Chue Ban Nam Mueang

I started this blog almost 10 years ago when I found a eBook which gave th romanized names for all provinces, districts and subdistricts, but was unable to contact anyone to get the obvious mistakes fixed for an eventual second edition. The only thing which happened was that later Excel sheets were added to the PDF files, making it a bit easier to go through the lists. As the original files are lost after various website relaunches, my copy of the files seems to be the only online source left.

It was an edit by the Thai Wikipedia Potapt  changing the spelling of Chang Chawa subdistrict to Chang Chwa in contrast to the recommended spelling. It turned out, that the word จว้า is from Northern Thai, and the syllable Chwa isn't found in Central Thai which makes the romanization look odd, and also might explain why it was romanized differently in 2006. The Royal Institute has reworked the recommended romanizations lately, and created a mobile app named Chue Ban Nam Mueang (Google AppStore). From the app description:

as well as 1,500 names of all provinces, Amphurs, Tambons, and special administrative regions in Thailand

Its already strange that the description uses the wrong romanization for the term "Amphoe", also 1500 would mean there are almost no Tambon in the data. Even worse is the German description in the AppStore, which is ludicrous Google Translate gibberish without any meaning, almost like the deadly joke. For those who don't speak German I added an English version.

Die Akademie der Mobil: mehr als fünfhundert lokalen Prioritäten Landnutzung, wie zum Beispiel, wie man schreibt. Es Fingerspitzen
The academy of mobile: more than five hundred local priorities land use, for example, how to spell. It fingertips

While a paper book is somewhat out of fashion now, a mobile app is an interesting way to make this issue more accessible - but the large drawback is that in fact it makes it even more difficult to get through the spellings in a systematic way than with the PDF from 2006. It seems the Royal Institute has not published the new list in any other ways, so it is almost impossible for me to check through the 7000+ names this way. And according to Potapt, even some of the old mistakes are still present.

I really wish the Thai authorities would be more accessible to feedback, it is really frustrating to see that in the last 10 years nobody in charge of that list ever looked online...

Pronunciation of the administrative units

The standard romanization using the RTGS standard gives a fair approximation of the correct pronunciation of the Thai names, but with some limitations - both the vocal length and the tone are ignored, and one should not read the romanized name like an English name. The Bang Sue meme only works when reading the romanized name of that Bangkok district like it were written in English. Using the transcription of the Thai names into the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) instead avoids all three problems, then Bang Sue (บางซื่อ) becomes "bāːŋ sɯ̂ː". Also those cases where there seem to be two subdivisions sharing the same name - like the two districts Bang Sai in Ayutthaya province - disappear with this transcription.

• Bang Sai (บางไทร) is read as "bāːŋ sāj".
• Bang Sai (บางซ้าย) is read as "bāːŋ sáːj".

In 2011 an anonymous user added the IPA transcription for several districts into the English Wikipedia, however sadly not to all. While I can do the RTGS romanization myself well already, I just know the basics of IPA, and the tone rules of written Thai are still too confusing for me, so I can neither check those IPA transcriptions nor add new ones. But I could add the IPA into my XML structure, and then run my bot to add those values to the items in WikiData. Though its just one small data field among many others, and its not available for all, at least it now makes that information from Wikipedia directly machine-readable without the need to parse English text. If anyone can provide me with more IPA transcriptions, I'd be happy to make sure these will find their way into Wikidata and Wikipedia...

Same-named districts

While there are only five districts which have a non-unique name in Thailand - the five Chaloem Phra Kiat districts (อำเภอเฉลิมพระเกียรติ) created in various parts of the country in 1996 - there is one apparent case of two districts with the same name in Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya province. Two of the 16 districts of the province are named Bang Sai, but in fact the two districts don't have the same name. The origin of this confusion is the romanization system.

• Bang Sai (บางไทร), the district with geocode 1404, is pronounced with a short ai (in English the same as in the word I) at end. The name means "Banyan tree village".
• Bang Sai (บางซ้าย), the district with geocode 1413, is pronounced with a long ai sound at end. The name means "left village" - don't know what left side is meant by the name.

The reason why both districts share the same English name despite having a different Thai pronounciation is simply due to the over-simplification done by the RTGS transcription scheme. This system, the official standard of transcribing Thai to English, has left out not just the tone heights but also the distinction between the short and long vowels. While there is another pair of districts which share the same English name despite having different Thai names - Wiang Sa in Surat Thani (เวียงสระ) and in Nan (เวียงสา), again with different vowel lengths at end - what makes the two Bang Sai so confusing is the fact that they are located within the same province quite close to each other. For example, in Wikipedia the only way to get a unique name for the two district was to add the geocode to the name, so the articles are located at Bang Sai District (1404) and Bang Sai District (1413).

Going down one administrative level, there strangely is just one case where two subdistricts within one district share the same romanization - in Fang district there are two subdistricts named Mae Kha, one with a short a and one with a long one. For villages however, it is quite common to have more than one village with the same Thai name within one subdistrict, which is no big problem since the villages are more often identified by their number than by their name.

For municipalities, it gets much more confusing, as there are cases of two municipalities with the same Thai name in one district, which only differ by the municipal level, so only when using name and administrative status together the name becomes unique. I will write a separate blog post on those cases later.

New romanization list from DOPA

As a matter of coincidence, just one day after I posted on the strange wrong romanization of Thap Khlo district, I noticed that the Department of Provincial Administration had put a new file on their website containing a new list of transcriptions. The link is titled นามสงเคราะห์ส่วนราชการ ชื่ออำเภอ จังหวัด และตำแหน่งของปค.ภาษาอังกฤษ, which translates as "Glossary of official English names of Provinces, Districts and Positions in DOPA". Thus there are all the district and province names in English, confirming that Thap Khlo was spelled wrong in earlier publications, as well as the romanization guessed for the new district in Chiang Mai being Galyani Vadhana, following the late princess' English name and not the RTGS transcription scheme. As the title of the link suggests, the romanization of the district and province names are only one part of the document, the recommended translations of positions as well as structures within the provincial administration are an equally useful second part. I have already gone through my own glossary of terms to update the English names, Somewhat strange is the name of the head of a minor district, which is supposed to be "Minor Chief District Officer", which IMHO should better be "Chief Minor District Officer". Its however academic currently anyway, as there are no minor districts right now. Only missing in this list are the chumchon, which I would translate as borough. Only thing still missing is a new updated and corrected version of the subdistrict name transcriptions, which should also include the municipalities.

Wrong romanizations

I have programmed a new little function around the XML to consolidate the romanized spellings of the administrative subdivisions which simply lists all the cases where the same Thai spelling had different romanized spellings in my XML. Especially for the administrative villages where I did the romanization manually (thus most of the Muban have no English spelling in my XML) I sometimes mixed up characters or did the spacing between the words differently. Therefore most of the cases where I had different spellings were mistakes on my side and fixed already, but there was one where the Royal Institute as the official institution to supervise the romanizations and recommended spellings has to blamed.

When DOPA on behalf of the Royal Institute published a list of recommended romanizations of all the subdistricts, I had spotted quite a lot of mistakes in that list already. But as I found and processed the corresponding list of district name recommendation several years before I learned to read Thai, so far I never questioned the spellings I picked from that list. But now with the help of my new code it seems found one mistake which was kept in Royal Institutes list for decades.

The name ทับคล้อ starts with the Thai character Tho Thahan, which is romanized with a Th as it is an aspirated consonant, in contrast to e,g, the unaspirated To Tao (ต). Any English speakers should not read this romanization like an English word, it is the same sound as in Thailand, not like in Thing. Therefore, the romanization of ทับคล้อ must be Thap Khlo. But - already in the recommended district romanizations published in Royal Gazette in 1987 it has been spelled Tap Khlo, And even the current PDF file from the Royal Institute website uses the spelling Tap Khlo. However, the reason why I was able to spot the mistake now is the list of recommended subdistrict romanization. In these files the subdistrict has been correctly romanized as Thap Khlo, and I now notice that the district is spelled Thap Khlo there as well. So while there have been several other mistakes in that list, the big mistake in the district list was fixed.

As the last publication in the Royal Gazette dates from 2000, and there have been two new districts in the meantime, it might be a good time to publish an updated (and corrected) version - or maybe even better publish a second edition of the subdistrict list addressing the mistakes, and adding the municipalities which in a few cases have a name with no corresponding district or subdistrict name. A reader has sent me several further cases where the recommended subdistrict romanizations might be wrong, but to my shame I haven't yet found the time to work through that list and incorporate it into the list of mistakes I have spotted.

Thursday linkage

Translator Marcel Barang today on his blog posted a piece on the confusing non-standard romanization of Thai words. The Election Commission in their wisdom has now declared the spelling Pheu Thai as the officially correct English spelling of the main opposition party - even though the official standard by the Royal Institute would make Phuea Thai the correct spelling of เพื่อไทย - and the most fitting name would have been Phuea Thaksin anyway. And since the same vowel occurs in Mueang, he continues to explain that the old romanization Muang could be misunderstood as "purple". And while talking of Mueang, he finally also explains how his translation for "Amphoe Mueang" (อำเภอเมือง) to ‘Central district’ or ‘Urban district’ wasn't approved by the newspaper editor - my own translation ‘Capital district’ might have survived the reasoning that the Amphoe Mueang is not always central, nor is it always urban.

An interesting read, and if you're interested in Thai literature but aren't able to read Thai, his blog is always worth a read.

Amphur vs. Amphoe

German blogger Noodlegei, who mostly writes on ways to use all the free applications and services from Google, some days ago tweeted a comparison of word occurrences in the Google books corpus. While I had read about this new corpus before, it was this tweet which made me think about using it for similar comparisons within the scope of this blog.

Whereas the word อำเภอ for the Thai districts is usually romanized as "Amphoe" following the RTGS romanization system, still rather popular on websites is the alternative transcription "Amphur" - Googlefight shows them as almost equally popular. But websites, especially with the thousands of copies of Wikipedia, are not that much good as a corpus, the books scanned for Google Books are of a much higher quality. And as a plus the Google Ngram viewer also includes the development over time. For the comparison of Amphoe vs Amphur it shows that the RTGS spelling is slowly becoming the more common one, but due to the rather low number of books containing this term years like 1982 with unusually many publications using Amphoe create a very significant peak, even with the smoothing function.

A second comparison of Muang vs Mueang for เมือง - the second one became the recommended transcription just ten years ago - shows a clear preference for the term Muang, with Mueang rising very slowly. However this comparison is slightly unfair, as there are also placenames where Muang is the official transcription, e.g. Ban Muang district, and also the districts of Laos are usually transcribed as Muang (ເມືອງ).

In German it has the Umlaut characters which fit perfectly the sounds of the two vowel, so for me the most natural way would be to spell them Amphö and Müang. These spellings are really unusual however - Amphö has only some 200 Google website hits, Müng slightly more with about 10.000, and even less when restricting to Google Books. I will of course stay with RTGS despite its shortcomings, and will also try my best to keep the Wikipedia articles to stay with the only standard it has.

Changes in recommended romanizations

I discovered that the recommended romanized names of provinces and districts were also published in the Royal Gazette, and not just the last ones from the year 2000, but also several older sets as well. I wasn't aware that these recommended transcriptions were already started in 1967. While most changes in these lists are of course newly added districts, the changes in the spellings are much more interesting, so I worked through all the lists (2000, 1987, 1977, 1967) and documented the changes. Most striking in looking through the changes is the change of Muang to Mueang, which was due to the corresponding change in the RTGS (Royal Thai General System of Transcription) - I wrote about that change earlier.

I have collected all the changes I noticed in the spreadsheet below, including changes where only a space or a hyphen was inserted or removed between parts of the name. Those spellings which I consider clearly wrong - like Bangkok Noi once spelled Bangkok Koi - are marked in red.

Not surprisingly most of the changes are those due to changes in RTGS. And since some Thai words are found in several district names, the table is somewhat repetitive. The ones which are found several times are the following:

• Mueang (เมือง), previously Muang, meaning "city"
• Bueng (บึง), previously Bung, meaning "swamp"
• Phueng (ผึ้ง), previously Phung, meaning "bee"
• Ruea (เรือ), previously Rua, meaning "boat"

The only thing which really surprises me is the high number of obvious mistakes in the 1987 announcement, a total of nine names obviously wrong. As that document was supposed to serve foreigners to spell the names correctly, especially those who cannot read Thai have no chance to know that Kanthag in real should be Kantang, as it was spelled both in the 2000 and 1977 announcement. At least the latest version from 2000 is without any mistake - whereas the 2007 book including the subdistricts introduced a few new ones, not surprising with the tenfold increase of names covered in that book.

Subdistrict name romanization

When I originally discovered the book ชื่อจังหวัด อำเภอ/กิ่งอำเภอ ตำบล เขต และแขวง ไทย-อังกฤษ (Thai-English transcription of changwat, amphoe, king amphoe, tambon, khet, and khwang approved by the Royal Institute, ISBN 9789747857047) as an eBook at the website of the Department of Provincial Administration (DOPA), it was only available as four PDF files, which made it quite some work to go through all the 7000+ subdistricts and check and correct the names in my spreadsheet.

I was now recently browsing through the announcements at the website amphoeyim.com (District Smile), another website from the Ministry of Interior around the district administration, just to look if there anything new to me. It also had the same publication online there, however once I downloaded it to my surprise it was two Excel files and two PDF, the actual data now in much easier readable form. Funnily, the original source at DOPA had also changed since I last checked it and also contains the two Excel sheets instead of the PDF with the tables.

As the XLS files are last changed in 2007, they obviously cannot include fixes to the mistakes I noted back then - see my own sheet with the dubious or wrong transcriptions - nor contain the new subdistricts created in Bangkok last year.

I don't know if there will be any new edition of the book, yet even better than such a reference book would be an online list continuously updated, for example adding the transcription into the geocode list.

By the way, if anyone can get me the paper version of that book it'd be a nice addition to my library, though just for collection. If I recall correctly, I read that the book was mostly distributed to libraries, including the local ones in each province - maybe wasn't even sold commercially.

Changes in romanized names

Inspired by the article at BangkokLibrary I took a look at the United Nations Working Group on Romanization Systems report on the Thai romanization.

When using geographical names romanized according to the previous 1967 version of the official Thai romanization system, it is essential to know that earlier no distinction was made between the vowels u and ue (u was used in both cases, [...]) and some diphthongs were romanized differently (iu for character 48 /now io/, ieo for character 53 /now iao/ in the table mentioned).

I wasn't aware before that the romanization system, abbreviated RTGS for "Royal Thai General System of Transcription" in fact just dated from the year 2000, when a bigger revision was made. Now I checked it I even found the official announcement of the RTGS in the Royal Gazette (ประกาศสำนักนายกรัฐมนตรี เรื่อง หลักเกณฑ์การถอดอักษรไทยเป็นอักษรโรมันแบบถ่ายเสียง).

This explains why in my first trips to Thailand I still saw the old airport spelled "Don Muang" everywhere, and only recently the street signs pointing towards that district have changed to "Don Mueang". I thought the policy to have street sign follow RTGS was enforced in the last decade, but now I know it was only the modification which made me notice that policy. But as you can see in this photo of the railway station Don Mueang (from the ThaiTransit blog) the old spelling still has survived.

Pronunciation and romanization of districts names

Some time ago, the Thai Wikipedian Potapt changed in few Wikipedia articles the spelling of Khwao Sinarin district to Khwao Sinrin. As I thought that all the articles were spelled according to the recommended English spellings as I found them in a list of the Royal Institute at first look this seemed like a mistake. But as I already knew Potapt as a very diligent contributor on the district and province articles in the Thai Wikipedia, there must have been more behind this.

It turned out that he (or she, don't know anything else than the username) referred in his change to the book "ชื่อจังหวัด อำเภอ/กิ่งอำเภอ ตำบล เขต และแขวง ไทย-อังกฤษ" published by the Department of Provincial Administration. It is the same one which is available online, and it contains the recommended English spelling down to subdistrict (Tambon) level. I mentioned it here before, and in fact Khwao Sinarin was one of the 135 romanizations which seemed wrong, contradict the normal RTGS rules, or contradict the above mentioned list of recommended spellings.

Another source mentioned by him was booklet named เขวาสินรินทร์, published in 2003 by the Royal Institute which gives the pronunciation of the district names, which for some complicate Sanskrit names is necessary even for Thai people. And there it also says it is pronounced "เขฺวา-สิน-ริน", Khwao Sin Rin. But even within DOPA one can find pages where it is spelled Sinrin as well as Sinarin, so no consistency there.

It is really a pity I never got any reply when I sent my list of corrections to DOPA after processing the complete book.

Etymology of Thesaban and Thesaphiban

I am sure Rikker on his blog on the Thai language would do a better job than me, but since the simple question whether the correct romanization of the word เทศบาล in the RTGS should be thesaban or thetsaban led to a real gem of etymological discussion on my Wikipedia talk page.

The spelling of the word in Thai will usually tell you which words are pronounced this way. In words like เทศบาล, which we might transliterate (not transcribe) as {thesbal}, the ศ /s/ has a dual role: it acts as the final consonant of the first syllable เทศ (from deśa "country"), pronounced /thet/ in isolation, but ศ /s/ also gives us an implicit /a/ vowel that becomes the linking syllable /sa/ connecting with บาล /ban/ (from pāl "protect").

Thus, the word thesaban (municipality) from its Indic Sanskrit roots means something like "protection of country".

I already was about ask Rikker if the word "thesaphiban" (เทศาภิบาล), used as the common term of all the administrative reforms under Prince Damrong in his time as Interior Minister 1894-1915. The "sa" syllable in the two words is totally different, for thesaban it's a short "a" (อะ), while in thesaphiban it is a long "a" (อา). But actually, the two words are related

Another reason to keep Thesaban occurred to me -- to maintain consistency with Thesaphiban (เทศาภิบาล), from the Indic roots เทศ (deśa) + อภิ (abhi) + บาล (pāl), but due to sandhi (สนธิ) compounding rules it becomes เทศาภิบาล (deśābhipāl, with a long ā vowel), and thus in RTGS must be Thesaphiban, and never *Thetsaphiban. Personally, I'd prefer to maintain consistency between these words with the same roots.

Tej Bunnag gives the etymology of the word thesaphiban in his book "The Provincial Administration of Siam 1892-1915" as follows

The word thesaphiban is compounded from three words of Pali origin, namely thet or thesa meaning ‘country’, aphi meaning ‘in particular' or ‘special’, ban or bala meaning ‘to be in charge of something’, and can be translated literally as ‘to be in special charge of an area of the country’.

Just the original question wasn't solved completely yet - it seems RTGS would suggest the spelling thetsaban, the actually pronunciation is however closer to thesaban.

I cannot recall why I did choose that spelling back then, whether I did not trust the output of the romanization tool by Wirote Aroonmanakun (see also this review in the LearningPost), or I chose the spelling from the ones I saw the web which looked most close to the way RTGS is applied to the non-Sanskrit words.

The Etymology of Phetchaburi

The text below was written by King Mongkut (Rama IV, reigned 1851-1868) himself and was first published in the Bangkok Calendar, an annual almanac founded in 1859 until the death of its printer Dan Beach Bradley. It was later republished in the 1885 compendium Siam, The Land of the White Elephant, edited by George S. Bacon. I found it in the book Early Accounts of Phetchaburi, published by the Siam Society in 1987. The photo shows the temple Wat Phra Kaeo, part of the Phra Nakhon Khiri palace complex right next to the town. It was also King Mongkut who built this palace.

Though titled etymology, the text is not about the origin of the name of the city, but in fact King Mongkut complains about the inconsistent and varying spellings of the name in western source.

But as the city P'etch'ără-booree the masses of the people in all parts call it P'ripp'ree or P'et-pree. The name P'etch'ără-booree is Sanskrit, a royal name given to the place the same as T'on-booree, Non-booree, Năk'awn K'u'n k'ăn, Sămŏŏtă-pra-kan, and Ch'ă-chong-sow. Now if Mahá nak'awn be called Bangkok, and the other names respectively called Tălát-k'wan, Paklat, Paknam, and Păătrew, it is proper that P'etch'ără-booree should follow suit, and be called by her vulgar name P'rip-p'ree, or P'et-p'ree.

Now that the company of teachers and print­ers should coin a name purporting to be after the royal style and yet do not take the true Sanskrit, seems not at all proper. In trying to Romanize the name P'etch'ără-booree, they place the mark over the a thus P'etchă-booree, making foreigners read it P'etcha-booree, following the utterances of old dances in the temples, who boast that they know Balăm Bali, and not satisfied with that, they even call the place City P'et, setting fortn both the Bali and the meaning of the word; and thus boast­ing greatly of their knowledge and of being a standard of orthography for the name of that city.

Now what is the necessity of coining another name like this? There is no occasion for it. When the name is thus incorrectly printed, persons truly acquainted with Sanskrit and Bali (for such there are many other places) will say that those who write or print the name in the way, must be pupils of ignorant teachers - blind teachers not fol­lowing the real Sanskrit in full, taking only the utterances of woodsmen, and holding them forth [as the correct way.] In following such sounds they cannot be in accord with the Sanskrit, and they conclude that the name is Siamese. Where­as, in truth, it is not Siamese. The true Siamese name is P'rip-p'ree or P'et-p'ree. It matters not what letters are used to express it - follow your own mind; but let the sound come out clear and accu­rate either P'rip-p'ree or P'et-p'ree, and it will be true Siamese. But the mode of writing and print­ing the name P'etchă-booree with the letter a and mark over it and other marks in two places, resists the eye and the mouth greatly. What­ever be done in this matter let there be uniformi­ty. If it be determined to follow the vulgar mode of calling the name, let that be followed out fully and accurately; but if the royal mode be preferred, let the king be sought unto for the pro­per way of writing it, which shall be in full accord­ance with the Sanskrit. And should this happen not to be like the utterance of the people in the temples the difference cannot be great. And persons unacquainted with Sanskrit will be con­strained to acknowledge that you do really know Sanskrit; and comparing the corrected with the improper mode of Romanizing, will praise you for the improvement which you have made. Such per­sons there are a few, not ignorant and blind lead­ers and dunces like the inmates of the temples and of the jungles and forests, but learned in the San­skrit and residents in Siam.

Toponyms with changing names and spellings

Fellow Wikipedian Michael Brückner, now working at the Naresuan University in Phitsanulok, in his working blog posted about two papers co-written by him. Though I can only access the second on GIS in Thailand, one of the problems they are trying to address is the identification of toponyms with the actual location, something which I also often have problems with during my work with the administrative entities.

As I am now only using Thai sources at least the problem of the plethora of romanization schemes does not affect me, and where I use "English" names to make it easier to read I exclusively use the RTGS (Royal Thai General System of Transcription), which though it has its weaknesses is at least a standard. But spelling changes in Thai are also possible, not just the temporary spelling reform of the 1940s, but also minor changes, like an added or removed ะ, or the omission of a silent last letter, both does not changes the pronunciation at all. One example can be the spelling change of Thep Nimit in Kamphaeng Phet, which changed from เทพนิมิตร to เทพนิมิต in 2005. Strangely I can only find the announcement for the rename of the TAO, but not the one for the subdistrict itself. And there are also accidental misspellings, sometimes even in the Royal Gazette. But as I work through the entities mostly manually I can identify the entities in these cases much easier than a computer would do with a simple search.

However much more work are the real name changes, and even worse name exchanges between two entities. Most problematic are names where I cannot find any current corresponding entity, and no source for a renaming or abolishing. One example is the minor district Hua Hin (กิ่งอำเภอหัวหิน) in Tak Province, which was created in 1906. And this announcement is the only thing I have found about this minor district so far. Its parent district Chiang Ngoen was downgraded to a minor district before 1917, and at an unknown date abolished completely. The only thing how I can link this Hua Hin to the present day entities is its main tambon Wang Hin, which is now under Mueang Tak district, same as the tambon Chiang Ngoen. I haven't yet lost my hope to find more about this minor district in the Gazette, but at least among the announcements I could find by searching for the titles there is nothing yet.

Tambon spelling

The romanization of Thai words is always a pain, everyone uses his own system, and some even use different transcriptions of the same word in one text. For example เมืองพล can be transcribed as Mueang Phon, Muang Pon or Müang Phol, and many more variations. The Royal Institute created a transcription standard named Royal Thai General System of Transcription (RTGS), which has its weaknesses, but at least gives rather good spellings for an English reader. Wirote Aroonmanakun even created a software which can do a machine transcription, at least for most cases.

For quite some time it already has a list of recommended spellings for the districts and provinces. Earlier this year the Department of Provincial Administration published a book with the recommended spelling of all the subdistricts, which is also available online. Sadly it is only a PDF, thus I had to compare these new spellings with those created by the machine transcription tool manually.

That document also included the suggested translations of the terms changwat, amphoe, king amphoe, tambon and muban - now finally making it clear that a minor district and a subdistrict is not the same. Too bad they did not include the local administrative entities in that, especially for the word thesaban tambon a lot of different translations are used.

I sent my corrections to DOPA, but did not get any reply to my email. I just hope it was read and will incoportate my changes in the next version, and will consider my suggestions of a XLS or plain text version as well.