Transcription into Chinese characters is the use of
traditional
A tradition is a belief or behavior (folk custom) passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examples include holidays or ...
or
simplified Chinese characters
Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as ''kanji' ...
to ''
phonetically
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...
''
transcribe
Transcription refers to the process of converting sounds (voice, music etc.) into letters or musical notes, or producing a copy of something in another medium, including:
Genetics
* Transcription (biology), the copying of DNA into RNA, the fir ...
the sound of terms and names of foreign words to the
Chinese language
Chinese (, especially when referring to written Chinese) is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in Greater China. About 1.3 billion people (or approximately 16% of the wor ...
. Transcription is distinct from
translation into Chinese
Chinese translation theory was born out of contact with vassal states during the Zhou Dynasty. It developed through translations of Buddhist scripture into Chinese. It is a response to the universals of the experience of translation and to the ...
whereby the ''meaning'' of a foreign word is communicated in Chinese. Since, in
mainland China
"Mainland China" is a geopolitical term defined as the territory governed by the People's Republic of China (including islands like Hainan or Chongming), excluding dependent territories of the PRC, and other territories within Greater China. ...
and often in
Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...
,
Hanyu Pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese for ...
is now used to transcribe Chinese into a modified
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...
and since
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
classes are now
standard in most secondary schools, it is increasingly common to see foreign names and terms left in their original form in Chinese texts. However, for mass media and marketing within China and for non-European languages, particularly those of the
Chinese minorities
Ethnic minorities in China are the non- Han population in the People's Republic of China (PRC).
The PRC officially recognizes 55 ethnic minority groups within China in addition to the Han majority. As of 2010, the combined population of of ...
, transcription into characters remains very common.
Despite the importance of
Cantonese
Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding are ...
and other southern coastal
varieties of Chinese
Chinese, also known as Sinitic, is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family consisting of hundreds of local varieties, many of which are not mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast of main ...
to foreign contact during the 19th century (as seen, for instance, in the number of
Cantonese loanwords in English), the northern
capital dialect has been formally sanctioned within the country for centuries. This status continued under the
Republic
A republic () is a "state in which power rests with the people or their representatives; specifically a state without a monarchy" and also a "government, or system of government, of such a state." Previously, especially in the 17th and 18th c ...
, which retained the importance of the "
National Language
A national language is a language (or language variant, e.g. dialect) that has some connection—de facto or de jure—with a nation. There is little consistency in the use of this term. One or more languages spoken as first languages in the te ...
" ( ''Guóyǔ'') despite moving its capital to
Nanking
Nanjing (; , Mandarin pronunciation: ), alternately romanized as Nanking, is the capital of Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China. It is a sub-provincial city, a megacity, and the second largest city in the East China region. T ...
,
Chungking
Chongqing ( or ; ; Sichuanese pronunciation: , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ), alternately romanized as Chungking (), is a municipality in Southwest China. The official abbreviation of the city, "" (), was approved by the State Counc ...
, and
Taipei
Taipei (), officially Taipei City, is the capital and a special municipality of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Located in Northern Taiwan, Taipei City is an enclave of the municipality of New Taipei City that sits about southwest of the n ...
, none of which natively spoke it. Similarly, "
Standard Chinese
Standard Chinese ()—in linguistics Standard Northern Mandarin or Standard Beijing Mandarin, in common speech simply Mandarin, better qualified as Standard Mandarin, Modern Standard Mandarin or Standard Mandarin Chinese—is a modern Standar ...
" ( ''Pǔtōnghuà'') has been mandatory for most media and education throughout the
People's Republic of China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
since 1956. Except for a handful of traditional exceptions, modern transcription therefore uses the standardized Mandarin pronunciations exclusively.
Official standards
Modern
Han Chinese
The Han Chinese () or Han people (), are an East Asian ethnic group native to China. They constitute the world's largest ethnic group, making up about 18% of the global population and consisting of various subgroups speaking distinctive va ...
consists of about 412
syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...
s in 5 tones, so
homophone
A homophone () is a word that is pronounced the same (to varying extent) as another word but differs in meaning. A ''homophone'' may also differ in spelling. The two words may be spelled the same, for example ''rose'' (flower) and ''rose'' (p ...
s abound and most non-Han words have multiple possible transcriptions. This is particularly true since Chinese is written as monosyllabic
logogram
In a written language, a logogram, logograph, or lexigraph is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Chinese characters (pronounced ''hanzi'' in Mandarin, ''kanji'' in Japanese, ''hanja'' in Korean) are generally logograms, as ...
s, and
consonant cluster
In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education fie ...
s foreign to Chinese must be broken into their constituent sounds (or omitted), despite being thought of as a single unit in their original language. Since there are so many characters to choose from when transcribing a word, a translator can manipulate the transcription to add additional meaning.
In the
People's Republic of China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
, the process has been standardized by the Proper Names and Translation Service of the state-run
Xinhua News Agency
Xinhua News Agency (English pronunciation: )J. C. Wells: Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, 3rd ed., for both British and American English, or New China News Agency, is the official state news agency of the People's Republic of China. Xinhua ...
. Xinhua publishes an official reference guide, the ''Names of the World's Peoples: a Comprehensive Dictionary of Names in Roman-Chinese'' ( ''Shìjiè Rénmíng Fānyì Dà Cídiǎn''), which controls most transcription for official media and publication in mainland China. As the name implies, the work consists of a dictionary of common names. It also includes transcription tables for names and terms which are not included. The English table is reproduced
below
Below may refer to:
*Earth
*Ground (disambiguation)
*Soil
*Floor
*Bottom (disambiguation)
Bottom may refer to:
Anatomy and sex
* Bottom (BDSM), the partner in a BDSM who takes the passive, receiving, or obedient role, to that of the top or ...
; those for a number of other languages are available on the
Chinese Wikipedia
The Chinese Wikipedia () is the written vernacular Chinese (a form of Mandarin Chinese) edition of Wikipedia. It is run by the Wikimedia Foundation. Started on 11 May 2001, the Chinese Wikipedia currently has articles and registered users, o ...
.
The Basic Laws of the
Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...
(
article
Article often refers to:
* Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness
* Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication
Article may also refer to:
G ...
) and
Macau
Macau or Macao (; ; ; ), officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (MSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a pop ...
(
article
Article often refers to:
* Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness
* Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication
Article may also refer to:
G ...
)
Special Administrative Regions
The special administrative regions (SAR) of the People's Republic of China are one of the provincial-level administrative divisions of the People's Republic of China directly under the control of its Central People's Government (State Co ...
provide that "Chinese" will be the official languages of those territories, in addition to English and Portuguese, respectively, leaving ambiguous the relative preference for
Cantonese
Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding are ...
and
Mandarin
Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to:
Language
* Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country
** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China
** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand ...
. In practice, transcriptions based on both Cantonese and Mandarin pronunciations have been used.
In
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...
, transcription standards are established by the Translation Standardisation Committee for the Chinese Media and in 2014 was moved to National Translation Committee (NTC) of the Ministry of Communication and Information. In
Malaysia
Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...
, transcription/translation standards are established by
Chinese Language Standardisation Council of Malaysia.
Increasingly, other countries are setting their own official standards for Chinese transcription and do not necessarily follow Xinhua's versions, just as Xinhua's version differs from Wade–Giles and other international standards. For example, the
United States embassy in China recommends rendering "
Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...
" as ''Ōubāmǎ'', while Xinhua uses ''Àobāmǎ''.
History
Transcription of foreign terms may date to the earliest surviving written records in China, the
Shang
The Shang dynasty (), also known as the Yin dynasty (), was a Chinese royal dynasty founded by Tang of Shang (Cheng Tang) that ruled in the Yellow River valley in the second millennium BC, traditionally succeeding the Xia dynasty and f ...
oracle bones
Oracle bones () are pieces of ox scapula and turtle plastron, which were used for pyromancy – a form of divination – in ancient China, mainly during the late Shang dynasty. ''Scapulimancy'' is the correct term if ox scapulae were used for the ...
. As the
Huaxia
''Huaxia'' (華夏, ) is a historical concept representing the Chinese nation, and came from the self-awareness of a common cultural ancestry by the various confederations of pre-Qin ethnic ancestors of Han people.
Etymology
The earliest ext ...
spread from their initial settlements near the confluence of the
Wei and
Yellow
Yellow is the color between green and orange on the spectrum of light. It is evoked by light with a dominant wavelength of roughly 575585 nm. It is a primary color in subtractive color systems, used in painting or color printing. In the R ...
rivers
A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of wate ...
, they were surrounded on all sides by
other peoples. The Chinese characters developed to describe them may have originally transcribed local names, such as the proposed connection between the original "
Eastern Yi" people () and an
Austroasiatic
The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The te ...
word for "sea".
[Schuessler, Axel. ''ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese'', p. 563. University of Hawaii Press, 2007.] However, the tendency within China was to fit new groups into the existing structure, so that, for example, "Yi" eventually became a word for ''any'' "
barbarian
A barbarian (or savage) is someone who is perceived to be either Civilization, uncivilized or primitive. The designation is usually applied as a generalization based on a popular stereotype; barbarians can be members of any nation judged by som ...
" and the name "
Yue" ( & ), originally applied to a people northwest of the Shang,
was later applied to a
people south of the Yangtze and then to
many cultures as far south as
Vietnam
Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...
. Interaction with the states of
Chu,
Wu, and
Yue during the
Spring and Autumn and
Warring States period
The Warring States period () was an era in History of China#Ancient China, ancient Chinese history characterized by warfare, as well as bureaucratic and military reforms and consolidation. It followed the Spring and Autumn period and concluded ...
s of the later
Zhou brings the first certain evidence of transcription: most famously, the word ''jiāng'' (), originally ''krong'',
[Baxter, Wm. H. & Sagart, Laurent. '' '', p. 56. 2011. Accessed 12 August 2013.] derives from the
Austroasiatic
The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The te ...
word for "river".
[Brindley, Erica. "Barbarians or Not? Ethnicity and Changing Conceptions of the Ancient Yue (Viet) Peoples, ca. 400–50 BC"]
pp. 6 ff
''Asia Major'', Vol. 16, No. 1 (2003). Accessed 7 November 2013.
Besides proper names, a small number of
loanwords
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because the ...
also found their way into Chinese during the
Han dynasty
The Han dynasty (, ; ) was an imperial dynasty of China (202 BC – 9 AD, 25–220 AD), established by Liu Bang (Emperor Gao) and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–207 BC) and a warr ...
after
Zhang Qian
Zhang Qian (; died c. 114) was a Chinese official and diplomat who served as an imperial envoy to the world outside of China in the late 2nd century BC during the Han dynasty. He was one of the first official diplomats to bring back valuable inf ...
's exploration of the
Western Regions
The Western Regions or Xiyu (Hsi-yü; ) was a historical name specified in the Chinese chronicles between the 3rd century BC to the 8th century AD that referred to the regions west of Yumen Pass, most often Central Asia or sometimes more spe ...
.
[ ]hi Youwei
HI or Hi may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* '' Hello Internet'', a podcast hosted by CGP Grey and Brady Haran
* ''Hi'' (magazine), teen-lifestyle publication
* "Hi" (Ofra Haza song), a song by Ofra Haza, Israel's entry in the 1983 Eurovisi ...
''Hànyǔ Wàiláicí''", "Chinese Loanwords" Commercial Press (Beijing), 2000. The
Western Han
The Han dynasty (, ; ) was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China (202 BC – 9 AD, 25–220 AD), established by Emperor Gaozu of Han, Liu Bang (Emperor Gao) and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by th ...
also saw
Liu Xiang's transcription and translation of the "
Song of the Yue Boatman The Song of the Yue Boatman () is a short song in an unknown language of southern China said to have been recorded around 528 BC.
A transcription using Chinese characters, together with a Chinese version, is preserved in the '' Garden of Storie ...
" in his ''
Garden of Stories
The ''Shuo Yuan'' (), variously translated as ''Garden of Stories'', ''Garden of Persuasions'', ''Garden of Talks'', etc., is a collection of stories and anecdotes from the pre-Qin period (先秦) to the Western Han Dynasty. The stories were comp ...
''. Some scholars have tried to use it to reconstruct an original version of the otherwise unrecorded language of the Yangtze's Yue people before their incorporation into the
Han
Han may refer to:
Ethnic groups
* Han Chinese, or Han People (): the name for the largest ethnic group in China, which also constitutes the world's largest ethnic group.
** Han Taiwanese (): the name for the ethnic group of the Taiwanese p ...
.
Zhengzhang Shangfang
Zhengzhang Shangfang (; ; 9 August 1933 – 19 May 2018) was a Chinese linguist, known for his reconstruction of Old Chinese.
Zhengzhang was born as Zheng Xiangfang ( ; ) in Yongjia County, on the outskirts of Wenzhou. As and have the same ...
. "Decipherment of Yue-Ren-Ge (Song of the Yue Boatman)". ''Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale'', Vol. 20
pp. 159–168
1991.
The expansion of
Buddhism
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and gra ...
within China during the
later Han Later Han (後漢) may refer to two dynastic states in imperial China:
*Eastern Han (25–220), the second period of the Han dynasty, also called Later Han
* Later Han (947–951), a dynasty during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period
See al ...
and
Three Kingdoms period
The Three Kingdoms () from 220 to 280 AD was the tripartite division of China among the dynastic states of Cao Wei, Shu Han, and Eastern Wu. The Three Kingdoms period was preceded by the Eastern Han dynasty and was followed by the West ...
required the transcription of a great many
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
and
Pali
Pali () is a Middle Indo-Aryan liturgical language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of the Buddhist ''Pāli Canon'' or ''Tipiṭaka'' as well as the sacred language of ''Theravāda'' Buddhism ...
terms. According to the
Song
A song is a musical composition intended to be performed by the human voice. This is often done at distinct and fixed pitches (melodies) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs contain various forms, such as those including the repetitio ...
-era scholar
Zhou Dunyi
Zhou Dunyi (; 1017–1073) was a Chinese cosmologist, philosopher, and writer during the Song dynasty. He conceptualized the Neo-Confucian cosmology of the day, explaining the relationship between human conduct and universal forces. In this wa ...
, the monk and translator
Xuanzang
Xuanzang (, ; 602–664), born Chen Hui / Chen Yi (), also known as Hiuen Tsang, was a 7th-century Chinese Buddhist monk, scholar, traveler, and translator. He is known for the epoch-making contributions to Chinese Buddhism, the travelogue of ...
(of ''
Journey to the West
''Journey to the West'' () is a Chinese novel published in the 16th century during the Ming dynasty and attributed to Wu Cheng'en. It is regarded as one of the greatest Classic Chinese Novels, and has been described as arguably the most popu ...
'' fame) handed down guidelines of "Five Kinds of Words Not to Translate" (). He directed that transcription should be used instead of translation when the words are:
#Arcane, such as
incantations
An incantation, a spell, a charm, an enchantment or a bewitchery, is a magical formula intended to trigger a magical effect on a person or objects. The formula can be spoken, sung or chanted. An incantation can also be performed during ceremo ...
#
Polysemous
Polysemy ( or ; ) is the capacity for a sign (e.g. a symbol, a morpheme, a word, or a phrase) to have multiple related meanings. For example, a word can have several word senses. Polysemy is distinct from ''monosemy'', where a word has a single ...
#Not found in China
#Traditionally transcribed, not translated
#Lofty and subtle, which a translation might devalue or obscure
These ancient transcription into Chinese characters provide clues to the reconstruction of
Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese recorded in the '' Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expanded editions. The ...
. In
historical Chinese phonology
Historical Chinese phonology deals with reconstructing the sounds of Chinese from the past. As Chinese is written with logographic characters, not alphabetic or syllabary, the methods employed in Historical Chinese phonology differ considerably ...
, this information is called ''duìyīn'' (); in Western
Sinology
Sinology, or Chinese studies, is an academic discipline that focuses on the study of China primarily through Chinese philosophy, language, literature, culture and history and often refers to Western scholarship. Its origin "may be traced to th ...
,
Baron Alexander von Staël-Holstein
Baron is a rank of nobility or title of honour, often hereditary, in various European countries, either current or historical. The female equivalent is baroness. Typically, the title denotes an aristocrat who ranks higher than a lord or knigh ...
was the first to emphasize its importance in reconstructing the sounds of Middle Chinese. The transcriptions made during the
Tang dynasty
The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, t= ), or Tang Empire, was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907 AD, with an Zhou dynasty (690–705), interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dyn ...
are particularly valuable, as the then-popular
Tantra
Tantra (; sa, तन्त्र, lit=loom, weave, warp) are the esoteric traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism that developed on the Indian subcontinent from the middle of the 1st millennium CE onwards. The term ''tantra'', in the Indian ...
sect required its
mantra
A mantra (Pali: ''manta'') or mantram (मन्त्रम्) is a sacred utterance, a numinous sound, a syllable, word or phonemes, or group of words in Sanskrit, Pali and other languages believed by practitioners to have religious, ma ...
s to be rendered very carefully into Chinese characters, since they were thought to lose their efficacy if their exact sounds were not properly uttered.
The
History of Liao
The ''History of Liao'', or ''Liao Shi'' (''Liáo Shǐ''), is a Chinese historical book compiled officially by the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), under the direction of the historian Toqto'a (Tuotuo), and finalized in 1344.Xu Elina-Qian, ...
contains a list of
Khitan words phonetically transcribed with Chinese characters. The
History of Jin
The ''History of Jin'' (''Jin Shi'') is a Chinese historical text, one of the ''Twenty Four Histories'', which details the history of the Jin dynasty founded by the Jurchens in northern China. It was compiled by the Yuan dynasty historian and mi ...
contains a list of
Jurchen words phonetically transcribed with Chinese characters.
In the
History of Yuan
The ''History of Yuan'' (''Yuán Shǐ''), also known as the ''Yuanshi'', is one of the official Chinese historical works known as the ''Twenty-Four Histories'' of China. Commissioned by the court of the Ming dynasty, in accordance to political ...
, Mongol names were phonetically transcribed in Chinese characters.
In the
Ming dynasty
The Ming dynasty (), officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last ort ...
, the
Chinese government's Bureau of Translators ( ''Sìyí Guǎn'') and the Bureau of Interpreters ( ''Huìtóng Guǎn'') published bilingual dictionaries/vocabularies of foreign languages like the Bureau of Translators' multilingual dictionary ( ''Huá-Yí yìyǔ'', 'Sino-Barbarian Dictionary'), using Chinese characters to phonetically transcribe the words of the foreign languages such as
Jurchen,
Korean
Korean may refer to:
People and culture
* Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula
* Korean cuisine
* Korean culture
* Korean language
**Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl
**Korean dialects and the Jeju language
** ...
,
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
,
Ryukyuan,
Mongolian,
Old Uyghur
Old Uyghur () was a Turkic language which was spoken in Qocho from the 9th–14th centuries and in Gansu.
History
The Old Uyghur language evolved from Old Turkic after the Uyghur Khaganate broke up and remnants of it migrated to Turfan, Qomu ...
,
Vietnamese
Vietnamese may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia
** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam.
* Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam
** Overse ...
,
Cham
Cham or CHAM may refer to:
Ethnicities and languages
*Chams, people in Vietnam and Cambodia
**Cham language, the language of the Cham people
***Cham script
***Cham (Unicode block), a block of Unicode characters of the Cham script
*Cham Albanian ...
,
Dai,
Thai
Thai or THAI may refer to:
* Of or from Thailand, a country in Southeast Asia
** Thai people, the dominant ethnic group of Thailand
** Thai language, a Tai-Kadai language spoken mainly in and around Thailand
*** Thai script
*** Thai (Unicode block ...
,
Burmese,
Khmer,
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
,
Tibetan
Tibetan may mean:
* of, from, or related to Tibet
* Tibetan people, an ethnic group
* Tibetan language:
** Classical Tibetan, the classical language used also as a contemporary written standard
** Standard Tibetan, the most widely used spoken dial ...
,
Malay
Malay may refer to:
Languages
* Malay language or Bahasa Melayu, a major Austronesian language spoken in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore
** History of the Malay language, the Malay language from the 4th to the 14th century
** Indonesi ...
,
Javanese,
Acehnese, and
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
.
During the
Qing dynasty
The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speak ...
some bilingual Chinese-Manchu dictionaries had the
Manchu
The Manchus (; ) are a Tungusic East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized ethnic minority in China and the people from whom Manchuria derives its name. The Later Jin (1616–1636) and ...
words phonetically transcribed with Chinese characters. The book ("Imperially-Published Revised and Enlarged mirror of Qing") in Manchu and Chinese, used both Manchu script to transcribe Chinese words and Chinese characters to transcribe Manchu words with
fanqie
''Fanqie'' ( zh, t= 反切, p=fǎnqiè) is a method in traditional Chinese lexicography to indicate the pronunciation of a monosyllabic character by using two other characters, one with the same initial consonant as the desired syllable and one ...
.
As part of the promotion of
Kaozheng Kaozheng (; "search for evidence"), alternatively called ''kaoju xue'' (; "evidential scholarship") and Qian–Jia School (), was a school and approach to study and research in the Qing dynasty of China from about 1600 to 1850. It was most prominent ...
studies in the
philological
Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as the ...
field, Qianlong decided that the Chinese character transcriptions of names and words of the
Khitan language
Khitan or Kitan ( in large script or in small, ''Khitai''; , ''Qìdānyǔ''), also known as Liao, is a now-extinct language once spoken in Northeast Asia by the Khitan people (4th to 13th century). It was the official language of the Liao Empir ...
in the
History of Liao
The ''History of Liao'', or ''Liao Shi'' (''Liáo Shǐ''), is a Chinese historical book compiled officially by the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), under the direction of the historian Toqto'a (Tuotuo), and finalized in 1344.Xu Elina-Qian, ...
, the
Jurchen language
Jurchen language ( zh, t=女真語, p=Nǚzhēn yǔ) was the Tungusic language of the Jurchen people of eastern Manchuria, the rulers of the Jin dynasty in northern China of the 12th and 13th centuries. It is ancestral to the Manchu language. In ...
in the
History of Jin
The ''History of Jin'' (''Jin Shi'') is a Chinese historical text, one of the ''Twenty Four Histories'', which details the history of the Jin dynasty founded by the Jurchens in northern China. It was compiled by the Yuan dynasty historian and mi ...
, and the
Mongolian language
Mongolian is the official language of Mongolia and both the most widely spoken and best-known member of the Mongolic language family. The number of speakers across all its dialects may be 5.2 million, including the vast majority of the residen ...
in the
History of Yuan
The ''History of Yuan'' (''Yuán Shǐ''), also known as the ''Yuanshi'', is one of the official Chinese historical works known as the ''Twenty-Four Histories'' of China. Commissioned by the court of the Ming dynasty, in accordance to political ...
were not phonetically accurate and true to the original pronunciation. The histories were in fact hastily compiled and suffered from inaccurate and inconsistent phonetic transcriptions of the same names. He ordered the "Imperial Liao Jin Yuan Three Histories National Language Explanation" ( ''Qīndìng Liáo Jīn Yuán sān shǐ guóyǔjiě''
) project to "correct" the Chinese character transcriptions by referring to the contemporaneous descendants of those languages. Qianlong identified the
Solon language
Evenki (Ewenkī), formerly known as Tungus or Solon, is the largest member of the northern group of Tungusic languages, a group which also includes Even, Negidal, and the more closely related Oroqen language. The name is sometimes wrongly gi ...
with the Khitan, the
Manchu language
Manchu (Manchu:, ) is a critically endangered East Asian Tungusic language native to the historical region of Manchuria in Northeast China.
As the traditional native language of the Manchus, it was one of the official languages of the Qing dyn ...
with the Jurchen, and the Mongolian language with the Mongolian. Solon, Mongolian, and Manchu speakers were consulted with on the "correct" pronunciations of the names and words and their Chinese transcriptions were accordingly changed. However the Khitan language has now been found by modern linguists to be a Mongolic language and is unrelated to the Solon language. The project was part of the Siku Quanshu. Qianlong also promulgated a theory that the
Daur people
The Daur people (Khalkha Mongolian: Дагуур, ''Daguur''; ) are a Mongolic people in Northeast China. The Daur form one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognised in the People's Republic of China. They numbered 131,992 according to the la ...
were descended from a Khitan clan, changing the Khitan clan name ''Dàhè'', found in the History of Liao, to ''Dáhū'ěr''. The Chinese transcription of the Manchu clan name Niohuru (''Niǔhùlù'') was edited and inserted in place of the Jurchen clan name (''Nǚxīliè'').
"2. A learned committee, consisting of Chinese, Manchus, Mongols, western Mohammedans, etc. was appointed by the emperor K'ien-lung to revise the Yüan shi, and especially the foreign names of men, places etc. occurring so frequently in that book. These savants in their reformatory zeal, proceeded on the idea, that all the proper names had been incorrectly rendered in the official documents of the Mongols, and had to be changed. They pronounced the same verdict with respect to the histories of the Liao and the Kin. Thus in the new editions of the histories of the Liao, Kin and Yüan, all the original proper names without exception disappeared, and were replaced by names of a new invention, which generally have little resemblance to the original. For further particulars, compare my Notes on Chinese Mediaeval Travellers, p. 58, note 1. By this way of corrupting the names of the original historios, which have generally rendered foreign sounds as correctly as the Chinese language permits, the K'ien-lung editions of these works have become completely unserviceable for historical and geographical investigations. K'ien-lung was very proud of the happy idea of metamorphosing the ancient proper names, and issued an edict, that in future no Chinese scholar should dare to use the ancient names.
After the three histories had been corrupted, K'ien-lung ordered the same committee to explain the meanings of the new names; and this gave rise to a new work entitled: Liao kin yüan shi yü kai, or "Explanation of words (proper names) found in the histories of the Liao, Kin and Yüan." In this vocabulary, all the names of men, countries, places, mountains, rivers etc.—of the three histories have been systematically arranged, but according to the new spelling. The original spelling of the name however is always given, and the chapters are indicated where the name occurs. This renders the vocabulary very useful for reference, and we may lay aside the fact, that the principal object in view of the learned committee, was the absurd explanation of the meaning of the newly-invented names. I may give a few examples of the sagacity these savants displayed in their etymological commentaries. The city of Derbend (the name means "gate" in Persian), situated on the western shore of the Caspian sea, is mentioned in the Yuan shi, as a city of Persia, and the name is written Da-r-ban. The committee changed the name into Du-r-ben, and explain that durben in Mongol means, "four." The name of Bardaa, a city of Armenia, is rendered in the original Yuan shi by Ba-r-da-a. The committee will have the name to be Ba-le-t'a-ha, and comment that this name in Manchu means "the neck part of a sable skin." By Bie-shi-ba-li in theuncorrupted Yuan shi, Bishbalik is to be understood. The meaning of this name in Turkish, is " Five cities," and the term Wu-ch'eng, meaning also "Five cities," occurs repeatedly in the Yuan shi, as a synonym of Bie-shi-ba-li. The committee however transformed the name into Ba-shi-bo-li, and state that Ba-shi in the language of the Mohammedans means "head" and bo-li "kidneys."
The most recent edition of the Yüan shi (also with corrupted proper names) is dated 1824, but Archimandrite Palladius has noticed that it was only finished about twenty years later. This edition is not difficult of purchase, and I fancy it is the only edition of the Yuan shi found in European libraries. The numerous translations from the "Mongol history," found in Pauthier's M. Polo, have all been made from this corrupted text. At the time Klaproth and Rémusat wrote, the Yuan shi was unknown in Europe, and it seems, that even the old Catholic missionaries in Peking had not seen it. The old sinologues knew only an extract of the great "Mongol History"." - E. Bretschneider
E is the fifth letter of the Latin alphabet.
E or e may also refer to:
Commerce and transportation
* €, the symbol for the euro, the European Union's standard currency unit
* ℮, the estimated sign, an EU symbol indicating that the weigh ...
, ''Notices of the Mediæval Geography and History of Central and Western Asia'', pp. 5-6.
Marshall Broomhall commented that ''Though a great soldier and a great litterateur, K'ien-lung did not escape some serious errors. At one time he appointed a learned committee of Chinese, Manchus, Mongols, and Western Mohammedans to revise the foreign names of men and places which occur in the Yüan Records. So unscientific was this work that the K'ien-lung editions of the Liao, Kin, and Yüan histories are practically useless. The title Kalif rendered Ha-li-fu was changed by the Committee into Farkha and is explained as being "a village in Manchuria."''
Transcriptions of English in Chinese characters were used in a book to learn English dating to 1860 in the reign of the Xianfeng Emperor. During the late 19th century, when Western ideas and products flooded China, transcriptions mushroomed. They include not only transcriptions of proper nouns but also those of common nouns for new products. The influence was particularly marked in dialects near the major ports, like
Shanghainese
The Shanghainese language, also known as the Shanghai dialect, or Hu language, is a variety of Wu Chinese spoken in the Districts of Shanghai, central districts of the Shanghai, City of Shanghai and its surrounding areas. It is classified as ...
. Many of these phonemic loans proved to be fads, however, and popular usage and linguistic reformers subsequently favored
calque
In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language wh ...
s or
neologism
A neologism Greek νέο- ''néo''(="new") and λόγος /''lógos'' meaning "speech, utterance"] is a relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not been fully accepted int ...
s in their place.
Sound and meaning
A transcription into Chinese characters can sometimes be a
phono-semantic matching
Phono-semantic matching (PSM) is the incorporation of a word into one language from another, often creating a neologism, where the word's non-native quality is hidden by replacing it with Phonetics, phonetically and semantically similar words or ...
, i.e. it reflects both the sound and the meaning of the transcribed word. For example, "
Modern Standard Chinese
Standard Chinese ()—in linguistics Standard Northern Mandarin or Standard Beijing Mandarin, in common speech simply Mandarin, better qualified as Standard Mandarin, Modern Standard Mandarin or Standard Mandarin Chinese—is a modern standar ...
''shēngnà'' "
sonar
Sonar (sound navigation and ranging or sonic navigation and ranging) is a technique that uses sound propagation (usually underwater, as in submarine navigation) to navigation, navigate, measure distances (ranging), communicate with or detect o ...
", uses the characters ''shēng'' "sound" and ''nà'' "receive, accept". ''shēng'' is a phonetically imperfect rendering of the English initial syllable. Chinese has a large number of homo/heterotonal homophonous morphemes, which would have been much better phonetically (but not nearly as good semantically) consider the syllable ' (cf. ''sòng'' 'deliver, carry, give (as a present)', ''sōng'' 'pine; loose, slack', ''sǒng'' 'tower; alarm, attract' etc.), ' (cf. ''sōu'' 'search', ''sǒu'' 'old man', ''sōu'' 'sour, spoiled' and many others) or ' (cf. ''shōu'' 'receive, accept', ''shòu'' 'receive, accept', ''shǒu'' 'hand', ''shǒu'' 'head', ''shòu'' 'beast', ''shòu'' 'thin' and so forth)."
Belarus
Belarus,, , ; alternatively and formerly known as Byelorussia (from Russian ). officially the Republic of Belarus,; rus, Республика Беларусь, Respublika Belarus. is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by R ...
(
lit. "White Russia") is transcribed in Chinese as ''Bái'éluósī'', with ''bái'' ("white") and ''Éluósī'' ("Russia") preserving the meaning of the original name. Similarly, the common ending ''-va'' in
Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
female surnames is usually transcribed as ''wā'', meaning "baby" or "girl", and the corresponding masculine suffix ''-
'' is rendered as ''fū'', meaning "man". In literary translations,
Utopia
A utopia ( ) typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book ''Utopia (book), Utopia'', describing a fictional ...
was famously transcribed by
Yan Fu
Yan Fu (, IPA: ; courtesy name: Ji Dao, ; 8 January 1854 — 27 October 1921) was a Chinese military officer, newspaper editor, translator, and writer. He was most famous for introducing western ideas, including Darwin's "natural selection", t ...
as / ''Wūtuōbāng'' ("unfounded country") and
Pantagruel
''The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel'' (french: La vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel) is a pentalogy of novels written in the 16th century by François Rabelais, telling the adventures of two giants, Gargantua ( , ) and his son Pantagruel ...
was written as / ''Pángdàgù'āi'', from / ("gigantic") and ("solid", "hefty"). More recently, one translation of
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet.
Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...
is / ''Wànwéi Wǎng'', meaning "
myriad
A myriad (from Ancient Greek grc, μυριάς, translit=myrias, label=none) is technically the number 10,000 (ten thousand); in that sense, the term is used in English almost exclusively for literal translations from Greek, Latin or Sinospher ...
-dimensional net". Sometimes the transcription reflects ''
chengyu
''Chengyu'' () are a type of traditional Chinese idiomatic expression, most of which consist of four characters. ''Chengyu'' were widely used in Classical Chinese and are still common in vernacular Chinese writing and in the spoken language t ...
'' or other Chinese sayings and idioms. For example, the
Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the most influential band of all time and were integral to the developme ...
are known in Mainland China as / ''Pītóushì'', "the mop-headed", and in Taiwan and Hong Kong, / ''Pītóusì'', "the mop-head four", reflecting the ''
chengyu
''Chengyu'' () are a type of traditional Chinese idiomatic expression, most of which consist of four characters. ''Chengyu'' were widely used in Classical Chinese and are still common in vernacular Chinese writing and in the spoken language t ...
'' / ''pītóu sànfǎ'' concerning disheveled hair. They can also reflect subjective opinions or advertising.
Esperanto
Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communi ...
, now known as "the international language" or literally "language of the world" (/ ''Shìjièyǔ''), was first introduced to China as / ''Àisībùnándú'', meaning "
elove this
ecause it'snot difficult to read".
Given that a Chinese neologism can be a phono-semantic matching (i.e. in accordance with both the meaning and the sound of the foreign lexical item), an "innocent" transcription may be unwittingly interpreted as reflecting the meaning of the original. During the
Qing dynasty
The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speak ...
, some Chinese scholars were unhappy to find China was located on a continent called / ''Yàxìyà'', i.e.
Asia
Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an area ...
, as / means "secondary" and / "small", believing that the Europeans were deliberately belittling the East. The ancient Japanese, or the
Wa people were upset by their name being represented by the character
倭 ''wō'' ("small, short, servile") by the Chinese, and replaced it with
和 ''hé'' ("peace, harmony"). Modern Africans have accused the Chinese of racism, as "Africa" is written as ''Fēizhōu'' ("negative, wrong continent") in Chinese. Whether these accusations were justified is controversial.
Cultural differences and personal preference about negative meaning is subjective. However, some translations are generally held to be inappropriate and are usually not used in today's transcriptions:
*
Mozambique
Mozambique (), officially the Republic of Mozambique ( pt, Moçambique or , ; ny, Mozambiki; sw, Msumbiji; ts, Muzambhiki), is a country located in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi ...
as / ''Mòsānbígěi'', with meaning "nose" and "three noses". Today the country is more often transcribed as ''Mòsāngbǐkè''.
*
Aberdeen
Aberdeen (; sco, Aiberdeen ; gd, Obar Dheathain ; la, Aberdonia) is a city in North East Scotland, and is the third most populous city in the country. Aberdeen is one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas (as Aberdeen City), and ...
is a common name for places and people, rendered as ''Yābādiàn'', with / meaning duck. However a place in Hong Kong, Aberdeen Harbour, was originally called ''Xiānggǎngzǐ'', meaning "Hong Kong minor"; that is now the official name, but is still used colloquially. Moreover, today the place is more often transcribed as ''Ābódīng''.
![Avenida do Conselheiro Ferreira de Almeida](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Avenida_do_Conselheiro_Ferreira_de_Almeida.png)
*A street in
Macau
Macau or Macao (; ; ; ), officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (MSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a pop ...
is called ''Avenida do Conselheiro Ferreira de Almeida'', after the official Ferreira de Almeida. Ferreira was transcribed as ''Féilìlǎ'', as shown on the name of the street, with meaning "fat" (adjective, adj.).
*A street in
Macau
Macau or Macao (; ; ; ), officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (MSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a pop ...
is called ''Avenida de Demetrio Cinatti''. It has been transcribed as ''Diēměidiāo Shīnádì dà mǎlù'', with ''diāo'' meaning cunning or wicked.
According to Ghil'ad Zuckermann, phono-semantic matching in Chinese is common in four semantic domains: brand names, computer jargon, technological terms and toponyms.
Some transcriptions are meant to have, or happen to have, positive connotations:
*United Kingdom is called / ''Yīngguó'', literally "hero country". The first character, , is abbreviated from ''Yīngjílì'', the early Chinese transcription of "English", but subsequently applied to the UK after it was formed from the union of England and Scotland.
*Germany is abbreviated as / ''Déguó'', literally "moral country". The first character, , is abbreviated from ''Déyìzhì'' (the Chinese transcription of "Deutsch (disambiguation), Deutsch", the German word for "German").
*United States of America is abbreviated / ''Měiguó'', literally "beautiful country". It is abbreviated from ''Měilìjiān Hézhòngguó'', being an early phonetic transcription of "America".
*Philippines as / ''Fēilǜbīn'' through transliteration. However Filipino-Chinese in the Philippines uses ''Fēiguó'' meaning "Fragrant Lands".
*Athens as ''Yǎdiǎn'', literally "elegant" and "classical".
*Champs-Élysées as / ''Xiāngxièlìshè'', meaning "fragrant pavilion (and) beautiful house".
*Dublin as ''Dūbólín'', meaning "Cupressus sempervirens, cypress forest capital city, capital".
*Florence, Firenze as ''Fěilěngcuì'' (by the poet Xu Zhimo), meaning "jadeite" and "cold". Today the city is usually known as / ''Fóluólúnsà'' or ''Fóluólúnsī'', transcriptions based on the Anglo-French ''Florence'' rather than the endonym.
*Fontainebleau as / ''Fēngdānbáilù'', meaning "red maple (and) white dew".
*Ithaca (island), Ithaca as / ''Qǐsèjiā'', literally "gorgeous colour wonderful".
*Yosemite as / ''Yōushānměidì'' (also / ''Yōuxiānměidì'', / ''Yōushèngměidì'', / ''Yōushīměidì'', or / ''Yōushèngměidì''), meaning "elegant mountain / excellent and holy / elegant poem / superior (and) beautiful land".
*Champagne (wine), Champagne as / ''xiāngbīn'', meaning "fragrant areca".
Foreign companies are able to choose representations of their names which serve advertising purposes:
*Coca-Cola as / ''Kěkǒu Kělè'', meaning "delicious (and) fun".
*Revlon as / ''Lùhuánóng'', literally "revealing bright spring dew", excerpted from Li Bai's ''A Song of Pure Happiness'' ().
*Sheraton Hotels and Resorts, Sheraton Hotels as / ''Xǐláidēng'', "love to visit".
*Best Buy as / ''Bǎisīmǎi'', "buy (after) thinking a hundred times".
*Subway (restaurant), Subway restaurants as / ''Sàibǎiwèi'', "competing (with) a hundred tastes".
*IKEA as ''Yíjiā'', "suitable/proper for a home".
*Costco as ''Hǎoshìduō'', "market of many great things".
*Duolingo as / ''Duōlínguó'', "multiple neighboring countries".
*Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) as ''Kěndéjī'', "agree to (a) virtuous foundation".
*McDonald's as / ''Màidāngláo'', "wheat serve as labor". The name was also chosen because it represented a "well-known local street", MacDonnell Road (), with meaning 'Road', in
Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...
, which was List of countries with McDonald's restaurants, the first Chinese speaking territory where a McDonald's restaurant opened (in 1975).
*BMW as / ''Bǎomǎ'', meaning "prize horse", sounding like its colloquial name "Beamer".
*Pizza Hut as / ''Bìshèngkè'', "the guest must win".
*Bing (search engine), Bing as / ''Bìyìng'', "must respond".
*Wikipedia is / ''Wéijī Bǎikē'', meaning "Wiki Encyclopedia". The Chinese transcription of "Wiki" is composed of two characters: /, whose ancient sense refers to "ropes or webs connecting objects", and alludes to the Internet; and , meaning "foundations". The name can be interpreted as "the encyclopedia that connects the fundamental knowledge of humanity".
Regional differences
Mainland China, Singapore and Malaysia use simplified characters in its transcriptions, while Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau typically use traditional characters. In addition, transcriptions used in Chinese speaking regions sometimes differ from official transcriptions. For example "Hawaii" ( ''Hāwǎyī'') is rendered as ''Xiàwēiyí'' in most Chinese-language media while New Zealand ( ''Xīnxīlán'') is transcribed by Taiwan media as ''Niǔxīlán''.
In general, mainland China tends to preserve the pronunciation of names deriving from their language of origin while Taiwan often transcribes them according to the English pronunciation. For example, the Russian President Vladimir Putin is known as ''Pǔjīng'' in mainland sources after the native
Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
pronunciation , whereas the name is rendered as ''Pǔdīng'' in Taiwan. Hong Kong and Macau, meanwhile, formerly transcribed names using their Cantonese pronunciations, although that practice has become less common following their handovers. Chinese transcriptions are now frequently cribbed from the mainland, even if the local pronunciation then becomes more remote from the original. For example, Cantonese sources copy the mainland transcription , despite its local pronunciation being the rather infelicitous ''Póugīng''.
In 2016, a controversy arose in Hong Kong when protestors petitioned Nintendo to reverse its decision of converting the Hong Kong names of over 100 Pokémon into the mainland Chinese equivalents of their names, including its most famous character Pikachu. In the first half of 2016, Nintendo announced that it would change Pikachu's name from its original Cantonese name, ''Béikāchīu'' , to ''Pèikāyāu'' in favor of fitting the Mandarin pronunciation, ''Píkǎqiū'' , in the most recent series of Pokémon games, Pokémon Sun and Moon, in order to standardize marketing in the Greater China region.
Even though Malaysia had their official transliteration names for ministers and currency unit (Malaysian ringgit, Malaysian Ringgit), China did not accept those transliterations and proceed to use their own transliterations. For Malay names, transliterations usually uses their pronunciation to transliterate into Chinese characters instead of their appeared romanization (e.g. Xinhua's translation usually transliterate letter by letter instead of following their pronunciation).
Transcription table
The table below is the English-into-Chinese transcription table from Xinhua News Agency, Xinhua's ''Names of the World's Peoples''. This table uses the International Phonetic Alphabet for English vowels (rows) and consonants (columns).
Notes
* When ⟨a⟩ is pronounced as at the beginning of a word, transcribe it according to the row.
* When ⟨ia⟩ is at the end of a word, transcribe the ⟨a⟩ as .
* When vowels ⟨a⟩, ⟨e⟩, ⟨i⟩, ⟨o⟩, and ⟨u⟩ are in an unstressed syllable, generally transcribe them according to their written forms.
* When diphthongs ⟨ai⟩ and ⟨ay⟩ are at the beginning of a word, transcribe them according to the [] row.
* When ⟨r⟩ or ⟨re⟩ is at the end of a word with a phonetic transcription of , transcribe both as .
* Transcribe [tr] and [dr] as [t] plus [r]- and [d] plus [r]-row characters.
* Transcribe ⟨m⟩ as when it is before a ⟨b⟩ or ⟨p⟩. But when a ⟨b⟩ after ⟨m⟩ is not pronounced, still transcribe ⟨m⟩ according to .
* Generally still transcribe an aspirated unaspirated-consonant or an unaspirated aspirated-consonant according to its written form.
* , , , , , , , , , , etc. (shown as alternatives above) are used in female names.
* is used at the beginning of a word. (shown as an alternative above)
Exceptions
Translating names
The characters now employed in standardized transcription tend to have abstract or obscure meanings and have fallen out of use, so that their phonetic use is apparent. Therefore, in many cases, the Chinese names non-Chinese people adopt for themselves are not those that are phonetically equivalent but are instead "adapted" from or "inspired" by (i.e., translations of) the original. See, for instance, the Governmental Cantonese Translation Service of English Names for British Officials, Chinese names of the Hong Kong governors.
New characters
Very rarely, characters are specially made for the transcribed terms. This was formerly more common: by adding the appropriate semantic radical (Chinese), radical, existing characters could be used to give a sense of the sound of the new word. , for instance, was formed out of (the water radical) + , which at the time had the sound value ''khong'',
[ to approximate the Baiyue, Yue name ''*Krong''. Similarly, the addition of (the grass radical) produced ''mòlì'' to translate the ]Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
name for jasmine () and (clothes) was added to other characters to permit ''jiāshā'', the Chinese version of Sanskrit kasaya (clothing), kasaya. Another such example is ''pīngpāng'' the Chinese word for ping pong, in which both characters are formed by removing a stroke from the similar sounding character ''bīng'', and at the same time, the two characters look like a net and a paddle. The most general radical for transcription is the mouth radical, which is used to transcribe not only certain foreign terms (such as ''kāfēi'', "coffee"), but also terms for which no Chinese characters exist in non-Mandarin varieties of Chinese
Chinese, also known as Sinitic, is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family consisting of hundreds of local varieties, many of which are not mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast of main ...
(such as Written Cantonese#Marked phonetic loans, in Cantonese). Such phono-semantic compounds make up the majority of Chinese characters, but new ones coined to communicate foreign words only infrequently reach common use today. Notable exceptions are the Chinese characters for chemical elements, which mostly consist of combining pre-existing characters with the appropriate radicals, such as for gases.
See also
*Sinicization
* Chinese Language Standardisation Council of Malaysia
*Romanization of Chinese
*Cyrillization of Chinese from pinyin, Cyrillization of Chinese
*Ateji, the Japanese equivalent
*Place names in China
*Chinese exonyms
*Chinese characters for transcribing Slavonic, for transcription from Church Slavonic
*Jingtang Jiaoyu, for transcribing Arabic to Chinese characters
*The Secret History of the Mongols, a surviving document written in Mongolian transcribed to Chinese characters
*Official Cantonese translations of English names for British officials
References
Citations
Sources
*
* Names of the World's Peoples (), published by the Xinhua News Agency
Xinhua News Agency (English pronunciation: )J. C. Wells: Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, 3rd ed., for both British and American English, or New China News Agency, is the official state news agency of the People's Republic of China. Xinhua ...
, October 1993, /Z21
{{Portal bar, Language, China
Chinese language
Transcription (linguistics)