You must have heard the story of "Cherry", a transliteration of the name, much more popular than its other name, "Cherry".
Whether it is the price tag in the mall or the "chelizi freedom" that is often said in the internet ridicule, the name transliterated from this cherries is used - chelizi. Covering chinese characters with an exotic flavor may be just convenient for fruit merchants to do marketing.
Transliteration of foreign nouns into Chinese has always been a headache for many translators, and readers are often dizzy by various translations.
For example, you may have a hard time associating the Cantonese translation of the name "Zu Gao Yu" with the famous tennis player Djokovic, but if you read it in Cantonese, you will probably understand it.
Similar Cantonese transliterations from English include:
Pancake, or pancake.
Strawberry, or strawberry.
Kick dead rabbit (tuxedo/tʌkˈsiːdəʊ/), men's dress, tailless dress.
Sirloin/ˈsɜːlɔɪn/), beef upper loin meat, steak.
In addition to the foreign words that circulated from Cantonese, many transliterated nouns that were used in the early days seem very strange today.
The Fourth Edition of the Practical Course on English-Chinese Translation explains that in the last century, China lacked uniform regulations on the translation of proper nouns, so it gave birth to many different translation names, coupled with the inability to republish past books and revise translation names, multiple versions of translated names were also circulated.
Personal name
Newton wouldn't have imagined that his first translation in China would be "Naiduan."
Similarly, Victor Hugo was called "Hugo" in the early days, probably because the pronunciation of [hjuː] resembles the Cantonese word for "ࡈ".
Shakespeare is also translated as "Narrow Spiers". In the Heavenly Speech, Yan Fu translates Galileo as "Galley Leo".
From left to right: Newton, Hugo, Shakespeare
Names with similar "treatment" include the following:
toponym
Another book published in the late Qing Dynasty for "wealth and strength to save the country" is also full of early translations of proper nouns, which is a collection of essays compiled by Zheng Guanying. There are many translated names of many places.
For example, he translated Oxford as "Oxford", Cambridge as "Kanbili", and now the most interesting is the translation of Harvard University as "Haba Academy", and Costa Rica as "Costa Rica" as "Costa Rica".
From top to bottom: Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard
The list of other place names is also too numerous, see the following table:
Other foreign nouns
In addition to personal names and place names, there is a class of abstract nouns that did not exist in Chinese before, and were translated into Chinese by many previous translators. For example, logic was previously translated by Yan Fu as "famous science", and Sun Yat-sen even translated it as "rational science".
Ma Xiangbo, the founder of Fudan University, as a priest with foreign language skills, has also translated many terms.
Abstraction was translated by him as "chī", and he also translated pheosophy (philosophy) as "zhizhi".
Unlike the way Ma Xiangbo used the concept of Chinese, Yan Fu may have been a transliteration maniac, who translated liberty as "Ribert" and another "freedom," freedom, as "Vulidan."
Yan fu's transliterations also include mile "milu", nerve "nirvana", and zebra "Zibura".
From left to right: Sun Yat-sen, Yan Fu, Ma Xiangbo
Seeing this, you should have a general understanding of how many strange translation variants of the translated names that we are familiar with today have been before. But how did the translators resolve this confusion?
The previously mentioned author of the Tutorial pointed out that there are three principles for transliteration of foreign proper nouns.
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Follow the pronunciation of the proper noun owner
Follow the pronunciation of the owners of proper names
It is unquestionably true that all the proper names should be transliterated from the correct pronunciation of their owners.
There is no doubt that transliteration of proper nouns needs to follow the correct pronunciation of their original owners.
The French names should be transliterated directly from the correct French pronunciation, the German names from the correct German pronunciation, and so on.
French names are transliterated according to the French pronunciation, German names are transliterated according to the German pronunciation, and so on.
The Chinese translations of “England”, “Paris”, “Berlin” and “Rome” are correct ones according to this rule.
The transliterations of "England", "Paris", "Berlin", and "Rome" in the Chinese follow this principle.
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Pronounce Chinese characters in Mandarin
Use the standard pronunciation of the Chinese character
Chinese characters are all monosyllabic with a single sound. The only remedy for this great confusion in translation is to fix certain Chinese characters to a certain syllable of foreign names.
Chinese characters are all monosyllabic, with only one sound. To solve the problem of confusion in transliteration, it is necessary to fix some Chinese characters to correspond to specific syllables in foreign proper nouns.
This work has been done by the Xinhua News Agency, whose achievements led to the drawing up of a list of Chinese characters for transliteration.
Xinhua completed this work by formulating a list of Chinese characters corresponding to the transliteration of foreign names.
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Use a translated name that is widely recognized and used
Adopt the established popular translated names
Names such as Caesar (/ˈsi:zə/), Bernard Shaw, Athens (/ˈæθənz/), Oxford, Cambridge, etc., are either inaccurate in pronunciation or even ridiculous in translation.
For example, names such as Caesar, George Bernard Shaw, Athens, Oxford, Cambridge, etc. are either inaccurately pronounced or grotesque in translation.
But as they have been popularly known, they are generally accepted and well established.
But because these names have been heard by many people, they have been widely accepted and established.
We have no idea to change these names or to retranslate them. To do so, we would perhaps create new confusion among the readers.
We do not change or retranslate these transliterations. If this is done, it may cause new confusion for the reader.
By now, you should know how to deal with a variety of foreign proper nouns.
But no matter how funny and strange these proper nouns may seem now, they are the first light that translators opened the window a hundred years ago and held in their hands.
Here is the China Daily bilingual news night listening bilingual, I am bilingual Jun. Good night, good dreams.
Notes
unquestionable [ʌnˈkwestʃənəbl] adj. Undoubtedly; beyond reproach; indeed
transliterate[trænsˈlɪtəreɪt] v. transliteration
monosyllabic[ˌmɒnəsɪˈlæbɪk]a. monosyllabic
remedy[ˈremədi] n. therapy;
Editor: Zuo Zhuo Ma Wenying
Intern: Zhuo Qinghong
Source: Tutorial on the Use of English-Chinese Translation, Fourth Edition (Guo Zhangzhang)
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Source: China Daily Bilingual News