Transliteration into Chinese characters

Transliteration is known as yīnyì (simplified Chinese: 音译; traditional Chinese: 音譯) or yìmíng (simplified Chinese: 译名; traditional Chinese: 譯名) in Chinese. While it is not uncommon to see foreign names left as they are in their original forms (for example, in Latin alphabet) in a Chinese text, it is a common practice to transliterate foreign proper nouns into Chinese characters.

When considering the transliteration of non-Chinese words into Chinese characters, one has to know the following facts:

• Chinese is written with monosyllabic logograms. Therefore, a word of three syllables is transliterated into at least three Chinese characters, in most cases three meaningful verbal units. ^[1]
• The same foreign word can have many different transliterations, based on different dialects. Transliteration based on one particular dialect may not sound close to the original when pronounced with another dialect. The official pinyin, based on Mandarin, is used in this article.
• Even within the same dialect, there may be more than one transliteration for a word, as homophones abound in Chinese, when tones are disregarded. There are plenty of characters to choose from when transliterating a word. In other words, one can manipulate the transliteration to suit one's purpose.

Sound, meaning and graph

A transliteration into Chinese characters is sometimes intended to reflect the meaning as well as the sound of the transliterated word. For example, the common ending -ва (-va) in a Russian female family name is usually transliterated as 娃 (wā; "baby", "girl"), and the —в in a male family name as 夫 (fū; "man"); Utopia is famously transliterated by Yan Fu as 烏托邦 (乌托邦 wūtuōbāng; "[a] fabricated country"); Pantagruel is transliterated as 龐大固埃 (庞大固埃 pángdàgù'āi), as 龐大 means "gigantic" and 固 "solid". One of the Chinese translations of World wide web is 萬維網 (万维网 Wànwéi Wǎng), meaning "10,000-dimensional net (or web)".

Sometimes subjective feelings towards a thing is reflected in its transliteration. The Beatles are known in Taiwan and Hong Kong as 披頭四 (披头四 pītóusì; "mop-head four"), comparing the four-character idiom 披頭散髮 (披头散发 pītóu sànfǎ; "to wear hair dishevelled"). Esperanto was known as 愛斯不難讀 (爱斯不难读 àisībùnándú; "[we or I] love this [because it is] not difficult to read") when it was first introduced into China.

Fidelity to the sound of the original is often sacrificed in a non-technical context. In transliterating the names of people, companies, shops and brands, phonetic fidelity is not the overriding factor: anything goes, as long as the Chinese name is memorable, dignified or auspicious. In some cases the naming process can hardly be termed "transliteration". A common example is the Chinese names non-Chinese people adopt for themselves, which are not truly transliterated, but rather "adapted" from or "inspired" by the original. See, for instance, the Chinese names of the Hong Kong governors.

Sometimes characters are specially made for transliterated terms. For example, 茉莉 (mòlì) for jasmine (Sanskrit: malli), 袈裟 (jiāshā) for kesa (Sanskrit: kasāya) or most of the Chinese characters for chemical elements. Most of them are semantic-phonetic compounds.

Connotations

Given that a word may be transliterated in accordance with meaning as well as sound, an "innocent" transliteration may be unwittingly interpreted as reflecting the meaning of the original. During the Qing Dynasty, some Chinese scholars were unhappy to find that China was located on a continent called 亞細亞 (亚细亚 yàxìyà), i.e. Asia, as 亞 means "secondary" and 細 "small", believing that the Europeans were deliberately belittling the East by such a naming.^[2] It was not only the Chinese who were unhappy. The ancient Japanese, or the Wa people were upset by their name being represented by the character 倭 (also meaning "small, short, servile") by the Chinese, and substituted it with another character.^[3]. The modern African also accused the Chinese of racism, as Africa is written as 非洲 (negative, wrong continent) in Chinese.^[4] Whether these accusations were justified remains a matter of controversy.

Owing to cultural difference and personal preference, whether a Chinese character has a negative meaning, and is thus inappropriate to be used for transliteration, can often be a subjective matter. The following phrases contain characters usually not used in today’s transliterations:

• Mozambique as 莫三鼻給 (莫三鼻给, mòsānbígěi), with 鼻 meaning "nose" and 三鼻 "three noses". Today the country is more often transliterated as 莫桑比克 (mòsāngbǐkè).
• Aberdeen, a common name for places and people, as 鴨巴甸 (yābādiàn), with 鴨 (鸭) meaning duck. A place in Hong Kong having the same name, Aberdeen Harbour, was originally called 香港仔 (xiānggǎngzǐ), meaning "Hong Kong minor". It is now the official name of that place, but 鴨巴甸 is still used in a colloquial way.
• A street in Macau is called Avenida do Conselheiro Ferreira de Almeida, named after the official Ferreira de Almeida. Ferreira was transliterated as 肥利喇 (féilìlǎ), as shown on the name of the street, with 肥 meaning "fat" (adj.).

On the other hand, the following transliterations are meant to, or happen to, have positive connotations:

• United States of America is abbreviated as 美國 (美国, měiguó, literally means "beautiful country"). It is abbreviated from 美利堅合眾國, 美利堅 is an early phonetic transliteration of "America".
• United Kingdom is called 英國 (英国, yīngguó, literally means "brave country"). The first character, 英, is abbreviated from 英吉利, the early Chinese transliteration of "English", but subsequently applied to the UK after it was formed from the union of England and Scotland.
• Germany is abbreviated as 德國 (德国, déguó, literally means "virtuous country"). The first character, 德, is abbreviated from 德意志 (the Chinese transliteration of "Deutsch", the German word for "German").
• Athens as 雅典 (Yădiăn), literally "elegant" and "classical";
• Champs-Élysées as 香榭麗舍 (香榭丽舍, Xiāngxièlìshè), meaning "fragrant pavilion (and) beautiful house";
• Coca-cola as 可口可樂 (可口可乐), 可口 meaning "delicious" and 可樂 is the translation of "cola" but can also be taken literally to mean "pleasing, satisfactory";
• Firenze as 翡冷翠 (by the poet Xu Zhimo), 翡翠 meaning "jadeite" and 冷 "cold". Note that today the city is usually known as 佛羅倫斯 (佛罗伦萨), a transliteration based on the English Florence, or the Latin Florentia;
• Fontainebleau as 楓丹白露 (枫丹白露), meaning "red maple (and) white dew";
• Ithaca as 綺色佳, literally "gorgeous color wonderful";
• Revlon as 露華濃, literally as "revealing bright spring dew", excerpted from Li Bai's A Song of Pure Happiness (清平調);
• Yosemite as 優山美地 (also 優仙美地, 優聖美地, 優詩美地, or 優勝美地), meaning "elegant mountain (and) beautiful land".
• Munich, German: München, the capital of Bavaria/Germany (derived fr. "Munichen" lit.: "(at the) monks") as 慕尼黑 Mùníhēi meaning "esteem - nun - black", accidentally (?) referring to the "Münchner Kindl", the city coat of arms of Munich showing kind of child-like monk dressed in black.
• Champagne as 香檳 (香槟, xiāng bīn) meaning "fragrant areca"

History

Transliteration appeared early in ancient Chinese texts as the Han people interacted with foreign peoples, such as Xiongnu. Besides proper names, a small number of loanwords in their transliterated forms found their way into Chinese during the Han Dynasty after Zhang Qian's exploration of the Western Regions.^[5]

Transliterations of the ethnic minorities' languages can also be found in ancient texts. A complete transliterated text of a Zhuang song can be found in Liu Xiang's Shuoyuan (說苑/说苑 "Garden of stories") of the Western Han Dynasty. The Chinese version of the song, known as Yueren Ge (越人歌 "Song of the Yue [boat]man"), was also provided in the work. Some scholars have tried to reconstruct the original text.^[6]

The classics of Buddhism began to be translated into Chinese during the late Han Dynasty. Many of the Sanskrit terms were then transliterated and became part of the Chinese language. According to the Song Dynasty scholar Zhou Dunyi (周敦義/周敦义),^[7] the famous monk and translator Xuanzang had his Wuzhong Bu Fan (五種不翻/五种不翻 "Five don't translate"), suggesting that Sanskrit terms should be transliterated instead of being translated when they are:

• arcane, such as incantations
• polysemous
• not found in China
• traditionally transliterated, not translated
• lofty and subtle, which a translation might devalue and obscure

These ancient transliteration into Chinese characters provide clues to the reconstruction of Middle Chinese. In historical Chinese phonology, this kind of information is called duiyin (對音/对音 "corresponding sounds"), with Baron Alexander von Staël-Holstein being the first scholar to emphasize its importance in reconstructing ancient Chinese. The transliterations made during the Tang Dynasty are particularly valuable as linguistic data, as the Tantra sect was then popular, with the mantras, an important Tantra practice, rendered very carefully into Chinese characters by the monk-translators. The spells, it was believed, would lose their power when their sounds were not accurately uttered.

During the late 19th century, when Western ideas and products flooded into China, transliterations mushroomed. They include not only transliterations of proper nouns, but also those of common nouns, i.e. phonemic loans.^[8] Most of them proved fads, though. After that period of time, people tend to favor loan translations.

In modern Japanese, foreign terms are transliterated into katakana. Some terms still appear in kanji, though, an example being 俱樂部/倶楽部, (クラブ "gathering fun department"=club). Some of these were absorbed into Chinese during the late 19th and early 20th century. For more about the use of Chinese characters to represent Japanese native words and foreign words, see ateji.

Official Guide

In People's Republic of China, the current official guide for the transliteration of people's names is the Names of the world's peoples: a comprehensive dictionary of names in Roman-Chinese (世界人名翻译大辞典), compiled by the Proper Names and Translation Service, the Xinhua News Agency. See the English transliteration table or those for a number of other languages that are provided by the work. Most of the official transliterations are based on Mandarin, the official language. A few of the official transliterations are not based on Mandarin, as they had been absorbed into Chinese long before Mandarin was established as the official language.

Cantonese media use a different (and loose) transliteration system based on Cantonese.

In Singapore, the Translation Standardisation Committee for the Chinese Media is responsible for the transliteration standard.

Difference in the phonetic translation between different regions

Names can be transliterated differently from the official versions in different Chinese speaking regions e.g. in Taiwan: 纽西兰/ 紐西蘭 Niǔxīlán "New Zealand", in mainland China: 新西兰/新西蘭 Xīnxīlán "New Zealand". Taiwan here uses "Niǔ" for "New" (phonetic), mainland China uses 新 (xīn) (semantic) transliteration. Here's how US President Barack Obama's surname is rendered:

欧巴马 / 歐巴馬 Ōubāmǎ (Official translation)

奥巴马 / 奧巴馬 Àobāmǎ (used mostly in mainland China)

The city of Sydney is rendered as 悉尼 (Xīní) in mainland China and as 雪梨 (Xuělí) in Taiwan.

Hong Kong and Macao usually transliterate names using Cantonese pronunciation but, since the handover, there has been a trend to follow mainland's methods, even if the Cantonese pronunciation becomes more remote from the original, e.g. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's surname is transliterated as 梅德韦杰夫 / 梅德韋傑夫 Méidéwéijiéfū, Cantonese becomes Muih-dak-waih-giht-fu, which is not phonetical rendering but borrowing from Mandarin spelling.

See also

• Sinicization
• Romanization of Chinese
• Cyrillization of Chinese
• Ateji - similar practice in Japanese

Notes