Transliteration into Chinese characters
Encyclopedia
In Chinese
, transcription
is known as yīnyì or yìmíng . While it is common to see foreign names left in their original forms (for example, in the Latin alphabet
) in a Chinese text, it is also common to transcribe foreign proper noun
s into Chinese character
s.
Issues when translating non-Chinese words into Chinese characters:
female family name is usually transcribed as 娃 (wā; "baby", "girl"), and the —в in a male family name as 夫 (fū; "man"); Utopia
is famously transcribed by Yan Fu
as 烏托邦 (乌托邦 wūtuōbāng; "[a] fabricated country"); Pantagruel
is transcribed as 龐大固埃 (庞大固埃 pángdàgù'āi), as 龐大 means "gigantic" and 固 "solid". One translation of World Wide Web
is 萬維網 (万维网 Wànwéi Wǎng), meaning "10,000-dimensional net (or web)".
Sometimes subjective feelings are reflected in a transcription. 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 original sound is often sacrificed in a non-technical context. In transcribing names of people, companies, shops or brands, phonetic fidelity is not the overriding factor: any characters may be used as long as the Chinese is memorable, dignified or auspicious. In some cases this amounts to renaming, rather than "transcription". A common example is the Chinese names non-Chinese people adopt for themselves, which are not transcribed, 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 transcribed terms. For example, 茉莉 (mòlì) for jasmine
, 袈裟 (jiāshā) for kasaya
(Sanskrit: kasāya) or most of the Chinese characters for chemical elements
. Most of them are semantic-phonetic compounds.
, some Chinese scholars were unhappy to find 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. 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 replaced it with another character. Modern Africans have accused the Chinese of racism, as "Africa" is written as 非洲 ("negative, wrong continent") in Chinese. Whether these accusations were justified is controversial.
Cultural differences and personal preference about negative meaning is subjective, however some translations are generally held to be inappropriate and are usually not used in today’s transcriptions:
Some transcriptions are meant to have, or happen to have, positive connotations:
interacted with foreigners such as the Xiongnu
. Besides proper names, a small number of loanwords in their transcribed forms found their way into Chinese during the Han Dynasty
after Zhang Qian
's exploration of the Western Regions
.
Transcriptions of other languages are found in ancient texts. A complete transcribed text of a short Yue song, known as Yueren Ge (越人歌 "Song of the Yue [boat]man"), is found in Liu Xiang
's Shuoyuan (說苑/说苑 "Garden of stories") of the Western Han Dynasty, along with a Chinese version of the song. Some scholars have tried to reconstruct the original text.
The classics of Buddhism
began to be translated into Chinese during the late Han Dynasty. Many Sanskrit terms were then transcribed and became part of the Chinese language. According to the Song Dynasty
scholar Zhou Dunyi (周敦義/周敦义), 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 transcribed instead of being translated when they are:
These ancient transcription into Chinese characters provide clues to the reconstruction of Middle Chinese
. In historical Chinese phonology
, this 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 transcriptions made during the Tang Dynasty
are particularly valuable as linguistic data, as the Tantra
sect was then popular, with the mantra
s, 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 China, transcriptions mushroomed. They include not only transcriptions of proper nouns, but also those of common nouns, i.e. phonemic loans. Most of them proved fads, though. After that period, people tend to favor loan translation
s.
In modern Japanese, foreign terms are transcribed 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 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
.
, the official guide for the transcription 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 of the Xinhua News Agency
. See the English transcription table or those for a number of other languages that are provided by the work. Most official transcriptions are based on Mandarin, the official language. A few official transcriptions are not based on Mandarin, as they had been absorbed into Chinese before Mandarin was established as the official language.
Cantonese
media use a different (and loose) transcription system based on Cantonese.
In Singapore
, the Translation Standardisation Committee for the Chinese Media is responsible for the transcription standard.
In the United States
, Russia
, Republic of Korea, Malaysia and many other countries Foreign Ministries or other competent government agencies set the official standards for transcribing names of entities under their jurisdiction into Chinese and other languages.
), whilst mainland China uses the semantic transcription 新 xīn which literally means "new" in Chinese. US President Barack Obama
's surname is rendered:
The city of Sydney
is rendered as 悉尼 (Xīní) in mainland China, Singapore, along with Malaysia and as 雪梨 (Xuělí) in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Cantonese speaking residents of Sydney.
Hong Kong and Macau usually transliterate names using Cantonese pronunciation but, since the handover from the British to the Chinese, there is a trend to follow mainland's methods, even if the Cantonese pronunciation becomes more remote from the original. For example, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
's surname is transcribed as 梅德韦杰夫 / 梅德韋傑夫 Méidéwéijiéfū, in Cantonese rendered as Muih-dak-waih-giht-fu, which is not phonetical rendering but borrowing from Mandarin spelling.
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
, transcription
Transcription (linguistics)
Transcription in the linguistic sense is the systematic representation of language in written form. The source can either be utterances or preexisting text in another writing system, although some linguists only consider the former as transcription.Transcription should not be confused with...
is known as yīnyì or yìmíng . While it is common to see foreign names left in their original forms (for example, in the Latin alphabet
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
) in a Chinese text, it is also common to transcribe foreign proper noun
Proper noun
A proper noun or proper name is a noun representing a unique entity , as distinguished from a common noun, which represents a class of entities —for example, city, planet, person or corporation)...
s into Chinese character
Chinese character
Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and Japanese , less frequently Korean , formerly Vietnamese , or other languages...
s.
Issues when translating non-Chinese words into Chinese characters:
- Chinese is written with monosyllabicSyllableA syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...
logogramLogogramA logogram, or logograph, is a grapheme which represents a word or a morpheme . This stands in contrast to phonograms, which represent phonemes or combinations of phonemes, and determinatives, which mark semantic categories.Logograms are often commonly known also as "ideograms"...
s. A word of three syllables is transcribed into at least three Chinese characters, in most cases three meaningful verbal units. - The same foreign word can have many transcriptions, based on different dialects. Transcription based on one dialect may not sound close to the original when pronounced with another dialect. (The official pinyinPinyinPinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...
, based on Mandarin, is used in this article.) - Even within the same dialect, there may be more than one transcription for a word (as homophoneHomophoneA homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning. The words may be spelled the same, such as rose and rose , or differently, such as carat, caret, and carrot, or to, two, and too. Homophones that are spelled the same are also both homographs and homonyms...
s abound in Chinese) when tonesTone (linguistics)Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called...
are disregarded. Since there are many characters to choose from when transcribing a word, a translator can manipulate the transcription to suit a purpose.
History
The following is an extract from "On the best method of representing the unaspirated mutes of the Mandarin dialect" by Rev. John Gulick. "The inhabitants of other Asiatic nations, who have had occasion to represent the words of their several languages by Chinese characters, have as a rule used unaspirated characters for the sounds, g, d, b, &. The Mohammedans from Arabia and Persia have followed this method[…]. The Mongols, Manchus and Japanese also constantly select unaspirated characters to represent the sounds g, d, b, and j of their languages. These surrounding Asiatic nations, in writing Chinese words in their own alphabets, have uniformly used g, d, b, &c., to represent the unaspirated sounds."Sound, meaning and graph
A transcription into Chinese characters sometimes reflects the meaning as well as the sound of the transcribed word. For example, the common ending -ва (-va) in a RussianRussian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
female family name is usually transcribed as 娃 (wā; "baby", "girl"), and the —в in a male family name as 夫 (fū; "man"); Utopia
Utopia
Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...
is famously transcribed by Yan Fu
Yan Fu
Yan Fu was a Chinese scholar and translator, most famous for introducing western ideas, including Darwin's "natural selection," to China in the late 19th century.-Life:...
as 烏托邦 (乌托邦 wūtuōbāng; "[a] fabricated country"); Pantagruel
Pantagruel
Pantagruel is an international Early Music ensemble specialising in semi-staged performances of Renaissance music. The group was formed in Essen, Germany at the end of 2002 by the English lutenist Mark Wheeler and the German born Dominik Schneider...
is transcribed as 龐大固埃 (庞大固埃 pángdàgù'āi), as 龐大 means "gigantic" and 固 "solid". One translation of World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
is 萬維網 (万维网 Wànwéi Wǎng), meaning "10,000-dimensional net (or web)".
Sometimes subjective feelings are reflected in a transcription. The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
are known in Taiwan and Hong Kong as 披頭四 (披头四 pītóusì; "mop-head four"), comparing the four-character idiom
Four-character idiom
Chengyu are a type of traditional Chinese idiomatic expressions, most of which consist of four characters. Chengyu were widely used in Classical Chinese and are still common in vernacular Chinese writing and in the spoken language today...
披頭散髮 (披头散发 pītóu sànfǎ; "to wear hair dishevelled"). Esperanto
Esperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
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 original sound is often sacrificed in a non-technical context. In transcribing names of people, companies, shops or brands, phonetic fidelity is not the overriding factor: any characters may be used as long as the Chinese is memorable, dignified or auspicious. In some cases this amounts to renaming, rather than "transcription". A common example is the Chinese names non-Chinese people adopt for themselves, which are not transcribed, 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 transcribed terms. For example, 茉莉 (mòlì) for jasmine
Jasmine
Jasminum , commonly known as jasmines, is a genus of shrubs and vines in the olive family . It contains around 200 species native to tropical and warm temperate regions of the Old World...
, 袈裟 (jiāshā) for kasaya
Kasaya (clothing)
Kāṣāya are the robes of Buddhist monks and nuns, named after a brown or saffron dye. In Sanskrit and Pali, these robes are also given the more general term cīvara, which references the robes without regard to color....
(Sanskrit: kasāya) or most of the Chinese characters for chemical elements
Chinese characters for chemical elements
The names for chemical elements in East Asian languages, along with those for some chemical compounds , are among the newest words to enter the local vocabularies...
. Most of them are semantic-phonetic compounds.
Connotations
Given that a word may be transcribed in accordance with meaning as well as sound, an "innocent" transcription may be unwittingly interpreted as reflecting the meaning of the original. During the Qing DynastyQing Dynasty
The Qing Dynasty was the last dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 with a brief, abortive restoration in 1917. It was preceded by the Ming Dynasty and followed by the Republic of China....
, some Chinese scholars were unhappy to find China was located on a continent called 亞細亞 (亚细亚 yàxìyà), i.e. Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
, as 亞 means "secondary" and 細 "small", believing that the Europeans were deliberately belittling the East. The ancient Japanese, or the Wa
Wa (Japan)
Japanese is the oldest recorded name of Japan. Chinese, Korean, and Japanese scribes regularly wrote Wa or Yamato "Japan" with the Chinese character 倭 until the 8th century, when the Japanese found fault with it, replacing it with 和 "harmony, peace, balance".- Historical references :The earliest...
people were upset by their name being represented by the character 倭 (also meaning "small, short, servile") by the Chinese, and replaced it with another character. Modern Africans have accused the Chinese of racism, as "Africa" is written as 非洲 ("negative, wrong continent") in Chinese. Whether these accusations were justified is controversial.
Cultural differences and personal preference about negative meaning is subjective, however some translations are generally held to be inappropriate and are usually not used in today’s transcriptions:
- MozambiqueMozambiqueMozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique , is a country in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west and Swaziland and South Africa to the southwest...
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 transcribed as 莫桑比克 (mòsāngbǐkè). - AberdeenAberdeenAberdeen is Scotland's third most populous city, one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas and the United Kingdom's 25th most populous city, with an official population estimate of ....
is a common name for places and people, rendered as 鴨巴甸 (yābādiàn), with 鴨 (鸭) meaning duck. However a place in Hong Kong, Aberdeen Harbour, was originally called 香港仔 (xiānggǎngzǐ), meaning "Hong Kong minor"; that is now the official name, but 鴨巴甸 is still used colloquially. Moreover, today the place is more often transcribed as 阿伯丁 (ābódīng). - A street in MacauMacauMacau , also spelled Macao , is, along with Hong Kong, one of the two special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China...
is called Avenida do Conselheiro Ferreira de Almeida, after the official Ferreira de Almeida. Ferreira was transcribed as 肥利喇 (féilìlǎ), as shown on the name of the street, with 肥 meaning "fat" (adj.AdjectiveIn grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
). - A street in MacauMacauMacau , also spelled Macao , is, along with Hong Kong, one of the two special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China...
is called Avenida de Demetrio Cinatti. It has been transcribed as 爹美刁施拿地大馬路, with 刁 meaning cunning or wicked. - PhilippinesPhilippinesThe Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
is transliterated as 菲律賓 (菲律宾, fēi lǜ bīn), but this has the negative connotation of 菲 signifying "poor", 律 signifying "law", and 賓/宾 having the meaning of "guest", thus giving a reading of "unruly guest". A replacement digraphDigraph (orthography)A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...
of 呂宋 (吕宋, lǚ sòng) "LuzonLuzonLuzon is the largest island in the Philippines. It is located in the northernmost region of the archipelago, and is also the name for one of the three primary island groups in the country centered on the Island of Luzon...
" has been suggested, following the example of Japan (日本).
Some transcriptions are meant to have, or happen to have, positive connotations:
- United States of America is abbreviated 美國 (美国, měiguó, literally "beautiful country"). It is abbreviated from 美利堅合眾國, 美利堅 is an early phonetic transcription of "America".
- United Kingdom is called 英國 (英国, yīngguó, means "flower country"). The first character, 英, is abbreviated from 英吉利, the early Chinese transcription of "English", but subsequently applied to the UK after it was formed from the union of England and Scotland.
- GermanyGermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
is abbreviated as 德國 (德国, déguó, literally "Moral country"). The first character, 德, is abbreviated from 德意志 (the Chinese transcription of "Deutsch", the German word for "German"). - AthensAthensAthens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...
as 雅典 (Yădiăn), literally "elegant" and "classical". - Champs-ÉlyséesChamps-ÉlyséesThe Avenue des Champs-Élysées is a prestigious avenue in Paris, France. With its cinemas, cafés, luxury specialty shops and clipped horse-chestnut trees, the Avenue des Champs-Élysées is one of the most famous streets and one of the most expensive strip of real estate in the world. The name is...
as 香榭麗舍 (香榭丽舍, Xiāngxièlìshè), meaning "fragrant pavilion (and) beautiful house". - Coca-colaCoca-ColaCoca-Cola is a carbonated soft drink sold in stores, restaurants, and vending machines in more than 200 countries. It is produced by The Coca-Cola Company of Atlanta, Georgia, and is often referred to simply as Coke...
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". - FirenzeFlorenceFlorence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
as 翡冷翠 (by the poet Xu ZhimoXu ZhimoXu Zhimo was an early 20th century Chinese poet. He was given the name of Zhangxu and the courtesy name of Yousen . He later changed his courtesy name to Zhimo ....
), 翡翠 meaning "jadeiteJadeiteJadeite is a pyroxene mineral with composition NaAlSi2O6. It is monoclinic. It has a Mohs hardness of about 6.5 to 7.0 depending on the composition. The mineral is dense, with a specific gravity of about 3.4. Jadeite forms solid solutions with other pyroxene endmembers such as augite and diopside ,...
" and 冷 "cold". Today the city is usually known as 佛羅倫薩 (佛罗伦萨), a transcription based on the Anglo-French Florence rather than the endonym. - FontainebleauFontainebleauFontainebleau is a commune in the metropolitan area of Paris, France. It is located south-southeast of the centre of Paris. Fontainebleau is a sub-prefecture of the Seine-et-Marne department, and it is the seat of the arrondissement of Fontainebleau...
as 楓丹白露 (枫丹白露), meaning "red maple (and) white dew". - IthacaIthacaIthaca or Ithaka is an island located in the Ionian Sea, in Greece, with an area of and a little more than three thousand inhabitants. It is also a separate regional unit of the Ionian Islands region, and the only municipality of the regional unit. It lies off the northeast coast of Kefalonia and...
as 綺色佳, literally "gorgeous colour wonderful". - RevlonRevlonRevlon is an American cosmetics, skin care, fragrance, and personal care company founded in 1932.-History:Revlon was founded in the midst of the Great Depression, 1932, by Charles Revson and his brother Joseph, along with a chemist, Charles Lachman, who contributed the "L" in the Revlon name...
as 露華濃, literally as "revealing bright spring dew", excerpted from Li BaiLi BaiLi Bai , also known in the West by various other transliterations, especially Li Po, was a major Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty poetry period. He has been regarded as one of the greatest poets in China's Tang period, which is often called China's "golden age" of poetry. Around a thousand existing...
'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".
- MunichMunichMunich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
, German: München, the capital of Bavaria/Germany (derived fr. "Munichen" lit.: "(at the) monks") as 慕尼黑 Mùníhēi meaning "esteem - nun - black", perhaps accidentally referring to the "Münchner Kindl", the city coat of arms of MunichCoat of arms of MunichThe coat of arms of Munich depicts a young monk dressed in black holding a red book. It has existed in a similar form since the 13th century, though at certain points in its history it has not depicted the central figure of the monk at all. As the German name for Munich, i.e...
showing kind of childlike monk dressed in black. - Champagne as 香檳 (香槟, xiāng bīn) meaning "fragrant areca"
- Sheraton hotelsSheraton Hotels and ResortsSheraton Hotels and Resorts is Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide's largest and second oldest brand . Starwood's headquarters are in White Plains, New York.-Sheraton history:...
as 喜来登 (Xǐláidēng), "love to visit" - Best BuyBest BuyBest Buy Co., Inc. is an American specialty retailer of consumer electronics in the United States, accounting for 19% of the market. It also operates in Mexico, Canada & China. The company's subsidiaries include Geek Squad, CinemaNow, Magnolia Audio Video, Pacific Sales, and, in Canada operates...
as 百思买 (Bǎisīmǎi), "buy (after) thinking a hundred times" - Subway restaurantsSubway (restaurant)Subway is an American restaurant franchise that primarily sells submarine sandwiches and salads. It is owned and operated by Doctor's Associates, Inc. . Subway is one of the fastest growing franchises in the world with 35,519 restaurants in 98 countries and territories as of October 25th, 2011...
as 赛百味 (Sàibǎiwèi), "competing (with) a hundred tastes" - CostcoCostcoCostco Wholesale Corporation is the largest membership warehouse club chain in the United States. it is the third largest retailer in the United States, where it originated, and the ninth largest in the world...
as 好市多 (Hǎoshìduō), "market of many great things"
History
Transcription appeared early in ancient Chinese texts when the Han peopleHan Chinese
Han Chinese are an ethnic group native to China and are the largest single ethnic group in the world.Han Chinese constitute about 92% of the population of the People's Republic of China , 98% of the population of the Republic of China , 78% of the population of Singapore, and about 20% of the...
interacted with foreigners such as the Xiongnu
Xiongnu
The Xiongnu were ancient nomadic-based people that formed a state or confederation north of the agriculture-based empire of the Han Dynasty. Most of the information on the Xiongnu comes from Chinese sources...
. Besides proper names, a small number of loanwords in their transcribed forms found their way into Chinese during the Han Dynasty
Han Dynasty
The Han Dynasty was the second imperial dynasty of China, preceded by the Qin Dynasty and succeeded by the Three Kingdoms . It was founded by the rebel leader Liu Bang, known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu of Han. It was briefly interrupted by the Xin Dynasty of the former regent Wang Mang...
after Zhang Qian
Zhang Qian
Zhang Qian was an imperial envoy to the world outside of China in the 2nd century BCE, during the time of the Han Dynasty...
's exploration of the Western Regions
Western Regions
The Western Regions or Xiyu was a historical name specified in the Chinese chronicles between the 3rd century BC to 8th century AD that referred to the regions west of Jade Gate, most often Central Asia or sometimes more specifically the easternmost portion of it The Western Regions or Xiyu was a...
.
Transcriptions of other languages are found in ancient texts. A complete transcribed text of a short Yue song, known as Yueren Ge (越人歌 "Song of the Yue [boat]man"), is found in Liu Xiang
Liu Xiang (author)
Liu Xiang , born Liu Gengsheng , courtesy name Zizheng , was a famous Confucian scholar of the Han Dynasty. He was born in Xuzhou and related to Liu Bang, the founder of the Han dynasty...
's Shuoyuan (說苑/说苑 "Garden of stories") of the Western Han Dynasty, along with a Chinese version of the song. Some scholars have tried to reconstruct the original text.
The classics of Buddhism
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
began to be translated into Chinese during the late Han Dynasty. Many Sanskrit terms were then transcribed and became part of the Chinese language. According to the Song Dynasty
Song Dynasty
The Song Dynasty was a ruling dynasty in China between 960 and 1279; it succeeded the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period, and was followed by the Yuan Dynasty. It was the first government in world history to issue banknotes or paper money, and the first Chinese government to establish a...
scholar Zhou Dunyi (周敦義/周敦义), the famous monk and translator Xuanzang
Xuanzang
Xuanzang was a famous Chinese Buddhist monk, scholar, traveler, and translator who described the interaction between China and India in the early Tang period...
had his Wuzhong Bu Fan (五種不翻/五种不翻 "Five don't translate"), suggesting that Sanskrit terms should be transcribed instead of being translated when they are:
- Arcane, such as incantations
- PolysemousPolysemyPolysemy is the capacity for a sign or signs to have multiple meanings , i.e., a large semantic field.Charles Fillmore and Beryl Atkins’ definition stipulates three elements: the various senses of a polysemous word have a central origin, the links between these senses form a network, and ...
- Not found in China
- Traditionally transcribed, not translated
- Lofty and subtle, which a translation might devalue and obscure
These ancient transcription into Chinese characters provide clues to the reconstruction of Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese , also called Ancient Chinese by the linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese language spoken during Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties...
. In historical Chinese phonology
Historical Chinese phonology
Historical Chinese phonology deals with reconstructing the sounds of Chinese from the past. As Chinese is written with logographic characters, not alphabetic or syllabary, the methods employed in Historical Chinese phonology differ considerably from those employed in, for example, Indo-European...
, this 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 transcriptions made during the Tang Dynasty
Tang Dynasty
The Tang Dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. It was founded by the Li family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire...
are particularly valuable as linguistic data, as the Tantra
Tantra
Tantra , anglicised tantricism or tantrism or tantram, is the name scholars give to an inter-religious spiritual movement that arose in medieval India, expressed in scriptures ....
sect was then popular, with the mantra
Mantra
A mantra is a sound, syllable, word, or group of words that is considered capable of "creating transformation"...
s, 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 China, transcriptions mushroomed. They include not only transcriptions of proper nouns, but also those of common nouns, i.e. phonemic loans. Most of them proved fads, though. After that period, people tend to favor loan translation
Calque
In linguistics, a calque or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal, word-for-word or root-for-root translation.-Calque:...
s.
In modern Japanese, foreign terms are transcribed into katakana
Katakana
is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet . The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Each kana represents one mora...
. Some terms still appear in kanji
Kanji
Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...
, though, an example being 俱樂部/倶楽部,
(クラブ "gathering fun department"=club). Some 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
Ateji
In modern Japanese, primarily refers to kanji used phonetically to represent native or borrowed words, without regard to the meaning of the underlying characters. This is analogous to man'yōgana in pre-modern Japanese...
.
Official Standards
In People's Republic of ChinaPeople's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
, the official guide for the transcription 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 of the Xinhua News Agency
Xinhua News Agency
The Xinhua News Agency is the official press agency of the government of the People's Republic of China and the biggest center for collecting information and press conferences in the PRC. It is the largest news agency in the PRC, ahead of the China News Service...
. See the English transcription table or those for a number of other languages that are provided by the work. Most official transcriptions are based on Mandarin, the official language. A few official transcriptions are not based on Mandarin, as they had been absorbed into Chinese before Mandarin was established as the official language.
Cantonese
Cantonese people
The Cantonese people are Han people whose ancestral homes are in Guangdong, China. The term "Cantonese people" would then be synonymous with the Bun Dei sub-ethnic group, and is sometimes known as Gwong Fu Jan for this narrower definition...
media use a different (and loose) transcription system based on Cantonese.
In Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
, the Translation Standardisation Committee for the Chinese Media is responsible for the transcription standard.
In the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, Republic of Korea, Malaysia and many other countries Foreign Ministries or other competent government agencies set the official standards for transcribing names of entities under their jurisdiction into Chinese and other languages.
Difference in the phonetic translation between different regions
Names can be transcribed differently between the official transcription standards used within each of the different Chinese speaking regions. For example, "New Zealand" is represented as 纽西兰/ 紐西蘭 Niǔxīlán in Taiwan, and 新西兰/新西蘭 Xīnxīlán within mainland China. Taiwan here uses 紐 Niǔ for "New" phonetically in the same manner as 纽约 Niǔyuē (New YorkNew York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
), whilst mainland China uses the semantic transcription 新 xīn which literally means "new" in Chinese. US President Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
'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 and Hong Kong)
The city of Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
is rendered as 悉尼 (Xīní) in mainland China, Singapore, along with Malaysia and as 雪梨 (Xuělí) in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Cantonese speaking residents of Sydney.
Hong Kong and Macau usually transliterate names using Cantonese pronunciation but, since the handover from the British to the Chinese, there is a trend to follow mainland's methods, even if the Cantonese pronunciation becomes more remote from the original. For example, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
Dmitry Medvedev
Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev is the third President of the Russian Federation.Born to a family of academics, Medvedev graduated from the Law Department of Leningrad State University in 1987. He defended his dissertation in 1990 and worked as a docent at his alma mater, now renamed to Saint...
's surname is transcribed as 梅德韦杰夫 / 梅德韋傑夫 Méidéwéijiéfū, in Cantonese rendered as Muih-dak-waih-giht-fu, which is not phonetical rendering but borrowing from Mandarin spelling.
See also
- SinicizationSinicizationSinicization, Sinicisation or Sinification, is the linguistic assimilation or cultural assimilation of terms and concepts of the language and culture of China...
- Romanization of ChineseRomanization of ChineseThe romanization of Mandarin Chinese is the use of the Latin alphabet to write Chinese. Because Chinese is a tonal language with a logographic script, its characters do not represent phonemes directly. There have been many systems of romanization throughout history...
- Cyrillization of Chinese
- AtejiAtejiIn modern Japanese, primarily refers to kanji used phonetically to represent native or borrowed words, without regard to the meaning of the underlying characters. This is analogous to man'yōgana in pre-modern Japanese...
- similar practice in Japanese - English to Chinese transliteration table adopted by the Chinese Wikipedia