Foreign words/names trasnliteration/pronunciation in Chinese - any changes needed?

[atitarev]

Hi all,

I heard different opinions about foreign words/names transliteration/pronunciation in Chinese - learners and natives. Is everyone happy with the status quo? That is, transliterating foreign words into Chinese using Chinese characters somewhat reminding the original pronunciation and adjusting to make it sound or mean better?

Issues with this approach are well-known, names become unrecognisable. It's probably OK for well-known names.

Our Chinese teacher mentioned that foreign names are often written in 2 versions - Chinese characters and Roman in brackets to show the pronunciation and the original spelling.

Questions:

1) Do you think this needs to be reformed or should it stay unchanged? Which method is needed?

a) New phonetic characters or diacritics to show missing sounds/combinations.

B) borrow and adjust characters to Mandarin from another language/script - Japanese, Korean, English, etc.

c) No change but provide Roman/other scripts spelling next to the Chinese characters.

2) If you're against the reform (note: I am NOT suggesting to reform Chinese language but the methods to render some foreign words.

3) Do you think Chinese people need to learn to pronounce SOME sounds/combinations that don't exist in Chinese, V, R, etc. I had a discussion with Japanese people about their phonetical system an dif they are happy with it. A few languages borrowed foreign sounds that didn't exist in their language, a good example is German.

Please don't overreact, by no means I don't want to offend Chinese culture and I like Chinese language and its writing system.

The vote allows multiple choices. I selected the bottom 2, as I think something needs to change but I'd like to see your opinion on this.

[wix]

Increased use of roman script is the best solution. It eliminates ambiguity and it accommodates most of the world's languages.

It is not necessary to expect Chinese people to pronounce the words perfectly. Non-Chinese speakers won't pronounce words written in pinyin perfectly either. However, the written form will prevent confusion and when spoken it is more likely to be intelligible than words transliterated using characters.

[wushijiao]

Since most people can’t pronounce foreign names, and instead just pronounce them in a pinyinized way, I say keep it as it is.

[wix]

Since most people can’t pronounce foreign names, and instead just pronounce them in a pinyinized way, I say keep it as it is.

Of course they pronounce them in a pinyinised way. They are just reading the characters.

For example, they will read 湯母克魯斯 as tangmu kelusi. However, if presented with Tom Cruise instead, they might say something that more closely resembles the English pronunciation.

[wushijiao]

Of course they pronounce them in a pinyinised way. They are just reading the characters

.

Haha! I meant when you speak your name to them. For example, almost no one who has not studied English can pronounce the name Bill. Try getting a 50 year-old man to say that name (I have many times)! You'll settle for 比尔, or some sort of Chinese name sooner or later. Try saying names like Hans Blix to Chinese people. You are as likely to get older Chinese to magically understand final constonants as you are to get older Americans to start pronouncing tones in Chinese names. It just doesn't register.

I suppose in a generation or so, when the majority of people will have had practice at pronouncing foreign sounds, it might be easier to convert to another system.

[Quest]

I suggest keeping the characters approach but standardizing what characters to use for what sound. The only reason the roman alphabet would work better is because every country has some sort of romanization in place for its names in order to communicate with the western world. But this is not an intrinsic advantage of the roman alphabet, more to do with the status of English. Japanese and Korean place names, for example, do not cause confusions in China.

[gato]

Japanese and Korean place names, for example, do not cause confusions in China.

Isn't that only true those city names that mutually agreed upon Chinese character names? But the controversy over changing 汉城 to 首尓 (Seoul) shows that this isn't always going to be the case.

[atitarev]

Japanese and Korean names don't cause confusion as long as they are not pronounced, IMHO, well almost. Shénhù (神户) has nothing in common with Kōbe (神戸) or Dàbǎn (大坂/大阪) with Ōsaka (大阪)

Even if Osaka were rendered phonetically, there is no common character in Mandarin with KA pronunciation used for foreign words, so it would be something like Ou-sa-jia. KA is not hard to pronounce for a Mandarin speaker (there is KE, KAO, etc), should there be new characters created for sound combinations non-existent in Mandarin?

EDIT: thanks Gato

[gato]

Even if Osaka were rendered phonetically, there is no character in Mandarin with KA pronunciation

You can try 欧萨卡. Kind of ugly, but that's how transliterations are, which is why most foreigners and foreign companies in China take up a Chinese-sounding name instead.

[Quest]

IMO, any method that would require adding sounds to the language should be avoided, because it will never accomodate sounds of all the languages in the world. Keep it systematic, simple, and local.

[atitarev]

I agree with you partially, Quest. (Could you also vote, please

Borrowing, for example, from Arabic emphatic or pharyngeal sounds would be too hard for any language, since those sounds are not known outside Arabic communities and these sounds simply don't exist in English, Chinese, etc.

IMO, languages benefit by borrowing from each other, some are more accommodating than others (for example German often renders foreign (English, French, some other) names with 100% accuracy, even with sounds, which do not exist in German) , also depends how close those languages are and how well known the other language is. English is becoming well-known in China and Mandarin has a lot of basic sounds (consonants and vowels) to imitate most words of well-known languages. It's the combinations that cause problems. The combinations are often difficult because they do not exist in Mandarin but because they can't be written down and they are produced using slightly similar syllables. The resulting pronunciation often doesn't help to identify the original pronunciation. I am not saying it's critical but we are just discussing.

[Quest]

How do you know I didn't? I don't see my option

All the well known countries and cities already have commonly accepted names, so I guess we are only talking about transliterations for obscure places, personal names or whatnot. That's where I would recommend using a more systematic approach. Another problem is, we have dialectal or politically separate media naming things differently...

It should also be noted that the Chinese (English) approach is more often seen in oversea Chinese newspapers. In China, people pay little attention to how names are spelled in English or in their original languages.

[atitarev]

The poll results are public, that's why I know

I am interested in a more systematic approach for obscure names, agree that commonly names won't change. If we do have it what should it be - new set of characters?

Even if we talk about commonly known names, how can we do a reliable search in Chinese web-sites about, say president Reagan, if it was written in differen ways in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan?

It should also be noted that the Chinese (English) approach is more often seen in oversea Chinese newspapers. In China, people pay little attention to how names are spelled in English or in their original languages.

There's more and more communication and miscommunication - he-he-he with China. It does become an issue sometimes for either side.

[gato]

It should also be noted that the Chinese (English) approach is more often seen in oversea Chinese newspapers.

Taiwan newspapers (chinatimes.com, for example) and writers also tend to more often include the romanized version of the foreign names along with the Chinese. However, there is no standard. It depends on the individual writers. China may be moving in that direction as well, though as of today, many writers in China are still not in the habit of doing so.

I think this is a particularly serious problem in academic writing where Chinese professors would sprinkle their texts with English words like "justice" or "shareholder" (though there are ready Chinese translations), but when it comes to foreign personal names, they tend to use only the Chinese transliteration. Sometimes, even the teachers only know the Chinese tranliteration and not the romanized names because that's how they learned it from their teachers. Not knowing the romanized names makes it more difficult for those doing research to communicate with the outside world and indeed to even conduct literature search on the internet. Typing the Chinese transliteration on google for "Vladimir Nabokov" (纳博科夫), for example, doesn't allow you to find any articles in English (or Russian) on him.

[wushijiao]

Not knowing the romanized names makes it more difficult for those doing research to communicate with the outside world and indeed to even conduct literature search on the internet.

I agree. It doesn't seem like there are very rigorous style guides for this type of stuff. Recently I've been going through some academic books in Chinese that:

1) include the romanized name the first time they introduce someone

2) have an index in the back of the book, with all the names of the people and which pages they are mentioned on. This index also includes the romanized names. So if you forget who the Chinese name refers to, you can just look in the back.

Unfortunately, this type of book isn't the norm, it seems. Many books don't even have indexes.

[Quest]

Typing the Chinese transliteration on google for "Vladimir Nabokov" (纳博科夫), for example, doesn't allow you to find any articles in English (or Russian) on him.

How many people in China can read and do research in English? I am sure it would make life easier for everybody if the world adopt English as its mother tongue, except when you have to deal with romanized Chinese names...

[gato]

How many people in China can read and do research in English? I am sure it would make life easier for everybody if the world adopt English as its mother tongue, except when you have to deal with romanized Chinese names...

That's a common response, but the suggestion above is directed towards people in universities and those who write for the university-educated. It's a smaller population, but a small fraction of 1.3 billion is still a large number. We are talking about tens of millions of people, at least. College textbooks at least should try to include romanization for non-Chinese names whenever possible.

[atitarev]

Wix mentioned transliteration of Tom Cruise into 汤姆·克鲁斯 (湯姆·克魯斯), which is pronounced as Tāngmǔ Kèlǔsī. I am sure most of his Chinese fans can pronounce his name in English, more or less close to the original but the characters force it to be pronounced Tāngmǔ Kèlǔsī. Should new phonetical symbols be created in Chinese just for foreign words? Even if we provide the romanised spelling once (for reference), the original pronunciation will be heavily distorted. Do you think no foreign combinations should be allowed into Chinese?

Interesting that our Chinese teacher said (as an example only) 我对 Tom Cruise 感兴趣, not 我对汤姆·克鲁斯感兴趣. It probably sounds funny to a native Chinese person and I hear this a lot from Chinese people living in Australia - they pronounce the names in English, even when they speak Chinese. I am not sure what they would write if they had to write - mix Roman letters with Hanzi or convert to characters.

[Quest]

Should new phonetical symbols be created in Chinese just for foreign words?

I think the same question can be asked for any language in the world. We are always only getting approximations of foreign sounds in any language. If a language doesn't have the sounds of another language, so be it. Borrowing English spellings and sounds to help identify and pronounce a Russian name isn't the best idea in the world, I'd say.

Interesting that our Chinese teacher said (as an example only) 我对 Tom Cruise 感兴趣, not 我对汤姆·克鲁斯感兴趣. It's probably sounds funny to a native Chinese person and I hear this a lot from Chinese people living in Australia - they pronounce the names in English, even when they speak Chinese.

Yes, Chinese people in English speaking countries do that a lot, mixing English in their Chinese, because they do not often see/hear the Chinese translations. I believe it's a different story in China, few people would refer to Bill Clinton, for example, as Bill Clinton. Ask them what his last name is, and I think many would tell you 克.

[atitarev]

Russian is not as important as English, I admit. Russian language is affected by globalisation as well like any other language. Sounds, which do not exist in Russian (like th in this or theory) are normally not reproduced 100% (Уильям Тэкерей - [vilyam tekerey] - William Thakeray), although some people do pronounce them. Tom Cruise would become Том Круз [tom kruz]. Although, there is no aspiration and R is rolled, it is a 100% mapping of vowels and consonants.

Chinese are able to pronounce Tom Kloos/Klooz, if any version of R is too hard, it would be much closer to the original than Tāngmǔ Kèlǔsī, don't you think? 2 syllables become 5.