When Taiwanese/Chinese study history in school, during the 10% of the time when they discuss matters outside of China, do they learn names translated into Chinese only or do they also learn the actual names as they are properly spelled and pronounced? If they learn translations only, especially in university, then they are truly getting a second-rate, bowlderized education.
[quote=âformosaâ]And in South Korea, how do they pronounce foreign words and names? I dunno.
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Korean has a lot of Japanese and Chinese (kinda Cantonese) influences. So, they have a similar problem. But they use their alphabet now, almost exclusively, so its a little more flexible than being stuck with characters.
The name confusion gets worse if you work as a mandarin-speaking guide for chinese and Taiwanese in your home country First of all, Taiwanese and Chinese often pronounce the same place differently. Secondly, 2 different Taiwanese often write the same place with different characters, who are pronounced slightly different etc, so you often end up having the guests asking you why you didnât take them to place x when the fact is that you just spent 2 hours with them there. It can get worse. Sometimes, the itiniary gets things completely wrong because the poor Taiwanese writing it was dependant on the rather shitty chinese language guide books available in Taiwan. I have forgot how many times I have had to tell the guests that there is only one castle in Elsinore, not 2. (The guests usually mistook the train station for the second castle - as it might look like one for the untrained eye - I once had to let a very unhappy group into it in order to convince them, as they thought I was cheating them).
My way out of this misery was to stick to my own names and let the guests know that beforehand - a few jokes about the quality of Taiwanese guide books usually preempted any questions from anyone - and I managed to look as a knowledgeable fellow.
Japanese have seemingly solved the problem, but in reality, theyâve only compounded it. While you can take a word such as MacDonaldâs and render it into Japanese using katakana, the end result is a six-syllable catastrophe that sounds nothing like the original. Often the Japanese, accept such foreign loan words as English, rather than Japanized versions of English and their pronunciation of actual English is adversely affected by it. Some words, such as computer, hotel, building and many others sound close enough so that they can be understood but when it comes to names, most donât make a smooth transition. Korean comes much closer to solving the problem simply because it has separate vowel and consonant sounds which can be combined, much like in English. With few exceptions, this canât be done in Japanese. Since Chinese is not a phonetic language, I canât see much room for improvement over the current situation. At any rate, the method currently used suits me fine.
When I was in junior high, my history teacher pronounced Mao Zedong as May-o Tessy Tung. It made me want to learn Chinese because I was sure it was wrong!!
Wipt
I like that âMay-O-Tessy Tung.â Soundlike a female rendition of Maozedong 
The Korean so-called alphabet is not really alphabet. Itâs another phonetic script invented in Korean called Hangul. And itâs one of the cleverest script ever invented. Each syllable is written in circle. Iâve leart to type it for a while but itâs useless since my mastery of that language is under the basics. Iâm installing a Korean Win98 today for testing. Hope to bring back some reminiscence of itâs input system
ax
I would argue that hangul is THE cleverest phonetic script ever invented. It can be learned quickly by virtually anyone. There are more exceptions to the basic phonetic rules than katakana but it is much more compact and easier to use.
But Rascal, how then would the Chinese write western names without using the alphabet and donât you think it would be a little arrogant for us to demand its use?
I am not demanding the use of English characters and of course you are right that writing it down is another problem besides pronouncing the names correctly.
The latter could perhaps be learned, the writing - yes, thatâs a question I havenât really thought about ⌠what to do!?
Spot on. If only there was something worth reading once you have learnt itâŚ
Tomas wrote: âI speak Mandarin on the job every day, and I canât for the life of me remember transliterated names. I can only remember things like Ah Tang for Tom Cruise and Mao Wang for Elvis Presley.â
Yes!
Why is Elvis caled KING CAT here? Anybody know why?
And the late Frank Sinatra is called THIN MONKEY or something rather than his real name. âSo something something.â WHY? Was he so thin and looked like a monkey?
FUNNY stuffâŚ
I didnât know the Tom Cruise nickname here. Any others? What is Speilberg called? Tom HAnks? Nicole Kidman? Brigitte Bardot? Hollywood?
Anybody know?
And another thing. . . Is there any other language in the world where people put their family name first?
One large company I worked for passed out a list of employees names and phone extensions. Perhaps because many had studied abroad, many were listed with family name last. But the rest were listed Chinese style. As a result, I often didnât know what to call people. Thank god for the hyphens.
But what happens when a Taiwanese is introduced to a westerner when doing business? Should he/she twist his/her name around western style so the ignorant foreigner will get the name right? Or state it properly, Chinese style, and cause possible confusion? Of course the confusion is greater if the foreigner understands that Chinese names are backwards and doesnât know whether the Taiwanren twisted it around for his benefit or not.
:?
Lots of other languages in Asia. And in Europe thereâs Hungarian.
More importantly, thank God for the fact that relatively few Taiwanese have adopted the habit popular in China of giving their children one-syllable given names.
In Taiwan, people using Chinese names should always give them in the standard order. If they really want to be âhelpfulâ to the poor, stupid foreigners, who of course would be completely incapable of remembering that the vast majority of people in East Asia (at least one quarter of the worldâs population) have their family names come first, they should adopt an âEnglishâ given name and use that in front of their family name.
So, how are Chinese names of famous foreign people decided anyway? The media? PR firms? Is there a committee? What if the famous person wants a different name (after visiting Taiwan, for example)?
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