Foreign place names in Chinese

[Kong Junrui]

Is there any place (website, book, etc) I can use that could tell me the names of specific places in Chinese not in China? For example, I know how to say America (美国), but I do not know how to say the state nor city I live in (Plano, Texas).

Thanks.

[gougou]

You should be able to find Texas, or anything of comparable size/importance in most dictionaries. For cities, you might have to google - or get a Chinese atlas.

[spencer4554]

With a brief google search and wifely help:

普莱诺 (plano)

德克萨斯 (texas)

Paul

[Kong Junrui]

Ah, thanks again. 谢谢你。

[gougou]

Often you will find states in their abbreviated form, too. For Texas, that would be 德州.

[trevelyan]

http://www.adsotrans.com/adso/uniedit.pl?word=&show_flag=on&search_english=Plano&show_english=on&search_flag=&show_pinyin=on&search_pinyin=

We have a lot of place names in Adso, including Plano and Texas. Alternate entries for the latter include:

得克萨斯州

德克萨斯州

德州

Not terribly important unless you need to specify that Texas is a state. If a word doesn't exist and you manage to find it, you can always add it and save the next person a bit of time searching.

[laohu489]

If you are interested only in American place names, there is a book called (appropriately enough) 美国地名译名手册 ISBN 7100017904. Great book, worth every 分 of the 40 人民币 I paid for it

[chenpv]

Great book, worth every 分 of the 40 人民币 I paid for it

Well done, I can say that you want to practise your chinese as much as possible. It reminds me of the old days when we were learning english like ' where is 厕所' or 'did you go to the 广场 last night?' Yes, I believe that, by throwing away pinyin when typing chinese characters, supplanting as many english words as you can in a sentence, you are sure to make rapid progress. -----------(well in this case, english learners like me wont be able to read any coherent english here and benefit from it. Hehe, never mind. )

[atitarev]

I don't want to start a new thread, I think it's related, anyway. 2 of our Chinese teachers mentioned that it becomes very common to use Roman letters to write foreign names in Chinese texts for company names and even foreign personal names. "Microsoft" stays "Microsoft", no transliteration is used. They said it is a trend from the last 2 years or so. Can you comment on this?

[skylee]

Isn't Microsoft called 微軟?

[atitarev]

Thanks, Skylee. Yes, I know this, that's why the question. I also saw manuals in Chinese where Microsoft is always spelled in English.