There are difficulties in translating proper names between Chinese and English. I have been pondering over the issue for many years. I will take this essay as an opportunity to present my thoughts over this issue, rather than treat this essay as mere course requirement.

The differences between the Chinese and English cultures (the total way of life) are marked, so are the two languages. It is said that language actually structures our reality and limits our thinking, citing the fact that we rely on language when we think about and describe almost everything. In this essay language is considered as one aspect in a certain culture, and an indicator of way of thinking. It may be considered a building material of a culture, whether brick, mortar or just a mirror is not discussed here. What in concern here is that a different culture is often accompanied by a different language, though the co-relationship between the two and which begetting which are not discussed here either. The purpose is to offer my understanding of culture and language, as a tiny part of the collective effort in the holistic approach to cultural understanding. Indeed, the usage and translation of names is a small part in language and translation, however, to understand the difference of names in two cultures will help us to achieve a better understanding of the two cultures. There is a Chinese proverb saying, "a drop of water can reflect the light of the sun." The usage of names is a minor in relation to a certain language, and a certain language is a minor in relation to a certain culture, nevertheless, they all reflect the major, which is, the human culture as a whole. So the major concern of this paper is the understanding of culture and language itself rather than translation techniques.

Language, I gather, reflects a certain way of thinking. The Chinese way of observing and understanding is different from that of the English. The Chinese observe and think in a generalizing way, which focuses on principles, while the English take the analytic way, which focuses on facts. Because of these very different approaches towards all matters, including tangible entities and intangible concepts and thoughts, the content, form and usage of names in Chinese culture and English culture are fundamentally different, which in turn makes their translation difficult.

Armed with the above background knowledge, this essay will try to distinguish the differences in Chinese and English proper names in a categorizing way. Basic material will be the current translation of proper names between the two languages.

There is one aspect worth of mentioning before hand. It is about referencing. While I am putting this paper together, I try to find useful literature on the translation of names between English and Chinese but have not found many, if any, till this moment. However, I have over the years gathered a certain amount of information regarding language and translation, in pieces of papers or on computer disks, without recording the source of the material. This is a reflection of my cultural background. The concentrate on principles has the effect of directing me to choose information, information which has a certain meaning to me, whenever and wherever I am reading or listening, with the purpose of digesting it and link and blend it to other information, in an effort to come to the general realization of the meaning within all of the information. It is believed in this approach could lead us to the realization of the universal rule which governs the inter and inner relationship between and within all matters, hence a single subject will not be treated as an isolated entity, but as part of a whole system. The fatal weakness within this approach is the ignorance of basic facts. Without facts, no theory can find a solid ground. It was not until last year when I undertook the Post Graduate Diploma course in Public Health Dentistry I start to realize the importance of referencing. Had I understood it ten years before, I would come up with a long list of reference. Now I consider my current university study as "facts conscious." However I have to remind myself of the possible drawbacks of concentrate on particular facts. The shortcoming with this approach is that related matters could be treated as isolated, independent entities. The research could be concentrated on partial factors, making the persuading of facts the ultimate goal, and the relationship between facts ignored; sometimes, this might be a hindrance to the revealing of truth which is behind all facts, begetting and governing all facts (my believe).

The tool used in this investigation is also of concern. We may be using a language to judge the same language when thinking and writing. Because language has its limitations, on the process of making judgements, our thinking is limited by the language. For example, we expect and objective point of view, but adjectives play the major role when judgements are in concern. All adjectives are subjective, so how can we come to an objective conclusion when we are using subjective words? The word "objective" itself is subjective, there is no absolute value to it. This is like the "speed of time" dilemma, time might not have speed, and objectiveness might not necessarily the property of language. This problem is left alone in this paper, but the existence of it is true and meaningful.

Names are categorized into two groups: the common names and the proper names. Only proper names are covered in this paper as required.

According to dictionary, a proper name is a noun that denotes a particular thing; usually capitalized. This classification reflects the western approach when investigate into matters, which tend to divide things up and try to give an absolute value to each item.

On the other hand the Chinese adopt the relative view. Its application here is that names can be either common or proper, depending on the circumstances. For example, "bird" is a common name, but it can be a proper name, I believe, when all animals are in concern.

Proper names can be given to a person, an organisation, a geographic spot, and a product.

Because of the length requirement of this assignment, only personal names and geographical names are discussed here. This will miss the translation of AIDS from English to Chinese, which transfers the public belief of the disease and keeps the enunciation at the same time, the best translation of names I have witnessed.

Names are important in Chinese culture. Confucius, the most influential person in Chinese history, once said when answering the question of what should be the most important thing to do after becoming governor: "the one thing needed first is the rectification of names." Because "if names are not right, what is said does not accord with the truth. When what is said does not accord with the truth, affairs cannot be carried on to success. When affairs cannot be carried on to success, rites and music do not flourish. When rites and music do not flourish, law and justice fail. And when law and justice fail, the people do not know how to move hand or foot. So a superior man consider it necessary that the names he uses may be spoken appropriately, and also that what he speaks may be carried out appropriately."

Regardless the true meaning in Confucius’ remark on names, the Chinese people take their personal names seriously, part out of superstition. (superstition is an important element in Chinese culture. We do not have to look far but look at Sydney’s China town we can see the name giving and name changing is one of the items listed on the fortune teller’s advertise window. Many people believe the name of the person can affect the person’s fate, and the name of a company can affect its business (this is other wise true). With very rare exception, every Chinese name has a certain meaning.

The nature of the Chinese language is responsible for this to happen. The following section will make a brief comparison of the two languages and the different content of names in the two cultures.

The following table shows the basic differences between the two languages.

As a morphemic language, every Chinese character itself is a word with meanings and sounds. In personal name’s sense, a normal Chinese name has two or three character, with the first one being the surname and the second and third being the given name. The surname has a literal meaning, but normally, the meaning is ignored might be because it is ascribed rather than acquired. But in many cases, the first name is given in such a fashion that it is in coherence with the surname to present one meaning. For example, one person’s surname means "ten thousands", when combined with the first name which means "mile", the whole name will mean "ten thousand miles", which is a long journey.

One Chinese character itself is a combination of two or more other characters, often on part carries some content of the word, and other part gives the word a sound. "woman" pluses "horse" is "mother", while "woman" give the word the gender aspect, "horse" only count for the sound of the word "mother".

Another fact is that one word only has one syllable, so when transliterate an English name into Chinese , one English word many end up as many Chinese words.

Generally, a personal name is used to tell that person apart from a crowd. What information an English name can give? I will gather the following:

1. Gender, but not always. It is by customs rather than meaning.
2. Family history, if from a remarkable family;
3. Origin, like a name with an Asian surname, like Bruce Lee; In some place there is a dominant surname.
4. Some forms of value, like a religious family tend to name their newborn after a saint.

A Chinese name can give the following information:

1. Gender, small percentage of exception. It is revealed by the meaning of the given name; for example, in a male’s name word implies strength are often used, while in a female’s name word like "beauty" and "flower" are often used.

 

2. Some form of value. Because every word in a personal name has a certain meaning, the value of the person who gives or bears that name can be reflected. It may accommodate the wishes of the parents, like words meaning "health", "intelligent"; sometimes a name carries the bearer’s wish or value, like "benevolence", "the sun".

 

3. Time factor. In two ways a name can be related to time factor. One is that the name is used in remembrance of a special event, like a child born on the National Day may be given the name "national day". Another way is that one can often tell in what period the person was born. For example, many people born during the "cultural evolution" was given the name "the party", "loyalty", "anti-imperialism", and "army". Names like "beauty" and "benevolence" were not popular because the later was not a idea in favor of the Communist Party, and the former shares the first word for "America", so a primary girl with the word "beauty" in her name may be dubbed "American spy", which might prove a negative influence to the child’s future.

 

4. Origin. The minorities have distinctive surnames. The same as the English name.

As we can see now, an English personal name is primary a "pure name" without particular meaning, it is used as a "handler" on the World Wide Web to call an individual, while a Chinese personal name in most cases carries with it a clear meaning with other information. Some English names may literally have a meaning, but I doubt if the literal meaning is really part of that name. The name of British army officer who was in command during the British invasion of Tibet was "Younghusband", but the name did not imply that he married young or was married to an older woman. In the novel the stranded Robinson named the native he met on a Friday "Friday", I will assume that the English would call the boy Friday without any reference to the event.

I gather that a geographical name could be given on three bases:

1. The space factor, or the geographical characteristic of the place, or position of the place. Examples like the Blue Mountains, the Yellow Stone National Parks, the Buffalo Land, and the Great Wall;
2. The time factor, or the historical aspect of the place, such as ancient myth, legend. One examples is New South Wales, the world "new" is time-related, and the historical implication is that there is an "old" South Wales, which is in the mother land or the conqueror, England, of course.
3. The Human factor, that is, a name given after a person.

The above three factors are similar in both cultures when geographical names are concerned. But yet again, due to the nature of the languages, every Chinese name has a meaning while most English names are mere meaningless symbols, especially those named after people. In many English geographical names, a part of the name may have a certain meaning, it is usually related to time, and structure, like New Castle.

There is a complicate phonetic system in the Chinese language, and there are similar systems in use in the English poems. In the Chinese personal name, the sound of the last character is important, whether it may be an "up", "open mouthed" sound or a "down", "close mouthed" sound affect the pronunciation of the whole name. This is an issue not discussed here because I do not have sufficient knowledge about it. In fact, it is not important in translation because no many people are aware of the sound issue. (And certainly no many people care about poems nowadays.)

The difficulties in translation is obvious after the above analysis and comparison.

Basically, it is the task of translating a name with certain meanings apart form being a symbol in place of a person or place into a name which only service as a symbol and vice versa.

There is conflict between translated names and the culture of the target language. For example, a Chinese reader may expect a translated name being meaningful, while an English reader may not get used to a name with a meaning.

According to Newmark, there are three ways of translating a geographical name: translate, transcribe, and modify. Transcribe can not be applied to the translation between Chinese and English, because people in either culture can not normally understand the writing of the other language. The common methods for translating personal and geographical names are:

1. Transliteration;
2. Translation;
3. The combination of translation and transliteration.

When translating from Chinese to English, transliteration is widely accepted as the norm. The shortcoming of this practice is plentiful. The most important is that the meanings are all lost. Take the name for the Chinese capital city for instance. It is called "Beijing" in English, but in Chinese it consists of two characters, "Bei" and "Jing". "Bei" means the North, and "Jing" means Capital City. So the two words putting together means "the capital city in the north". Understandably, there is also "Nanjing", the capital city in the South. Take my own name as an example of personal name transliteration. "Li" is my surname, literally means plum, but with the same pronunciation as word with the meaning of "paying attention to", or "reason" and "truth", while my first name consists of two words, "zhong" and "hua". "zhong" means the middle, "hua" means the Chinese as a particular group of people. When put together, "zhonghua" means China, or The Chinese, without the sense of country. Now my official name on my passport is Li Zhonghua, nothing but the sound is left.

Yes, the sound, it is the only thing similar in the source text and the target text. Sound alone carries out the basic function of a name: to distinguish one from the other.

There is no much of difficulties when conducting a transliteration, but are we being "accurate?" If we try to be "accurate" and translate the meaning of a Chinese name, the translation might not sound like a "name" at all, and would not has a pronunciation similar to that of the original. The meaning of the Chinese name may need a whole sentence to explain, so if a Chinese name is literally translated in to English, it will become a sentence if not a paragraph. The translation and the original would share nothing in common in a name’s sense. This means the name is totally lost.

This gap might not be bridged with the use of our current languages.

The translation of proper names from English to Chinese is technically much simpler. For the personal names, it is basically a process of transliteration, or called phonetic transcription. The commonly used English personal names have a fixed set of corresponding names in Chinese. Normally, the names are give a word with similar sound with a meaning suitable for the gender, like choose a word with part of it stand for "woman" as a female’s name.

But because every Chinese word has a meaning, the Chinese people instinctively try to draw information from the translated names. So in the translation of geographical names, the combination technique is employed. The process is to translate the part that has a certain meaning in a name, and the rest phonetically transcribed. For example, the "New" in New Zealand is literally translated, while the "Zealand" is transliterated. Even Blacktown is translated this way, giving people the impression that the town being black in colour. The "hill" in "Box Hill" was literally translated, will the "Box" was transliterated.

This makes the translation of names from English into Chinese proves difficult. Words have to be chosen carefully. Firstly, when translating literally, it may be difficult or impossible to find the exact equivalence, so misunderstanding may occur; secondly, to add meaning to some thing originally "blank" may cause confusion and distraction. Marx was transliterated into a three-word Chinese name, with the "ma" in the surname’s place. Hence many Chinese people then and now believes "Ma", a well know Chinese surname meaning "horse", being to Karl Marx’s surname. During the anti-Marxism movement in the 30’s and 40’s, one village was burnt to the ground only because the dominant surname in the village "Ma" and the village is known as "the Ma’s village."

Another difficulty is cause by the fact that there are many Chinese words with the same sound or only with very subtle changes, one English name may have more than one Chinese translation. One place or one person can appear in different local Chinese newspapers under different names. It can be confusion. Citing the problem in 1988, the Chinese community in Melbourne made an effort to unify the translation of suburb names. I was living at Fitzroy. I believed that by careful choosing of words, one could come up with a name not only with a similar sound, but also with a meaning indicating the characteristic of the place. I suggested that Fitzroy could be translated into "Fei Cui Lou Yi" in Chinese, which means "beautiful dress", indicating the fact that Fitzroy was kind of a red light area. Still, almost ten years later, suburbs still are printed differently in the papers.

The fact is, after the Chinese and the English first meet centuries ago, the difficulty of translating proper names began to exit. The root of this difficulty is in the cultural difference itself. It would not cause major problem when the general public on earth starts to understand the limitation of their own understanding of the world as a whole and try to tolerant, understand, and learn from other cultures intentionally.

I found that people in China have got used to foreign names in Chinese with no obvious meaning, especially the educated younger generations. People also pay less and less attention to traditions. In fact, tradition is a relative matter, for it changes with time. With the spreading of English study in China, leaving English proper names as they are might become a tradition in the future. Or with the development of technology, most geographical names could be bi-lingual or muti-lingual. At least, we can have uniformed Chinese translation for any place in Australia. The idea is, thanks to the advancing Internet, we could have a Chinese Translation Site for Geographical names on line 24 hours. New names are submitted to the site and the translation will be used as the only proper translated name. With Internet on the figure tip, people should check with the site when in doubt. An auto check file could be downloaded from the site and become part of the spell checker within the word processing software. It is feasible, once the initiation is made.

The benefit of encountering such difficulties is that we become well aware of the limitation of any languages. I believe it the translators’ duty to arouse this awareness among the people. This may help make a change in people’s mind because people lie too heavily on language when it comes to understanding the world.

The intention of translation, I believe is to bridge two different cultures with the general purpose of achieving better understanding of our human kind and the world we belong to. There are enjoyable particular works in translation with the use of artful techniques, however this should not blind us from lofty ideas. Translators are bi-lingual and supposed to be bi-cultural, they might have be in a better position to contribute to the effort of finding answers to questions like "geographical factors beget a culture, or biological factors beget a culture" than mono lingual linguists. Language is but one of part of a culture, so are different languages, and different cultures necessary in human evolvement? While vastly different culturally, why both the English and Chinese use the same human organs to represent the same human feeling or behavior? In both languages, people use heart for thinking and feeling, use spleen for bad temper, even medically these organs have nothing to do with thinking and temper.

We face difficulties when translating. If the problem can be properly dealt with, the practical work could be done. If one tries to find the origin of the problem, a better understanding of oneself and related matters could be achieved. If one tries to find the reason or purpose of the problems, or tries to find out if a reason of purpose exists, I personally believe it will be a life well fulfilled.

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