How to say Populations and Civilizations when talking about history?


Dealing with historical matters for a certain urban area, one would like to
say the following:

> In this city we had many populations here: Normans, Greeks and French...

So what is the right term for: "Population" and "Civilization"? Thankyou

PS I tried dictionary, but there I cannot find good exmples... probably my
dictionary is not so advanced. I also tried denshi-jisho on-line... the same




I recommend [www.alc.co.jp](http://www.alc.co.jp) as a starting point for
these kinds of questions. It contains a huge library of example sentences and
you can search multiple words simultaneously in both English and Japanese.

That said, here is my translation of the sentence you gave:

> 当市は複数の文明ーノルマン文明やギリシャ文明やフランス文明などーが住み着いたことのある歴史を持っています。

The tone got a bit more formal than your original sentence, but you get the
idea.

The key thing to point out is that when translating, you should try searching
for how ideas are expressed rather than word-equivalences. If you attempt the
latter, you usually end up with awkward formulations or just end up making
things more complicated than you need to.

**Edit (2013/10/10)** :  
Following Earthling's suggestion, the original translation,

> 当市は様々な国の人―ノルマン人やギリシャ人やフランス人など―を占めていた都市です。

was changed to better reflect the intent of the original sentence




I recommend [www.alc.co.jp](http://www.alc.co.jp) as a starting point for
these kinds of questions. It contains a huge library of example sentences and
you can search multiple words simultaneously in both English and Japanese.

That said, here is my translation of the sentence you gave:

> 当市は複数の文明ーノルマン文明やギリシャ文明やフランス文明などーが住み着いたことのある歴史を持っています。

The tone got a bit more formal than your original sentence, but you get the
idea.

The key thing to point out is that when translating, you should try searching
for how ideas are expressed rather than word-equivalences. If you attempt the
latter, you usually end up with awkward formulations or just end up making
things more complicated than you need to.

**Edit (2013/10/10)** :  
Following Earthling's suggestion, the original translation,

> 当市は様々な国の人―ノルマン人やギリシャ人やフランス人など―を占めていた都市です。

was changed to better reflect the intent of the original sentence

