Talk:Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was move. —Nightstallion (?) ^{Seen this already?} 06:42, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move April 2006

Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun → Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune

To refer to the piece by anything other than its original title is extremely rare -- Picapica 20:40, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Survey

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~

• Support. David Kernow 04:45, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose My experience varies. Concert programs are often (but not always) in French; but only the most pretentious of radio announcers will use the French without the English, English without French being not uncommon. Septentrionalis 17:29, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
• Support, as the French title is how I usually see the song mentioned. I have even seen Sirius use the French title. Olessi 20:11, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
• Support I see and hear both, but the French most often in print. My feeling is the article should be in French with a redirect from the English. Rizzleboffin 23:39, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

Add any additional comments

• Personally I would not object to moving the article, but there is a guideline that says we should use English. Also, 59,500 Google hits suggest that use of the English title is not "extremely" rare. David Sneek 21:38, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
• I ought perhaps to have qualified "extremely rare" with "in my experience". I can honestly say that in over 50 years of listening to music I have never seen "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun" on a concert programme or heard the piece thus announced.
  This may well be a UK/US thing, of course. While accepting that search engines, like the Bible, can be used to "prove" anything (how many of the 59,500 are derivatives of the current WP entry itself?), I would point out that googling for "BBC Radio 3"+"Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune" produces 223 hits; "BBC Radio 3"+"Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun" gives only 21 (and a good proportion of the latter turn out to be American sites).
  The convention referred to above says, by the way: "Name your pages in English and place the native transliteration on the first line of the article unless the native form is more commonly used in English than the English form" (my italics). Quite apart from the poor choice of words here (Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune is not a "native transliteration" of Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun), I think that there is a good case for saying that the original title is indeed more commonly used, as is the case with the titles of all Debussy's works as included in the WP article dealing with that composer. -- Picapica 10:18, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was PAGE MOVED per discussion below. --Philip Baird Shearer 12:06, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune → Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun — from WP:RM: "This article was moved from the English title to the French title in April 2006. The users supporting this move seem to have largely ignored WP:UE, so I felt it was worth having another look at this. —Heimstern Läufer 07:43, 10 February 2007 (UTC)" [ Chris cheese whine 08:01, 10 February 2007 (UTC) ]

[edit] Survey

Add  # '''Support'''  or  # '''Oppose'''  on a new line in the appropriate section followed by a brief explanation, then sign your opinion using ~~~~. Please remember that this survey is not a vote, and please provide an explanation for your recommendation.

[edit] Survey - in support of the move

1. Support - WP:UE suggests that we should use the well-known English name. Chris cheese whine 08:02, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
2. Support — the English name is in common enough usage to invoke WP:UE. As long as you don't try to move My Mother. --SigPig |^{SEND - OVER} 08:52, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
3. Support as nom. Heimstern Läufer 03:54, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Support. WP:UE; I think it's pretty clear that this piece is known by an English name. Is there an authoritative dictionary/encyclopedia to turn to in cases like this? Liner notes? --Akhilleus (talk) 19:46, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Survey - in opposition to the move

1. Oppose The French title is by far the more common. --Mel Etitis (Talk) 14:01, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

Add any additional comments:

• Here are some reliable sources that use the English title, which I hope will dispel the notion that it's uncommon: A Norton Critical Score [3], an article in the peer-reviewed journal 19th-century Music [4], and a program description on the National Symphony Orchestra's website [5]. Heimstern Läufer 18:38, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

  I don't think that anyone has said that it's uncommon (though I might have missed that), just that the French title is more common. A quick Google gives 126,000 hits for the French and 50,400 for the English title. In The Penguin Guide I counted fifteen recordings with the French title and none with the English. --Mel Etitis (Talk) 21:57, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

  Recordings nearly always give original languages, as they are meant for international consumption (note that liner notes are typically in at least three languages: English, French and German). They also almost universally write "Wiener Philharmoniker", while our article is Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. The classical recording industry does not reflect everyday English usage. As for the Google search: don't forget this gives French-language sources which would obviously use the French title and thus have no bearing on English usage. Heimstern Läufer 22:03, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

  I found that doing an English pages-only search gave comparable results for "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun" and "Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune". Heimstern Läufer 22:10, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

  "Recordings nearly always give original languages, as they are meant for international consumption"; so is Wikipedia. More importantly, although Googling for English-language pages gives similar hits, it's interesting to not that the majority (of the ones that I looked at, flicking through the results) give the French title first, followed by the English translation. --Mel Etitis (Talk) 23:34, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

  Yes, Wikipedia is an international encyclopedia, but it's still an English-language encyclopedia with a standard of using English titles. Heimstern Läufer 00:09, 11 February 2007 (UTC)