translation - Why are the same words translated differently into English depending on their meaning?

I've seen it several times before, but only have one example at hand right now. This Forbes article mentions Russia as country's name, but Rossiya as the bank's name, despite that these words are exactly the same in Russian, where they are translated from.

Is there some kind of rule for this?

Answer

It's a matter of when and where these words were romanized.

The English word Russia is a very old term for a very old country. When it was coined, the romanization of English words tended to be very English-centric. "Russia" is both (1) close enough to "Россия" that it was understandable, and (2) easy for medieval English speakers to pronounce.

Once a word enters the English language in a romanized form, that romanization tends to stick. But principles of romanization shift. This can be seen most clearly in Chinese. In the 1950s, the Chinese government created a new romanization system to replace the older Wade-Giles system.

Under the old Wade-Giles system, China's modern captial, 北京, was known in the West as "Peking." Under the new pinyin system, it is transliterated as "Beijing."

These days, most new names romanized from Chinese into English use pinyin, and most media outlets use pinyin for the names of many places, too: Beijing for Peking, Hangzhou for Hangchow, etc.

But older names and terms that entered the English language before the pinyin era are still commonly used in their older romanizations. Even though nobody flies to Peking anymore, we still eat Peking duck, not Beijing duck. You are still just as likely to hear about Mao Tse-Tung as Mao Zedong, and Kung Fu Zi has not replaced Confucius. The older the term was when it entered English, the more resistant it is to change.

So Russia, a word that entered English in the middle ages, is very resistant to change--to the point where it is now considered a translation, rather than a romanization. On the other hand, when translating the names of foreign entities, journalists tend to follow set rules, a set system specified by a style guide. This applies to newly translated names--for example, a bank called "Россия," which is transliterated according to a set system (in this case, probably BGN/PCGN romanization). It doesn't apply to the country, which already has an established English equivalent.