translating names

[Silent]

How do people handle western names when writing Chinese? Recently I had several times I wanted to use western names but had no clue what the official transliteration to Chinese is. Sometimes names can be found searching the web but that's not very practical for quick wechat messages and if you don't know whether a chinese name exists, how long do you search? In native Chinese I sometimes see some transliteration with the western name in brackets so I often use western names or a more or less translated name. Does not  always feel really satisfactory though, specially if the name is (partially) descriptive.

 

For Dutch speakers some examples I encountered writing about my trip to Amersfoort this weekend:

Mondriaanhuis

Armen de Poth

Koppelpoort

Keistad

Marokkaanse met aanvraagformulier voor inburgeringscursus (Title of a painting, I more or less translated it to 摩洛哥女孩子文书处理 but no-one is going to trace that back to the actual painting)

 

How do you guys handle this?

 

 

[大块头]

Xinhua publishes a dictionary of name translations, but I have never read it. I believe this Wikipedia entry describes the overall transcription system that this book uses.

[Silent]

Thanks for the reply 大块头. Not sure this really is what I'm looking for. The book is about people, peoples names are part of the issue, my scope is however much wider and includes place names, brand names, touristic attractions etc and the wikipedia article is mainly sound based. Common official names are translated with sound and meaning in mind.

 

Maybe I'm looking for something that doesn't exist, but essentially I'm looking for two things. A simple and quick way to find out or an official translation exists and if so what it is. And if there is no known/official translation how to handle it? You just transcribe according to a system like the wikipedia article? With a meaningful name a direct transcription doesn't feel right to me, translating seems better but has it's pitfalls too. Names that are partially meaningful and partially just a sound I'm even more in doubt. Maybe it's just a matter of finding and getting habited to a personal style to handle it. Mainly wondering how other people handle it.

 

 

[Lu]

I suspect the Mondriaanhuis has a more or less official Chinese name, which I would look for by vigorous googling Mondriaan's Chinese name and the address, or 博物馆, or such terms. Koppelpoort I'd probably translate as Koppelpoort门 (assuming this is still an actual gate). The title of the painting of the Moroccan girl would be a pest to translate, because there is so much cultural and political background there that just translating the title could never do it justice. You need a least a full paragraph there, or else just write 'a painting with implied cricitism of the current Dutch political climate towards immigrants' or something along those lines.

 

In informal communication, many Chinese people use either the Dutch (or other local) name, or they make up a transliteration or description and include the local name in brackets on the first mention. In more formal communication (a website for the city of Amersfoort, say), you'd need an experienced native-speaking translator who is not afraid to ask questions.

[Silent]

Hi Lu, great to read that your approach as experienced translator seems pretty much the way I was thinking about it and often go about it. Difference that this time sitting in the train typing a wechat message I was too lazy to google vigorously and that often times I'm not fully satisfied with the outcome of the searching process..

 

You know any tricks to find official names in an efficient manner?

 

For Mondriaanhuis I choose to use Mondraan家, just found on internet: 蒙德里安之家, I avoided the name of koppelpoort and only added a picture as I had no clue what to make of it. On internet I just found 水陆两栖城门, something I would never have come up with and not really the way I had considered koppel. As said with respect to the painting I used  摩洛哥女孩子文书处理 though it doesn't really come close. For me the style was more important then the cultural issue as it's a modern version of Vermeer's girl with letter. 

 

 

[大块头]

It looks like there is a similar book for place names, but that doesn't help you if you're stuck on a train and didn't happen to bring the 2 kilograms of dead tree with you.

 

I'm not a professional translator, but in the past I've had good luck with finding the article on Wikipedia in English and then switching to Chinese. 百度百科 is also a good resource.

 

Your results with these methods may not be as good with Dutch, however.

[Silent]

I sometimes use the wiki trick too. For major, well know people and places it works mostly fine, but the moment you get away from the mainstream it doesn't work that well any more.

[Lu]

22 hours ago, Silent said:

You know any tricks to find official names in an efficient manner?

For Dutch translations, I don't think there is an efficient manner. Wikipedia is often a good place to start, but not all places or things have a page in both languages. You can google Dutch name + something you think will show up in the Chinese name (be it something like 家 or 博物馆 or a character from the name), or find the English name first and use that to look for the Chinese name.

 

For wechat, I think you handled it just fine. I don't know if a Chinese person would necessarily have done better with the Koppelpoort or the Moroccan girl, unless perhaps they had a Chinese guidebook at hand.