Another issue is that we don't have a clear cut standard here. As was the case with "Persepolis" and "Ray", the long history alone is not enough to have such a rule established. I guess to prevent arbitrary decision making in this regard we need to avoid acting case by case! This could be a double-edged sword. I'm not positive that if we change Ghazzaghkhaneh to "Cossack House", some time in future we could stop someone else from changing the native names into its translated English name. It would be very hard to convince them not to change the native name as they might refer to this case and use it as the basis of their action to change various names into their English equivalents. I foresee the situation that I have to argue with new Wikipedians who are to translate "Toopkhaneh" to "Cannon square", "Park Shahr" to "City Park", "Rah Ahan Square" to "Railroad Square", "Azadi Tower" to "Freedom Tower", "Laleh Park" to "Tulip Park", "Lalehzar" to "Tulip Garden", "Bagh-e Ferdows" to "Paradise garden" and so on! FaraM 03:35, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

@Iranianson: Well, let me show you one practical example: six years ago, I've opened new category called "Pol-e Dokhtar (Kashkan)", and three years after, one user renamed it to "Pol-e Dokhtar bridge" with summary "english and more precise" (see history). I saw that renaming several months ago, and I restored it back, because change is a complete nonsense. First, it's not English as he said, because English would be Daughter Bridge or Maiden Bridge, which are less used than original Persian term. Second, it gives two bridges in title (Pol + bridge) which I consider as unacceptable. Third, it was not more precise, as he claimed, because there are more namesake bridges in Iran. The category "Pol-e Dokhtar (Kashkan)" is now on my watchlist so there's no chance someone will repeat the same mistakes again. I'll jump in and correct it. All other Iran-related categories which I passed are also on my watchlist, so trust me, there won't be any naming issues in future.

Of course I know that Shahrbani Palace is not a palace in traditional sense (i.e. a grand residence), but neither are the hundreds of other buildings across Europe and the world that bear the term "Palace" in their name. Since the 19th century, term "palace" also includes many monumental public and government buildings, and Iran followed European examples in naming. Thus, its infobox clearly states a "government building", as well as its categories. The same goes for "Cossack House (Tehran)", you won't find house in its infobox or cats, only barracks and university. Infoboxes are the most descriptive of all.

Regarding hypothetical examples, I'm speaking about direct-use of Wikimedia Commons. Japanese tourist will find everything needed here, from names, function, period, date, even precise coordinates. In the above-mentioned German case, he'll find nothing. The best thing of all, imagine if he finds "Qazaq Khaneh" or "Ghazzagh Khaneh" in some paper brochure, and try to find it here on Commons. Do you think he'll have problems because there's no native name in title? Luckily, nope! Try yourself, search either "Qazaq Khaneh" or "Ghazzagh Khaneh" in upper-right box, you'll get "Cossack House (Tehran)" in both cases. The reason for it is that Wikidata contains all variations of original Persian term (I put it).

One important thing I skipped earlier: don't think that terms used here in Wikimedia "will be taken as a reference other sources." It may happen only in charlatan tourist and news sources, but not in serious publications. Just imagine some scholarly article which states "Hindu Temple in Bandar Abbas was built in 1893" with reference to Wikimedia Commons. :) Of course it won't happen. If you search precise date in Persian news sources, you'll get 1210 AH, 1267 AH (or AP), and 1310 AH. But why is only 1893 correct? Because, if you jump to its Wikidata item, you'll find a reference with link to academic publication. Currently Category:Buildings in Iran by year of completion has 260 different years, and in 99% cases you'll find some reference in Wikidata. Who else has it? Japan, UK, Russia, Germany? None. :) One year ago Iran was on the same level, utter chaos in categorization, periodization, naming, etc. And really I don't want to get back to those days. --Orijentolog (talk) 12:06, 28 December 2020 (UTC)