Monday, May 17, 2004
White House, in Chinese, it is literally ......
It's very interesting that I was talking with my coworker Tony about back in the old days, a good domain name could grab big bucks, like Compaq paid $3.3 million for "altavista.com", and we joked about Whitehouse.com being a famous pornography site, and all of sudden, I just realized the literal translation of "White House" into Chinese "白房子" was a jargon for brothel, referring 老舍's famous novel "骆驼祥子".
And I told him about another example of careful translation, that the name "Bush" was translated "布什" (which doesn't carry real meanings, or something like 'spreading stuff', instead of "不实" (not honest).
Interesting, here are some other examples of 'interesting translations':
1, Mercedes Benz, in Chinese, depending on where you go, in China it's 奔驰 'ben1 chi2, meaning runs fast), in Taiwan, it's 宾士 ('bin1 shi4', sort of suggesting it's a gentleman), but the sounds benz, sounds more like 奔死 'ben1 si3' meaning 'run to death', or 笨死 'ben4 si3', meaning 'stupid to death', I guess not many people would buy a car with that name anymore.
2, Morman, phonetically translated in to Chinese as '摩门' 'mo2 men2' (doesn't have much meaning, except a typical foreign name to Chinese people), however, the word 'mo2' sounds the same as '魔', another much more popular character, which means 'devil', and '魔门', would mean "devil's gate". No doubt, the name itself has become a huge barrier for the popular religion in the US to spread itself to any mandarin speaking population.
And I told him about another example of careful translation, that the name "Bush" was translated "布什" (which doesn't carry real meanings, or something like 'spreading stuff', instead of "不实" (not honest).
Interesting, here are some other examples of 'interesting translations':
1, Mercedes Benz, in Chinese, depending on where you go, in China it's 奔驰 'ben1 chi2, meaning runs fast), in Taiwan, it's 宾士 ('bin1 shi4', sort of suggesting it's a gentleman), but the sounds benz, sounds more like 奔死 'ben1 si3' meaning 'run to death', or 笨死 'ben4 si3', meaning 'stupid to death', I guess not many people would buy a car with that name anymore.
2, Morman, phonetically translated in to Chinese as '摩门' 'mo2 men2' (doesn't have much meaning, except a typical foreign name to Chinese people), however, the word 'mo2' sounds the same as '魔', another much more popular character, which means 'devil', and '魔门', would mean "devil's gate". No doubt, the name itself has become a huge barrier for the popular religion in the US to spread itself to any mandarin speaking population.
