Address translation

[fovisser]

Hello,

 

Can someone help me translate this address? When I use Google Translate, the order is wrong...

 

中國江蘇省昆山市錦溪鎮正崴路惠峰公寓18#

 

Thanks.

 

Frank.

[Lu]

中國江蘇省昆山市錦溪鎮正崴路惠峰公寓18#

 

[name of addressee]

Huifeng Gongyu no. 18 [this apartment complex may well have an official English name, but since I don't know it, just use pinyin]

Zhengsui Road

Jinxi Village

Kunshan City

Jiangsu Province

PR China

 

Your best bet is printing the Chinese address and sticking that on the envelope, and then write beneath it:

Kunshan City

Jiangsu Province

PR China

 

By the time it gets to Jiangsu the address in Chinese will be more useful than any translation. Include a phone number of the addressee if you have it.

[889]

In the U.S. at least, postal clerks can now require that the entire address, as well as the name of the addressee, be romanised.

 

A phone number is useful if it's a package; a postal code will always be useful.

[Kamille]

In the U.S. at least, postal clerks can now require that the entire address, as well as the name of the addressee, be romanised.

 

Dude I hope this never happens in Europe or I will never know what to write in order to send a letter to Taiwan. They don't use hanyun pinyin here and their romanisation system is completely random. There's no actual rule. People write sounds as they please. Even in the name of the streets it's awfully random and I could never make sense of any address written using the latin alphabet Taiwanese like to feed their foreigners with (with the honorable purpose of making things easier for us... how ironic :-/ ).

Now oblige people to write their letters with a romanised address and it will just be a big chaos where you can never be sure if your letter will ever reach destination or not :-/

In China at least hanyu pinyin follows very precise rules which are learned by everyone. Here it's total chaos.

 

I guess the same would happen in Korea where they don't seem to have a fixed romanisation system either?

 

I mean, the postal services don't need to be able to read the address if they can read enough information to send the letter to the right country. What a pain :-/

[Lu]

Dude I hope this never happens in Europe or I will never know what to write in order to send a letter to Taiwan.

Just write pinyin, or corrupted Wade-Giles, or Tongyong, or whatever you're comfortable with, and above that the Chinese. I can kind of understand that people want a full address in letters they can read, but surely there's no rule forbidding you from writing the address in letters the addressee can read.

[edelweis]

@Kamille: already the case, see the CGV of La Poste.

In practice I've sent mail with Latin letters address + Chinese characters address, no problem,

and also mail with Chinese characters + country name in latin Letters, also no problem.

But if you try to send a package at the post office, the employee is supposed to make you write the address in Latin letters.

[889]

Nothing forbidding you from using Chinese, so long as you've romanised it.

 

The rule's in Section 122.1(d) of the International Mail Manual:

 

"Addresses in Russian, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Cyrillic, Japanese, or Chinese characters must bear an interline translation in English of the addressee’s full legal name (see Note above) and complete address (including country). If the English translation is not known, the foreign language words must appear in roman characters (either printed or script)."

 

The mentioned note says, "the term 'full legal name' means the name that corresponds to the addressee’s government-issued identification — i.e., the addressee’s first name, middle initial (if applicable), and last name."

 

Who knows whether this is all strictly enforced over the post office counter.

 

http://pe.usps.gov/cpim/ftp/manuals/imm/full/imm.pdf

[Kamille]

Roger. So yeah, it's not that much of a pain, after all.

Addresses in Russian, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Cyrillic, Japanese, or Chinese characters must blablabla

 

So it's not necessary for Korean, Tibetan or any of the others ? So much for trying to make a complete list where you could just write "addresses in non-latin characters"  

[fovisser]

Thanks, guys! The package is on the way again.