foreign variety names?

[johno]

What is the accepted way of dealing with variety names from foreign countries? I have some varieties from Spain and from Mexico - do I keep calling them by the names they came to me with, or do I call them by their English translation? Is there a resource in which I might find them already translated?

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by johno

What is the accepted way of dealing with variety names from foreign countries? I have some varieties from Spain and from Mexico - do I keep calling them by the names they came to me with, or do I call them by their English translation? Is there a resource in which I might find them already translated?

I don't know as there's any rule or guideline on this but it has been discussed several times.

I know Andrey has strong feelings about this and feels that varieties should retain the original name in the original language and that if an English translation is known it should be secondary to the primary name.

In the SSE Yearbook there are duplications since sometimes a person will list a variety with the original name and others will list it with its translated name.

This past Spring I received a large number of packaged seeds from CIS and Andrey and Tania and others helped translate them from the original Russian to English, and that had also been attempted by an associate of the person who sent them to me.

I promised Andrey I would list in the 2008 SSE Yearbook the ones I chose to have grown this year with the original names and in parentheses indicate the translation.

My feeling is that the original names should be used.

I don't know of any handy web resource that will translate the tomato variety names accurately. In that thread about my CIS varieties a few folks attempted to let them be translated via a web resource and the results were pretty darn funny, actually.

I think the best thing to do is to post here at Tville and hope that someone can help you with the English translations of those varieties in question .

Hope that helps.

[johno]

Thank you Carolyn, I was hoping you'd see this. It does help to know what others' opinions are regarding this matter.

Having been a world traveller, I sympathize with the idea of keeping the names in their original form. Having had some strict English instructors in the past, I was afraid that was a no-no in this language...

I have been calling them by their original names, but there are problems with this, the foremost being most people don't know what it means. I love the idea of calling them by the original name first, followed by the English translation in parentheses. That pretty much solves the problem.

The reason I ask if there is a resource is because I'm afraid of translating a variety that is already going by a translated name. For example, I recieved 'Reisetomate' seeds, which I would have translated as 'Trip tomato.' I have learned since then that it already goes by the name 'Voyage.' I'd hate to add to the confusion of duplicated names, but there again, calling them by both names solves the problem.

Thanks!

[Andrey_BY]

Carolyn has fully describe my point of view to solve this problem

I just hope more gardeners will find Tomatoville and join us using this method because I don't thing there is any chance e.g. for non-Russians to translate many original Russian names in English. There are so many nuances in adoption of Cyrillic letters in a Latin (English) way. And also we have 6 cases in Russian language and so many words which have multiple means in English...

My Reisetomato, by the way

[amideutch]

Here is a translation from a German site describing the "Reisetomate". Ami
The travel tomato has a strange form, since the fruit consists of several partial fruits. One can break thus a piece of a tomato off, and the juice does not run nevertheless out. It is the ideal tomato on journeys, we mostly carries forward it for moving. It has a spicy fine taste, easily mehlig however nevertheless juicy. This original sort comes from the Indios in Guatemala. It is sown starting from February, the plants is preferred and can starting from May, if no more danger of frost exists, be expenditure-planted. Tomatoes should be protected in principle against rains, since they get otherwise easily the herb rot. The harvest begins in August and reaches up to the first frost. One can let green tomatoes after-mature in the house.

Andrey, how goes it on the job hunt. Nice picture, as always of the "Reisetomate".

[carolyn137]

It has a spicy fine taste,

*****

The heck it does ami and you tell them that.

And since the smaller fruits are fused all over the surface when you try to break one off it doesn't always come free and you get left with a gaping hole, which isn't so fine for "traveling" on a "Voyage" with those fruits.

Sure I've grown it. It was introduced to the SSE YEarbook many years ago and I grew it out of curiousity.

Now that my curiousity has been satified there's no need to ever grow it again, and certainly not as a variety grown for taste, rather, it's the novelty of it that interests most folks the way I see it.

[amideutch]

Carolyn, aren't we the feisty one. Your recuperation must be comming along nicely and the tennis going on over in England must be helping out as well. I'd tell them but I don't know them. Just like they say, spitters to some are heaven to others. Now, if the other William's sister gets beat it will make my day. Ami, as always,

[johno]

Well here's the problem again... Ami's info calls it 'Travel tomato.' So, is it 'Voyage,' as two American sources have informed me, or is it 'Travel?'

I guess this expresses the importance of using the original non-English name first.

By the way, the Reisetomate (Voyage) I'm growing looks more like Ami's description than Andrey's photo.

[Andrey_BY]

Johno, I believe everything you can see on my photo fits to Ami's description. Fruits are very ribbed from top to the bottom.

Ami, the best job is still on the way to reach it

[carolyn137]

Johno, I believe everything you can see on my photo fits to Ami's description. Fruits are very ribbed from top to the bottom.


*****

But they shouldn't be just ribbed Andrey. Picture a fruit with many smaller cherry sized fruit all over the surface. So if you look at the fruit it looks like a lot of bumps/

That
's about the best way I can describe it. Your fruits are ribbed, but I don't see the many smaller fruits I expect to see covering the surface.

[PNW_D]

Here's a pic - scroll down a bit

http://sev.lternet.edu/~jnekola/Heirloom/tomatoesR.htm

[johno]

Yep. That's more like the fruits mine are bearing. That's not to say anything's wrong with yours, Andrey - they just look like a selected strain.

[Andrey_BY]

OK, this can be not a classic Reisetomato, but I've got these seeds from Reinhard. So I'd better ask him

Anyway it's probably because I took this picture not from the needed angle. If you can see the fruit on the top is made of such small single cherry fruits. So we just have to wait a little bit to see these fruits ready to be judged later in July

By the way this is another Reisetomato (started a bit later than the first one) from Reinhard's seedpacket. A huge cluster of 15. As I can see there is still a chance for these fruits to be divided into almost cherry size pieces

[Husbear]

Also the American keyboard adds to problems of translation

также американская клавиатура добавляет к проблемам перевода

[bcday]

Originally Posted by Andrey_BY

OK, this can be not a classic Reisetomato, but I've got these seeds from Reinhard. So I'd better ask him

By the way this is another Reisetomato (started a bit later than the first one) from Reinhard's seedpacket. A huge cluster of 15. As I can see there is still a chance for these fruits to be divided into almost cherry size pieces

Here's Reinhard's photo of Reisetomate. Even the unripe fruits are very lumpy, not ribbed. http://mitglied.lycos.de/rkraft/Toma...eisetomate.jpg

I think sending your pictures to Reinhard is a good idea. He can tell you if you've got Reisetomate or a rare new hybrid.