Howdy, y'all! I was translating some English copy to
German the other day, and I came across the phrase "
My name is
Dylan" (which comes into
German as "Ich heisse
Dylan"). Now, it could just be me, but
Dylan sounds terribly out of place in
German, and is quite cumbersome to pronounce! So, I endeavored to assimilate it into the language (not in the translation, of course!). In case you don't already know, "
Dylan" comes from the Welsh elements "dy", great, and "llanw", sea. I decided that the simplest method (seeing as
German has few names that are truly its own, and most all of those are merely early tribal names) would be to translate those two elements into
German, and then corrupt them into a phonetically simple word. Dy becomes great becomes toll. Llanw becomes sea becomes Meer. The result I chose is "Tolme". The correct pronounciation of this (in broad transcription via IPA) is [tolmɐ], but I see no reason why [tolmi] and [tolm] shouldn't be acceptable, if desired. (Sorry about the characters, I'm not sure how BtN's board handels IPA :p)
I guess I'd just like to know what you think, or if you'd 've done anything differently.