How are western names converted to Chinese?
transliteration, translation, and custom made. I used transliteration to translation most of the names here. 1. The first way is simple transliteration, using Chinese characters whose pronunciations are similar to the syllables of an English name. The name “Clinton” is transliterated ke4 lin2 dun4. A certain limited set of Chinese characters has come into common use for transliteration purposes, but I don’t know the exact rules for how to transliterate a name (in any case, Taiwan and mainland China have different rules and use different characters). The problem with transliterated names like this is they are bit clumsy. They’re often much longer than ordinary Chinese names, and they look and sound obviously “foreign”. 2. Translation — rendering the meaning of the original name. For example, ‘Rotbard’ (German) translated into ‘Redbeard’ (English). This is hardest as most Western names simply do not have a Chinese equivalent. Translation of the meaning. This is mostly used for works of
