proper transliteration

[markpete]

Hi. I was wondering if there's some pattern to the way English place-names are translated into Chinese. Boston is commonly translated as 波士頓 bo1shi4dun4, which sounds very much like it does in English. In cases like this, when the translation is rendered so the word sounds the same in both English and Chinese, are there particular characters which are preferred over others with the same pronunciation? Particular patterns of tones that are generally used? Are the simplest characters to write the ones that are used? Or am I at liberty to choose any characters that give a similar sound?

Of course some are well-established translations, but I'm wondering how to represent names that haven't been translated into Chinese before.

Thanks!

[gougou]

am I at liberty to choose any characters that give a similar sound?

yes, but

are there particular characters which are preferred over others with the same pronunciation?

yes

(EDIT: When looking for something more detailed, I came across this page)

[markpete]

Hmm. Well, maybe you can tell me how far off I am. I want to translate Mono Lake, which is in western California, into Chinese characters. I went with 曼偶湖 man4ou3hu2 (graceful image? lake). I did see a note when looking up the character 歐ou1 that it was often used for writing foreign words, but it didn't seem quite appropriate to use a character which means 'vomit' for a pretty lake.

Is there any pattern to which characters are preferred for such place names?

[gougou]

but it didn't seem quite appropriate to use a character which means 'vomit' for a pretty lake.

So what does that tell us about Europe???

For commonly used characters, see the page I edited in above (connection is a bit slow today, didn't see that you already replied).

[trevelyan]

That's a nice list, gougou. We've been collecting and tagging characters that are used phonetically as part of the Adso project as well. We don't have as many as in the list provided by Stephen Walsh at the URL link, but it is easier to see them with the associated pinyin, if not in alphabetical order:

http://www.adsotrans.com/adso/unidict.pl?word=&show_flag=on&search_english=&search_flag=PHONETIC&show_pinyin=on&search_pinyin=

Stephen is dead right that the list is an open set anyway. I've even seen 一 used occasionally in names. That being said, you should probably go with 莫诺 for "Mono". Its what a quick lookup in 二十一世纪世界地名录 put out by the 现代出版社 suggests, anyway.

[skylee]

I like the Chinese name of Yosemite -> 優山美地

(Another tranliteration is 優勝美地, which is not as good IMO.)

[Jim]

There's that slightly odd inconsistency in Chinese versions of some British place-names (which you notice if you watch the football) where cardinal compass points are translated but the rest of the name is transliterated, for example West Ham is rendered 西汉姆.

[Quest]

I did see a note when looking up the character 歐ou1 that it was often used for writing foreign words, but it didn't seem quite appropriate to use a character which means 'vomit' for a pretty lake.

欧 ou1 is different from 呕 ou3

[Yuchi]

I had a question about transliterating a certain name "Thompson".

is it 汤姆森 or 汤普森? My friend seems to believe it's the first one, while the dictionaries and translators say otherwise.

And if it is the second one, is 汤姆森 "Tomson"? The 'p' sound doesn't seem to exist in 汤姆森 which makes me lean toward the second one myself.

[jukebox]

And if it is the second one, is 汤姆森 "Tomson"? The 'p' sound doesn't seem to exist in 汤姆森 which makes me lean toward the second one myself.

Thomson -> 湯姆森/遜

Thompson-> 湯普森/遜

森 and 遜 are exchangeable.

I looked up in my English dictionary, finding that the letter 'p' in 'Thompson' is sometimes silent.

[Ferno]

I do not understand why Chinese keeping using "shi" for the "s" sound in transliteration when "si" would be much more logical...

note the word should be "transliteration"... the sounds are being put from the English alphabet into the Chinese pseudo-alphabet, it's not actually being translated

[jukebox]

I do not understand why Chinese keeping using "shi" for the "s" sound in transliteration when "si" would be much more logical...

I think the problem is due to the existing translations which are from different dialect, while there're no retroflex sounds in some southern dialects, e.g., Cantonese.

For instance, 'Disney' was once translated into '迪斯尼'(Disini) in China mainland, and '迪士尼'(Dishini) in Hong Kong. But in 1995, Disney finally decided to use '迪士尼' as a universal translation in Greater China region. And nowadays China mainland gradually adopts the Hong Kong translation, namely, '迪士尼', and meanwhile some ppl still insist on '迪斯尼'.

[trevelyan]

I know that the official Chinese translations of the Tintin comics translate the names of the police officers as 汤姆森 or 汤普森, so I think the correct answer is "both".

[hakkaboy]

Jukebox, I think you will find that a "p" sound often accidentally intrudes in "Thomson"

[atitarev]

I searched for names of Australian cities and found that Brisbane (Queensland) has 2 versions: 布里斯本 (Bùlǐsīběn) and 布里斯班 (Bùlǐsībān). Since the first had more hits in google, I'll stick to the first one. It's not the first time I notice names transliterated in various ways. Melbourne is usually transliterated as 墨尔本 but I remember seeing the last character having the sound of "bo", not "ben".

1) Is it OK to have mutiple versions for geographical names depending on who the author is? My guess is there must be atlases, dictionaries but not every village could be listed.

2) Or is it only a case when China/Taiwan/Hong Kong transliterate them differently (with the case of Brisbane)?

3) What do Chinese authors/reporters do to check the way a geographical name is called?

[kudra]

I don't know which book, but at some point Thompson answers the phone and says something like, "... no it's Thompson with a 'p', as in psychology." This is of course in the English edition.

From which I conclude that in the context of reading aloud TinTin at least, the p in Thompson is to be silent, and thus Thomson and Thompson exact homophones.