Category talk:Special Protection Areas

requested move

•  Oppose please see this discussion for reference. I think the decision and especially the last comment there is correct ("It is a proper noun referring to a specific legal status. It is not descriptive. Proper nouns are capitalized in English.") In addition i would like to point out that we have various other "special" or "bird protection areas" worldwide, but this one is specific for the European Union on a supranational level. Holger1959 (talk) 23:31, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

• • As cited in the linked discussion, the European Union directive uses it only as an uncapitalized descriptive term, which have its specific meaning within context of bird protection. When these words are used outside this close context, mere capitalization is not sufficient nor appropriate way how to express that the word "special" should mean "bird-related". Most of countries use more suitable and more specific names for this type of protected areas (bird areas, bird protection areas etc.). The determining directive and the common language logic are more relevant than an excessive application by some subaltern clerk in UK. This usage is not an issue of correct application of English language but rather an issue of British local administrative anomaly which should not be applied to whole European Union and all EU countries.

• • The second problem is that English language tends (sometimes) to regard terms (even descriptive ones) as proper names, even though they denote a type/category of subjects, not a specific subject. I'm not very experienced in English but I'm not sure that such tendency is quite consistent, definite and stabilized. Wikipedia and Commons don't tend to apply such escessive overcapitalization generally. --ŠJů (talk) 17:36, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Btw., if we would consider the term as a proper name, then we should not translate it and we should use it in local form for every EU country. Real undescriptive proper names should be not translated. --ŠJů (talk) 17:56, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

@ŠJů: 1) the problem i see with your suggestion to rename the category from "Special Protection Areas" to "Special protection areas", is that it does not solve the problem you described. It even would make the possibility of misunderstandings larger (and people may include many other contents unrelated to the well defined EU SPAs).

2) Please check EU publications from recent years. They usually only use "Special Protection Areas" in the capitalized form (even if the 1979 directive originally had it not capitalized).

3) Your additional suggestion to use "local form for every EU country" would mean to have categories like "Category:Europäische Vogelschutzgebiete in Deutschland" (for Germany, instead of "Category:Special Protection Areas in Germany"). For consistency i don't think this is a good idea. And your suggestion ignores that SPAs are legally defined by the EU on a supranational level (the member countries only follow the directives and legal procedures in this field), and also binding English naming exists.

4) If other users also think that "Special Protection Areas" is not clear enough as a category name for Commons, we may consider adding a clarifying parts in brackets, like "Category:Special Protection Areas (European Union)" or "Category:Special Protection Areas (EU birds directive)". But as said before, "Category:Special protection areas" would make the situation worse, not better.

Holger1959 (talk) 21:58, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Unfortunately, you may be right that EU publications from recent years set such a inappropriate terminology. However, we have many other official terms for types and levels of protected objects or areas (natural, cultural etc.) and even though their names are official and represent a specific status of protection, we usually don't regard them as proper names and don't capitalize them. If we use this phrase, we should add any disambiguation or attribute expressing that it means special protection under the Birds Directive, intended for birds protection. E.g. in the Czech Republic we have a very similar term "zvláště chráněné území" (= specially protected area) with substantially different meaning.

If we will consider the term as a proper name (and will not translate such a proper name), that doesn't mean that the rest of the category name should be not in English. However, to use inflektive proper names within the English analytic grammar may by problematic. However, in this case, the capitalization should mark not a proper name, but that it is a descriptive term in its context-specific meaning. --ŠJů (talk) 22:28, 3 January 2015 (UTC)