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On November 23, 1983, the Treasury Board issued its Circular No. 1983-58 to implement the policy adopted by the Canadian Permanent Committee on Geographical Names (CPCGN) regarding the linguistic treatment of geographical names on federal maps and in federal documents.
The principles enunciated in the policy are as follows:
The Treasury Board also designated the Translation Bureau as the organization responsible for determining what, in running text, should be the proper form of the names of geographical features in the other language.
In 1989 a committee made up of Translation Bureau and CPCGN representatives was assigned the task of examining the various problems encountered in translating official English names of Canadian geographical features into French and devising solutions. The committee produced the "General Rules for Translating and Writing the Names of Canadian Geographical Features,"1 the purpose of which was to standardize the translation and writing of geographical feature names within a sentence (rather than on a map). Although the rules were written for the translation of English names into French, the committee did recommend that, where applicable, they also be followed for the translation of French names into English.
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Where the generic of an English-language place name has been translated into French, it is essential to restore it to its original English form when translating the French document into English. In the following sentence, the toponyms have been translated into French but their official forms are English:
Since, in accordance with the rules, the specific parts of these toponyms (Somerset, Brodeur, Prince of Wales) have not been modified in any way, it becomes more a question of verifying the official English form in the appropriate gazetteer than a question of translation. The original names are Somerset Island, Brodeur Peninsula and Prince of Wales Island.
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