Talk:L'isola disabitata

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[edit] Translation of the title

The original contributor translated the title as The Desert Island. Based on Grove, I changed this to The Deserted Island - the Opera Project have a policy of non-proliferation of titles etc. The contributor then reverted.

'Desert' and 'deserted' are not the same, just as unpopulated and depopulated are not the same. Collins Cobuild Dictionary (1995) has this defintion: "A desert island is a small tropical island, where nobody lives." so the italian word disabitata is more accurately translated by deserted - quite apart from not confusing everybody with a new and less distinctive title. -- Kleinzach 00:03, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

It's interesting that there are so many differing interpretations of these words. Webster's considers them interchangable, but OED gives unihabited for desert and forsaken for deserted, though the verb desert is "to make desert". Kleinzach first raised this issue here, where there is futher discusion. Sparafucil 03:43, 18 October 2007 (UTC)