How do you study transliterations and names?

[Jan Finster]

To me this is one of the more frustrating aspects of learning Chinese.

 

How do you study transliterations?

How do you study names?

 

Recently, I started assigning a meaning to the names even if it was non-sensical.

For example:

雅虎 instead of just learning Yahoo, I learned "elegant tiger" (this still makes some sense)

平壤 instead of just learning Pyongyang,  I learn "flat earth" (this still makes some sense)

 锦荣 instead of just remembering the name JinRong, I remember "brocade glory" (?)

 

 

 

 

[Tomsima]

For many transliterations its worth looking at the history behind them, from what language did they enter Chinese, in what dialect was the word probably intended to be spoken in etc. This often helps me in remembering otherwise strange transliterations. one I can think of off the top of my head is 三文魚 for salmon, which came in through Cantonese (where the characters are pronounced 'saam1man4') versus 沙門菌 for salmonella, which I would presume is a later mainland transliteration for the same English pronunciation.

 

I find once I can understand the logic behind it remembering the characters becomes a lot easier. as for the wider volume of modern transliterations, there's a fairly consistent pattern on what characters are used and after memorising enough you can start to judge by intuition in a lot of cases. for example, Chernobyl is 切爾諾貝利, which uses a bunch of standard characters used for transliterating English pronunciations. You might guess 其爾諾貝爾 or something similar, and I would hazard a guess that the transliteration is actually based off the Ukrainian pronunciation of Chernobyl, rather than a general American pronunciation (which usually mirrors ls and rs with 爾)

[Jan Finster]

7 minutes ago, Tomsima said:

諾貝爾

 

I just learned, this would be Nobel (price).

 

I still find it weird that they apply tones to non-Chinese words. Looks random to me ? I do not think we would pronounce Chernobyl in a way that justifies using 3 fourth tones in "..byl"  ??

[889]

Am I the only one who doesn't put much time into this?

 

That is, I could not correctly write out by hand from memory the characters for any but the most common foreign names. But I almost always recognise them in text in context. And unless you're taking exams, writing these days is usually on a machine assisted by an IME: if you get the Pinyin wrong on the first try you just try again.

 

Foreign "transliterations" in Chinese tend to draw on the same 100-plus characters, and what's important is knowing those characters and their Pinyin, and that's where I'd put the study emphasis. Once you've got those building blocks down pat, dealing with foreign names shouldn't be a big problem.

 

The table at the end of this Wikipedia entry may show an official index of these building blocks.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcription_into_Chinese_characters

[imron]

7 hours ago, 889 said:

 

Am I the only one who doesn't put much time into this?

 

Nope. I’m the same. 

[Geiko]

I don't pay too much attention to transliterations either, especially because you often find different versions in China and Taiwan: 巴塞罗那 vs 巴塞隆納，意大利 vs 義大利，肯尼亚 vs 肯亞……

[Jan Finster]

11 hours ago, 889 said:

That is, I could not correctly write out by hand from memory the characters for any but the most common foreign names. But I almost always recognise them in text in context. And unless you're taking exams, writing these days is usually on a machine assisted by an IME: if you get the Pinyin wrong on the first try you just try again.

 

I never said anything about writing longhand. I am not learning to write Chinese at all. I just realised that transliterations and names are confusing at my level. When you read a text and they talk about 勐海县 and 勐 阿镇 and you do not know if they are important words essential to the meaning, this can be confusing. 

 

11 hours ago, 889 said:

Am I the only one who doesn't put much time into this?

 

11 hours ago, 889 said:

Once you've got those building blocks down pat, dealing with foreign names shouldn't be a big problem.

 

The table at the end of this Wikipedia entry may show an official index of these building blocks.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcription_into_Chinese_characters

IMO, studying that table "down pat" is putting a lot of time into it ?

But, thanks! This table is awesome.? If I ever get myself to study it including the IPA phonetic notation, I will get back to it ?

[889]

You don't need to worry about IPAI! Just make sure you know those characters -- they're basic ones -- and their Pinyin readings and you should be set.

 

We have no idea why people here are studying Chinese. My point is simply that anyone who's going to be writing exams in Chinese will have a different perspective on this issue.

[Flickserve]

On 4/20/2020 at 4:40 PM, Jan Finster said:

you do not know if they are important words essential to the meaning, this can be confusing. 

 

try not to overthink it.

[Tomsima]

I'm quite amazed to see the consensus appears to be that people don't actively study transliterations, what do you do when you want to talk or write about things like events in non-chinese history? are people remembering the pronunciation of the word alone, or switching into English, out just giving it a rough shot at an approximated pronunciation? I have practiced producing the correct characters in writing, which leads to correct tones and speaking habits. I didn't used to, and used to bumble through more obscure county names, foreign figures and events, but it always used to be a stumbling block for me so I put a lot of time into learning the correct transliterations for most general knowledge stuff.

 

I now read most of my news on dw in traditional, so I get the Taiwan alternatives too. More importantly I find it quite interesting too, am I alone?

[Lu]

23 minutes ago, Tomsima said:

I'm quite amazed to see the consensus appears to be that people don't actively study transliterations, what do you do when you want to talk or write about things like events in non-chinese history? are people remembering the pronunciation of the word alone, or switching into English, out just giving it a rough shot at an approximated pronunciation?

The latter two at first, and then assuming my conversation partner knows who or what I'm talking about, I try and copy how they say it and I'm good for the rest of the conversation. If there is time to prepare in advance, or if I need to write something, I'd look it up of course.

 

One category I'm actively trying to learn more words in is country names.

 

A category that the above tactic does not work at all is Japanese names. I can by now make an understandable attempt at Murakami Haruki and that's it. It almost never comes up, but when it does it is immediately a real problem.

[imron]

2 hours ago, Tomsima said:

out just giving it a rough shot at an approximated pronunciation?

This is mostly what I do, and it works 95% of the time - just take any English word and split it in to Chinese sounding syllables.

[Tomsima]

I would guess that 95% is an overrepresentation of what works based on individual limits in one's ability to express oneself. I think Chinese 'transliterations' are important not to overlook, as they are not simply transliterations, or transcriptions, or translations, but often a blurred middle ground, where a rough approximation of sound often pays heed to the meaning of the characters used to represent said sounds. Even if these were found to only make up 5% of all transliterations, I still think thats enough reason to put time into learning a good selection actively. Even ones that don't fall into this category are often still worth learning for the sake of sounding 'nicer' or perhaps more 'respectful' in everyday conversation (eg countries, capitals, famous people and events).

 

Take a look below at some I have previously noted down as transliterations which I'm pretty sure I would fail at understanding without active study (for interests sake, at least):

 

雨果

Spoiler

Victor Hugo, I would hazard a guess that the characters used are in some way related to his sombre works, eg 悲惨世界 Les Miserables)

声呐

Spoiler

SONAR characters clearly related to meaning as well as the sound of the acronym. This is true of RADAR (雷达) but differs from other similar sounding acronyms like SCUBA (水肺) or NASA (美国国家航空航天局) which are just translations.

高加索

Spoiler

Caucasus, caucasian. 高 perhaps draws on the Caucasus mountain range

日内瓦

Spoiler

Geneva I dont think a beginner would be able to guess this from listening or reading, and it sounds very different to the English to my ears, so needs to be learnt actively.

凡尔赛

Spoiler

Versailles same reason as 日内瓦

卡扎菲

Spoiler

Muammar Gadaffi This may well be based on the proper pronounciation of the name, but if I wasn't to learn this I would probably guess 加达菲 or something similar, which would be useless as it sounds nothing like the actual transliteration.

拜占庭

Spoiler

Byzantium, if you're lucky you might see it as 拜占庭帝国, the Byzantine empire, in which case its a lot easier to guess. Again, note the apt choice of characters.

图灵

Spoiler

Alan Turing Has come up a few times in the word 图灵机, which if you know 图灵 is Turing is pretty easy to figure out, otherwise its just another thread you've lost. If I didn't study this I might guess 图灵, but equally might go for something like 多令. I would guess the characters 图 and 灵 were chosen in relation to the Turing test (图灵测试).

居里夫人

Spoiler

Marie Curie The problem is this one is like a false friend; as soon as you hear 居里 you might think 'julie, julia', and the connection to Marie Curie becomes all the more difficult.

波帕

Spoiler

Pol Pot I just find this one difficult to remember

奥斯维辛

Spoiler

Aushwitz the transliteration comes from the Polish Oświęcim rather than the German which also is used in English.

 

[889]

"I'm quite amazed to see the consensus appears to be that people don't actively study transliterations."

 

For those in an academic environment or becoming professional translators or the like, a broad knowledge of Chinese names in their field is no doubt important.

 

But for more casual learners of Chinese, there are a lot more important aspects of the language to worry about, especially in the early decades of study.

 

Myself, I can't even spell names like Haile Selassie and Pete Buttigieg in English without looking them up first. So no shame I have no idea what they look like in Chinese.

[Dlezcano]

My guesses for the foreign words written by Tomsima (I am only writing the ones I didn't know beforehand):

 

雨果-> couldn't figure out anything, just thinking in some sweet and delicious fruit.

拜占庭-> Byzantine

图灵-> Turin (city in Italy)

居里夫人-> Lady Julie (?)

波帕-> Bhopal (city in India)

奥斯维辛-> couldn't figure out anything, thought for a moment in a German surname like Schwarzenegger.

 

Actually had fun at doing it.