In the English language, there are no flexions of the nouns as they are in the German language. "Felber" is the genitive case of "Felben", so the noun is "Felben", not "Felber".
Since the valley is named for "Felben", "Felben valley" ist a semantically correct translation. Another appropriate translation would be "Valley of Felben". The German-speaking will certainly feel more comfortable with "Felber valley", but this imparts an incorrect perception with the English speaking (just another example as to why semantics are important).
If you feel unhappy with it, we can replace it by the German name ("Felbertal"
and add a comment to the locality description. Under no circumstance, however, we should use "Felber valley" or similar nonsense. The fact that google gives a multitude of hits for that is not a strong point here. There is nothing wrong with being educative in respect of an error that occurs much too often. There is a small section in every dictionary that explains how the cases are correctly addressed in a foreign language.
The same holds for the river valleys, by the way. The English speaking strictly use (noun, i.e. river name) + (valley).
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/08/2008 10:22AM by Peter Haas.
