Foreign words/names trasnliteration/pronunciation in Chinese - any changes needed?

[skylee]

I think most western people who are English-speaking but have never studied Mandarin pronounce Chinese names in a funny way, especially those with Q, R, Z, J. Should new phonetical symbols be created in English for Chinese names so that people could pronounce them properly?

[Quest]

Chinese are able to pronounce Tom Kloos/Klooz, if any version of R is too hard, it would be much closer to the original than Tāngmǔ Kèlǔsī, don't you think? 2 syllables become 5.

But the moment you pronounce Tom Kloos, you are no longer speaking in the bounds of "Chinese". As I said before, it certainly helps English speakers when there's English words in Chinese texts, or when Chinese people speak in Chinglish. I just don't see the benefit for the majority of the people in China to create new symbols to approximate foreign sounds (how many do we need?) or to write in roman alphabets (should we write Deutschland or Germany, should we pronounce España or Spain?) Is it going to solve the problem, or are we going to end up with bad pronunciations of appromixations of appromixations?

It's never easy to associate names between two different scripts. The Japanese "script" might be an exception, but is that really what we want?

[atitarev]

Skylee, I know what you mean. It is annoying but this is to do with knowledge of how to use those symbols when we talk about Chinese, I don't think new symbols should be created, the symbols are there. Most TV anchors have a good approximation of sounds, at least they know that Qin is not [Kin] but [Chin]. I am not suggesting to create new sounds in any language (but it wouldn't hurt to borrow the exact pronunciation).

But the moment you pronounce Tom Kloos, you are no longer speaking in the bounds of "Chinese".

Is breaking the bounds a taboo? The bounds are already broken when a foreign word penetrated a language.

The Japanese "script" might be an exception, but is that really better?

Japanese script is far from perfect but in Japanese they created specific katakana symbols just to render some sounds/combinations, which are not present in Japanese:

ファ　フィ　フェ　フォ　fa fi fe fo

ヘゥ hu

ティ ti

ディ di

ヴ vu

ヴァ va　ヴィ vi　ヴェ ve　ヴォ vo

Japanese people often slip into the more Japanese version of those sounds but they can identify the original pronunciation.

Russian language borrowed letter Ф (F) from Greek (long time ago) to render foreign sounds.

Arabic has introduced (not consistently) letters to render P, G and V, non-existent in Arabic.

Language reforms do happen, it's just a matter of deciding whether it is necessary at this stage.

English adjusts their spelling more often to match original spelling or pronunciation (Moldavia - Moldova, Kirghizia - Kyrghyzstan, Peking - Beijng). Germany is a too common name but you will see that Munich is spelled also as München, Moscow as Moskva, Warsaw as Warszawa, etc, at least on maps.

[gato]

As I said before, it certainly helps English speakers when there's English words in Chinese texts, or when Chinese people speak in Chinglish. I just don't see the benefit for the majority of the people in China to create new symbols to approximate foreign sounds (how many do we need?)

atitarev probably was thinking of the Japanese system for foreign names when he suggested new symbols, but I don't think they are necessary. I would suggest as a first step to start with personal names and use either the British or American version if there are variations -- not because the Brits or the Americans are inherently superior, but that it is easier to choose one version and stick with it and English is the most popular foreign language in China as well as the rest of the world.

It would help academic learning and exchange, and that potentially could help the majority of Chinese people. As I said before, bilingual references to names is already much more common in Taiwan than in the PRC. Maybe that is also the case in the Hong Kong SAR.

[bhchao]

There's been calls to reform the current romanization system for Hangul in South Korea. Yesterday's article from the Korea Times: http://search.hankooki.com/times/times_view.php?term=romanization++&path=hankooki3/times/lpage/nation/200609/kt2006092617271211990.htm&media=kt

[atitarev]

I preferred the new government system, since it mapped consonants one-to-one, very similar to Hanyu Pinyin system, where it is Beijing, not Peiching.

Korean has more complex rules about voiced/unvoiced consonants but aspirated/unaspirated are the same or similar to Mandarin. They keep discussing things that have long been agreed on in the pinyin system - render aspirated as k, t, c, ch, q, p and their unaspirated pairs as g, d, z, zh, j, b, ignoring voiced/voiceless, since Mandarin doesn't really have voiceness in the same sense, as for example English. So Busan is better than Pusan for the same reason as Beijing is better than Peiching. (Initial Korean B (ᄇ) is pronounced as unaspirated P in the beginning of a word but as as unaspirated B in the middle of a word). I would stick to B in both cases for simplicity.

For political reasons (taking into account any prospect of unification of Koreas) McCune-Reischauer (M-R) is preferred.

Not concerned about vowels, it's just a convention, you can't render 100% the pronunciation, you need TO KNOW how to pronounce the combination. I think changing "eo" to "o" is stupid, since there's also an "o" but "eo" is somewhat like German ö or French "eu" or "œu".

[bhchao]

For political reasons (taking into account any prospect of unification of Koreas) McCune-Reischauer (M-R) is preferred.

Interesting. Why would M-R be preferred in that case? Doesn't the current romanization system more accurately reflect how initial consonants are pronounced in Korean? For example, I've always heard bulgogi pronounced with a 'b' rather than a 'p' (at least to my ears). I'm not an expert on aspirated/unaspirated sounds, but it seems the pronunciation of words in Korean are more in line with the current system than with M-R.

So I am curious as to why M-R would be preferred over the current system as a unification tool.

[atitarev]

Bhchao, I agree that current system is phonetically better, symilar to pinyin in consistency but North Korea still uses M-R, they should either both change or stick to one (even inconsistent but the same) system. They also have big difference in spelling initial L/R (ᄅ) - the Southeners dropped it, so family name Li/Ri has become Yi （李）but that's another story...

[djwebb2004]

Well aside from the transliteration of Western names i nto Chinese is the problem of detecting a name in the sentence. What I mean is that often I have asked a chinese friend what a sentence meant, and the answer was that the part I was having difficulty with was actually a foreign name transliterated into Chinese, and I was trying to translate it characterby character and get some meaning out of it. Now if they underlined foreign personal and place names, or put them in a box - like the Egyptian hieroglyphic cartouche - it would make things a lot easier for me!

[atitarev]

Agree with that Djwebb2004. It makes it a bit easier when a dot (·) between first and last name is used or the original spelling in brackets is given.

[atitarev]

Here's an excerpt from "An Australian Guide to Chinese Language Publishing and Translating":

...

To make it easier for the reader to trace back the translation to the original name or title, it is often best to include the original name in brackets after the Chinese translation when translating proper nouns, such as:

諾曼頓 (Normanton)

彼得約翰遜 (Peter Johnson)

澳中理事會 (Australia China Council)

天地股份有限公司 (Heaven and Earth Pty Ltd)

The provision of the English term will make it easier for the reader to refer to the original names and titles should there be a need to do so.

...

In addition, there is an emerging vocabulary unique to the Australian situation. The development of an indigenous Australian-Chinese lexicon or “Chinese Australianisms” is happening through the translation of technical terms that are used in a specific way in the Australian social system (such as “設定比率(deeming rates)” in the pension system).4 Sometimes proper nouns are retained in their English form when used in Chinese texts. For example “Centrelink” is not translated in the Chinese version of the newsletter “Age Pension News for Seniors”5.

In terms of style guides for writing Australian Chinese,