Transcription Into Chinese Characters - Sound, Meaning and Graph

Sound, Meaning and Graph

A transcription into Chinese characters sometimes reflects the meaning as well as the sound of the transcribed word. For example, the common ending -va in a Russian female family name is usually transcribed as 娃 (wā; "baby", "girl"), and the —v in a male family name as 夫 (fū; "man"); Utopia is famously transcribed by Yan Fu as 烏托邦 (乌托邦 wūtuōbāng; " fabricated country"); Pantagruel is transcribed as 龐大固埃 (庞大固埃 pángdàgù'āi), as 龐大 means "gigantic" and 固 "solid". One translation of World Wide Web is 萬維網 (万维网 Wànwéi Wǎng), meaning "10,000-dimensional net (or web)".

Sometimes subjective feelings are reflected in a transcription. The Beatles are known in Taiwan and Hong Kong as 披頭四 (披头四 pītóusì; "mop-head four"), comparing the four-character idiom 披頭散髮 (披头散发 pītóu sànfǎ; "to wear hair dishevelled"). Esperanto was known as 愛斯不難讀 (爱斯不难读 àisībùnándú; " love this not difficult to read") when it was first introduced into China (now it is known as "世界语" shìjièyǔ, meaning "international language").

Fidelity to the original sound is often sacrificed in a non-technical context. In transcribing names of people, companies, shops or brands, phonetic fidelity is not the overriding factor: any characters may be used as long as the Chinese is memorable, dignified or auspicious. In some cases this amounts to renaming, rather than "transcription". A common example is the Chinese names non-Chinese people adopt for themselves, which are not transcribed, but rather "adapted" from or "inspired" by the original. See, for instance, the Chinese names of the Hong Kong governors.

Sometimes characters are specially made for transcribed terms. For example, 茉莉 (mòlì) for jasmine (Sanskrit: malli), 袈裟 (jiāshā) for kasaya (Sanskrit: kasāya) or most of the Chinese characters for chemical elements. Most of them are semantic-phonetic compounds.