Nitpick: "Frank" Kafka Is Still Around

yoinks -my bad

but nevertheless -it should be FRANZ!

What craziness. I'm sure he'd be bemused by this discussion. Or most probably terrified.

Poor Franz.

He should be renamed as 'K'.

kazapp said:

Interesting. For me it has always been Franz Kafka. Now I see that "Frank" (or "Francis") "Kafka" is actually the most correct english spelling! Thanks for educating me on this

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Franz Kafa is the only correct way to write the author's name. Talking about Christopher Columbus is a red herring. Have you ever heard of Ernesto Hemingway, Guillaume Faulkner, Wilhelm Schakeschpeer or Hermann Wouk?

holy king said:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Metamorphos...f=pd_ka_1/202-5623734-9811832?ie=UTF8&s=books

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Thank you! I see that they also sell books by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, not Theodore Dostoyevsky.

Roland Johansen said:

This argument doesn't contradict mine. There are no books with the name Virgil on them nor was he called that way in any historical documents. So if Virgilius is translated in English, then I do not find the above a good enough reason not to translate Franz Kafka.

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Some historical persons (mostly royalty, but also Vergil, Horace, Christopher Coulmbus, Joan of Arc and so on) have traditionally got their names translated. That does *not* mean that it is correct to call Franz Kafka "Frank", or to change the names of other people. Hermann Hesse - not Herman Hesse. Alberto Moravia - not Albert Moravia. Brigitte Bardot - not Brigid Bardot.

Roland Johansen said:

Just to see if the translation from Franz Kafka to Frank Kafka was very unusual, I did a google search on Frank Kafka. There were 33000 hits. (Francis Kafka only got 402 hits, Frantisek Kafka got 883 hits) The original name Franz Kafka got over 3 million hits. So the translation is rare (about 1%) but not totally undone.

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That simply means that there are quite a few illiterate people around. Also, that the Czechs, for nationalistic reasons, insist on calling him Frantisek even though he wrote in German and was always called Franz by his family.
The name Franz is *not* "the same name" as Francis or Francisco or Francesco. It is simply derived from the same original name - Franciscus. Is that really so hard to accept?

Willowmound said:

Bill Faulkner would be correct. Bill is short for William.

Calling Franz Kafka 'Frank' is more like calling Faulkner 'John'.

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E'en so, I have never seen one of Faulkner's books with the form "Bill" on the cover, because that was not the name he used as a writer. His brother wrote a memorial book called "My brother Bill", but that's a different matter. He was nto calling for the name on the covers of his brother's books to be changed.

aelf said:

He should be renamed as 'K'.

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True.

Apart from that, I agree with Öjevind: he should be called Franz.

Or Bill.

"Frank" is a nickname for "Francis", which is the English translation of "Franz".

Technically, the most correct way to refer to him in English is "Francis Kafka". "Frank Kafka", while not ideal, is still better than leaving "Franz", which is very easily translatable, untranslated.

It's really a shame that Anglicization, and localization of names in general, has become less common. "King John Charles" just sounds better and more natural in English than "King Juan Carlos".

Heck, I still say "Nicholas Machiavell", "James Chirac", "Henry Dandolo", "Joseph Garibald", "Peking", "Leghorn", "Bombay", "Cambay", "Dacca", "Calcutta", "Cawnpore", "Pampeluna", "Lyons" (1), "Koenigsberg" (2), "Porto Rico", "Lapps", "Gypsies" "Thaddeus Cosciusco", and "Rhodesia", instead of "Niccolò Machiavelli", "Jacques Chirac", "Enrico Dandolo", "Giuseppe Garibaldi", "Beijing", "Livorno", "Mumbai", "Khambhat", "Dhaka", "Kolkata", "Kanpur", "Pamplona", "Lyon", "Kaliningrad", "Puerto Rico", "Sami", "Romany" "Tadeusz Kościuszko", and "Zimbabwe".

All of the names that I prefer sound and look better and less out of place in English than their foreign counterparts.

And yes, if I ever visit a Spanish-speaking country, I will introduce myself as Roberto.

I hold the same principle when it comes to immigrants. If you are Polish, and named "Ryszard Kościuszko", you should change your name to "Richard Cosciusco" if you move to the USA.

Same for a Mexican named "José Pablo García". If they come to the US, they should become "Joseph Paul Garcia".

A German named "Heinrich Wilhelm Nonnenmacher" should become "Henry William Nunemaker" if he ever moves to the USA.

A Dutchman called "Johan Frederik Bruyn" should become "John Frederick Brown" in America, and "Juan Federico Brun" in Mexico.

Yes, I recognize that some surnames don't have Anglicizations. I in general don't like just literally translating surnames "Kowalski" to "Smith" for example.

Some surnames, however, do have established Anglicizations. Some of these are direct translations. ("Bruyn" to "Brown" or "Schmidt" to "Smith") Some are phonetic. ("Nonnenmacher", which literally means "castrator of pigs" to "Nunemaker", or "Mac Gabhann", which literally means "son of the smith" to McGowan) If your foreign surname has a conventional Anglicization, the Anglicization should be used in English. If not, a form without any foreign letters or diacritics should be used.

These same principles should apply to all languages.

It just makes more sense to translate given names like any other word.

IdiotWind said:

I defy anyone to find a copy of any of kafka's books with his christian name on the cover as "Frank" -if any do exist they are the result of a typo (as it is in the game) and are probably worth $$$ to a rare book dealer....
The guy's name will be remembered as how it appears on what history will remember him for: his writing. FRANZ Kafka

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Well I for one believe that any historical mistake as a result of time is an outrage! How do they know what Hammurabi looks like?! I demand the creators of this game go back in time in an effort to get everything 100% accurate or I won't be satisfied!!!

Look, there are a million things about this game we could nitpick people. We could argue about the technologies, the Euro-centrism of the timeline, whatever you want. I for one am happy to have this game made available to me. When you're dealing with history, there are so many things we just don't know. Some names are translated, some aren't. So? I for one could argue that this game should only be made available in English as that is the defacto language of the this company's country. Anybody who can't read English is illiterate. (Last sentence is sarcasm btw )

This thread is NINE years old.

People should be called what they prefer to be called, within reason.

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