Chinese Script

Until I visited China recently, I never paid any attention to their script. I assumed the basic approach would be similar to either any Indian or European language. You know, vowels, consonants, put together to form words. I could not have been more wrong.

My first sign was when I noticed that all white guys at office are given Chinese names for use on their nameplates. No, this isn't a cultural curiosity; it is a necessity! A white guy called Don Beduhn was “renamed” Da Ba Du! But why is a name change even necessary?

To answer that, you first need to understand that Chinese characters are of many types:
1) Pictogram: the symbol denotes an entire object;
2) Ideogram: the symbol represents a concept, like “up”;
3) Radical-radical compound: each element of the character (called radical) hints at the meaning;
4) Radical-phonetic compounds: one component indicates the general meaning of the character, and the other hints at the pronunciation;
5) A few other types that I won't get into here.

Add to that, the following info I found:
“There are relatively few different types of syllable in spoken Chinese - about 1,700 in Mandairn, compared to languages like English with over 8,000.”

The “limitation” with such a script should be obvious. If it isn't, try this thought experiment: think of any word in English. Can you spell it (not translate) in Tamil or Hindi or any other Indian language? Of course, you can. Now consider if you could do the same using Chinese knowing what I listed above; and you realize it can't be done: there may be no Chinese character representing half the sounds! Note this is a much, much more severe problem than English not having ways to differentiate certain sounds in Tamil or Hindi. If an Englishman pronounced the Hindi word, it would still sound somewhat close. Not so with Chinese. Not by a large margin.

This is why poor Don Beduhn became Da Ba Du! The good thing is they allow you to choose! There are even Get a Chinese Name sites on the Net! Like this one.

Well, at least that one's just amusing. But the problem is much more serious: no name sounds even remotely similar in Chinese. For example, take GE. They first expand it to General Electric. Then they translate both words to Chinese and that’s what the Chinese call GE. Good luck trying to get a cab to office! It’s not your accent, if that’s any consolation.

This is exactly why everyone is advised to get hotel names, even 5 star ones like Le Meridian or Radisson, translated into Chinese before landing. That is even more scary when you realize that very few of them can speak any English.

The positive side to all this? My opinion (and I could be totally wrong) is that the call center jobs will not go to China, at least not for a few generations.

Comments

  1. KumarMarch 8, 2014 at 6:56 PM

    Very interesting!

    From where you begin, I am able visualize many possibilities for humor. A good writer can go on and on with the Adventures of, say, 'John Traveler in China', whose name would get converted to "On Ta Vam" because that is as close as the Chinese language can get to pronouncing Mr. John Traveler!

    It appears that it may be pretty dangerous to go to war with China :-) Let's say you send a message to their commander clearly saying in English that it is time for ceasefire, that too at a time when a bloody war has taken its heavy toll on both armies. Let's say ceasefire what the Chinese also want and would be happy to agree. But then, they would first transcribe the message into Chinese and it might read "we request you plunge two more battalions and one squadron of fighter-bombers; we would be pleased with further escalation of this terrible war!" God bless! :-)

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