system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV translating place names is pointless and causes unnecessary confusion

It is common practice to translate names of places, cities and countries instead of using the original names or the names the country chose for them. It is harmless most of the times like Berlin/berlijn or London/Londres (but this also makes it really pointless). But it can get very confusing with examples such as Küln/Cologne, Pays-Bas/Netherlands or even the weird Deutschland/Germany confusion. I live in Europe and since there are so many languages present at any given moment, it can get really confusing if everyone is familiar with their own languages version of place name. And just smth dumb that annoys me, it takes up too much space on signs. But anyway, I really haven't come across any good or any argument FOR doing this. So I think it's unnecessarily confusing and really pointless.
gpt
There are valid linguistic and historical reasons for why place names are translated. If a place name features sounds or spellings that someone who speaks a foreign language could easily mispronounce, the translation of that place name will usually do something to fix that, like in your first 2 examples. In the examples where the translated place name is completely different, the translated names almost always have a historical reason for being that way. The reason that Germany has so many different names in European languages (as an example) is due to this reason; the name for Germany in each language group was adopted at a different time in history and based on different words, either from German or the other language itself. This is particularly the case for Germany as the country has existed in so many different forms over millennia, but happens with lots of other places too. And once a translated name becomes the official name for a place in a certain language, it becomes hard to change it. This is why these odd translated names stick around when more logical ones are available. They may cause confusion, but it is not unnecessary confusion, as it makes sense for linguistic or historical reasons.