What is name translation and what are the difficulties in name translation? How to translate a good name?
First, the translation of English names.
Translating English names into Chinese is more complicated, depending on the specific situation. This is because there are many homophones in Chinese. Choosing different Chinese characters to translate the same English name will confuse readers and confuse whether they are talking about one person or more people. For example, there were at least nine translations of the name Philip in the early days: Philip, Philip, Philip, Philip, Philip, Philip, Philip; There are at least five versions of William: William, William, William and Wen Lian. In view of this, the translation of names should be as unified as possible to avoid unnecessary confusion. It is not difficult to do this. For example, some English names have regular suffixes, so try to be consistent when choosing Chinese characters. For example, -bridge in Fairbridge of Broodbridge is now translated as "bridge".
Because Chinese characters are mostly polysemous words, which are easy to cause association, in addition to the unification of words (see the transliteration table of the New Practical English-Chinese Course), the following criteria should be observed:
(A) the name comes from the master control principle.
When the names of Europeans and Americans are translated, they are translated into Chinese according to the principle that the names should follow the owner, that is, according to their customary order, such as david copperfield's translation into "david copperfield".
Names of English-speaking countries are sometimes homographs with different pronunciations. For example, Berkeley reads /ba:kli/ in Britain, which translates into "Barclays", but reads /b in the United States. : kli/, which should be translated as "Becquerel".
Some words in English names are pronounced irregularly, so special attention should be paid to translation. For example, Mao Mu's gh is silent, and the Chinese translation should be "Mao Mu".
Some foreigners like to sinicize their real names to make them sound like China people's names. For example, Joseph Needham is translated into "Joseph Needham" (Britain), Si Tuleideng into "Si Tuleideng" (America), Fei Zhengqing into "Fei Zhengqing" (America), James G. endicott into "James Gareth endicott" (Canada) and Pearl Buck into "Buck". These translations are not standardized, but they are widely known and widely used, so there is no need to retranslate them.
(2) the principle of convention
Some translated names are obviously not pronounced correctly, but they have been popular for a long time, accepted and established, and there is no need to change them. For example, Eden is pronounced as /` i:den/ (Eden), but it is used to be translated as "Eden".
In order to preserve national characteristics, foreigners' names are generally not in Chinese. However, the translation of some traditional customs is generally unchanged in order to maintain historical consistency and avoid misunderstanding. This requires translators to be diligent and ask more questions and have a better understanding of people in politics, economy and culture. For example, Bernard Shaw is Bernard Shaw, not Bernard Shaw; Bethune was uniformly translated as "Bethune", but Norman Bethune, a Canadian, translated it as "Bethune"; Marx is generally translated as "Marx", but the great revolutionary teacher Marx always translates as "Marx".
(3) the principle of conciseness
The unimportant consonants in a name can be omitted, because if the name is more than four words, it will be difficult for readers in China to remember it. Short words are easy for readers to remember, for example, Engels translated into "Engels" instead of "Engels"; Eliot translated into "Eliot" instead of "Eliot"; Shakespeare translated Shakespeare, not Shakespeare; MacDonald translated into "Mai Tang? Quot, not "McDonnell Douglas".