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I know that when I read sites like Wikipedia and there are foreign words they
will often give the name with the original alphabet and spelling as well as a
phonetic and a literal translation. So for instance the entry for Tokyo has
(東京 Tōkyō, "Eastern Capital") next to the first use of Tokyo.

I had this thought because I was debating on how to translate the name of a
place near where I live. It's called Little Italy (think China town but
Italian). I was going to translate it phonetically as `リトルイタリア` but I think
that loses some of the meaning so I was going to add `小さいイタリア` with the
specification that it was a literal translation.

So my question is how do I indicate that something is a literal translation
not a phonetic translation?
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2011-09-22T02:36:24.067
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translation
How do you indicate a literal translation
First of all, I think you'd be better off with "リトル・イタリー". Second, I think
most Japanese are familiar with "リトル", so it might be better to forgo the
literal translation and include something descriptive instead.
"イタリア系の人が多く住む地区" or "イタリア料理のレストランが多い地区", depending on what kind of Little
Italy you mean. If you must, "直訳：小さいイタリア" would indicate that it's a literal
translation.
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2011-09-22T03:06:41.717
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Not sure what the point of a literal translation is here, as there would be
many better ways to explain what "Little Italy" is without resorting to
"小さいイタリア".

Beside the perfectly fine katakana transliteration, you could always take
example on similar neighbourhoods in Japan:

["Chinatown" (aka "Little China") in
Yokohama](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yokohama_Chinatown) is 中華街, so "Little
Italy" could be イタリア街 or even 伊街, if you want to make it _really_ obscure.
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