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Transcription into Chinese characters
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Transcription into Chinese characters
Transcription into Chinese characters is the use of traditional or simplified Chinese characters to phonetically transcribe the sound of terms and names of foreign words to the Chinese language. Transcription is distinct from translation into Chinese whereby the meaning of a foreign word is communicated in Chinese. Since English classes are now standard in most secondary schools, it is increasingly common to see foreign names and terms left in their original form in Chinese texts.[citation needed] However, for mass media and marketing within China and for non-European languages, particularly those of the Chinese minorities, transcription into characters remains very common.
Except for a handful of traditional exceptions, most modern transcription in mainland China uses the standardized Mandarin pronunciations exclusively.
Modern Han Chinese consists of about 412 syllables in 5 tones, so homophones abound and most non-Han words have multiple possible transcriptions. This is particularly true since Chinese is written as monosyllabic logograms, and consonant clusters foreign to Chinese must be broken into their constituent sounds (or omitted), despite being thought of as a single unit in their original language. Since there are so many characters to choose from when transcribing a word, a translator can manipulate the transcription to add additional meaning. As an example, for the syllable jī, there is a choice of some 120 characters that have this as a Hanyu Pinyin reading.
In the People's Republic of China, the process has been standardized by the Proper Names and Translation Service of the state-run Xinhua News Agency. Xinhua publishes an official reference guide, the Names of the World's Peoples: a Comprehensive Dictionary of Names in Roman-Chinese (世界人名翻译大辞典 Shìjiè Rénmíng Fānyì Dà Cídiǎn), which controls most transcription for official media and publication in mainland China. As the name implies, the work consists of a dictionary of common names. It also includes transcription tables for names and terms which are not included. The English table is reproduced below; those for a number of other languages are available on the Chinese Wikipedia.
The Basic Laws of the Hong Kong (article) and Macau (article) Special Administrative Regions provide that "Chinese" will be the official languages of those territories, in addition to English and Portuguese, respectively, leaving ambiguous the relative preference for Cantonese and Mandarin. In practice, transcriptions based on both Cantonese and Mandarin pronunciations have been used.[citation needed]
In Singapore, transcription standards are established by the Translation Standardisation Committee for the Chinese Media and in 2014 was moved to National Translation Committee (NTC) of the Ministry of Communication and Information. In Malaysia, transcription/translation standards are established by Chinese Language Standardisation Council of Malaysia.
Increasingly, other countries are setting their own official standards for Chinese transcription[citation needed] and do not necessarily follow Xinhua's versions, just as Xinhua's version differs from Wade–Giles and other international standards.[citation needed][clarification needed] For example, the United States embassy in China recommends rendering "Obama" as 欧巴马 Ōubāmǎ, while Xinhua uses 奥巴马 Àobāmǎ.
Transcription of foreign terms may date to the earliest surviving written records in China, the Shang oracle bones. As the Huaxia spread from their initial settlements near the confluence of the Wei and Yellow rivers, they were surrounded on all sides by other peoples. The Chinese characters developed to describe them may have originally transcribed local names, such as the proposed connection between the original "Eastern Yi" people (東夷) and an Austroasiatic word for "sea". However, the tendency within China was to fit new groups into the existing structure, so that, for example, "Yi" eventually became a word for any "barbarian" and the name "Yue" (戉 & 越), originally applied to a people northwest of the Shang, was later applied to a people south of the Yangtze and then to many cultures as far south as Vietnam. Interaction with the states of Chu, Wu, and Yue during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods of the later Zhou brings the first certain evidence of transcription: most famously, the word jiāng (江), originally krong, derives from the Austroasiatic word for "river".
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Transcription into Chinese characters AI simulator
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Transcription into Chinese characters
Transcription into Chinese characters is the use of traditional or simplified Chinese characters to phonetically transcribe the sound of terms and names of foreign words to the Chinese language. Transcription is distinct from translation into Chinese whereby the meaning of a foreign word is communicated in Chinese. Since English classes are now standard in most secondary schools, it is increasingly common to see foreign names and terms left in their original form in Chinese texts.[citation needed] However, for mass media and marketing within China and for non-European languages, particularly those of the Chinese minorities, transcription into characters remains very common.
Except for a handful of traditional exceptions, most modern transcription in mainland China uses the standardized Mandarin pronunciations exclusively.
Modern Han Chinese consists of about 412 syllables in 5 tones, so homophones abound and most non-Han words have multiple possible transcriptions. This is particularly true since Chinese is written as monosyllabic logograms, and consonant clusters foreign to Chinese must be broken into their constituent sounds (or omitted), despite being thought of as a single unit in their original language. Since there are so many characters to choose from when transcribing a word, a translator can manipulate the transcription to add additional meaning. As an example, for the syllable jī, there is a choice of some 120 characters that have this as a Hanyu Pinyin reading.
In the People's Republic of China, the process has been standardized by the Proper Names and Translation Service of the state-run Xinhua News Agency. Xinhua publishes an official reference guide, the Names of the World's Peoples: a Comprehensive Dictionary of Names in Roman-Chinese (世界人名翻译大辞典 Shìjiè Rénmíng Fānyì Dà Cídiǎn), which controls most transcription for official media and publication in mainland China. As the name implies, the work consists of a dictionary of common names. It also includes transcription tables for names and terms which are not included. The English table is reproduced below; those for a number of other languages are available on the Chinese Wikipedia.
The Basic Laws of the Hong Kong (article) and Macau (article) Special Administrative Regions provide that "Chinese" will be the official languages of those territories, in addition to English and Portuguese, respectively, leaving ambiguous the relative preference for Cantonese and Mandarin. In practice, transcriptions based on both Cantonese and Mandarin pronunciations have been used.[citation needed]
In Singapore, transcription standards are established by the Translation Standardisation Committee for the Chinese Media and in 2014 was moved to National Translation Committee (NTC) of the Ministry of Communication and Information. In Malaysia, transcription/translation standards are established by Chinese Language Standardisation Council of Malaysia.
Increasingly, other countries are setting their own official standards for Chinese transcription[citation needed] and do not necessarily follow Xinhua's versions, just as Xinhua's version differs from Wade–Giles and other international standards.[citation needed][clarification needed] For example, the United States embassy in China recommends rendering "Obama" as 欧巴马 Ōubāmǎ, while Xinhua uses 奥巴马 Àobāmǎ.
Transcription of foreign terms may date to the earliest surviving written records in China, the Shang oracle bones. As the Huaxia spread from their initial settlements near the confluence of the Wei and Yellow rivers, they were surrounded on all sides by other peoples. The Chinese characters developed to describe them may have originally transcribed local names, such as the proposed connection between the original "Eastern Yi" people (東夷) and an Austroasiatic word for "sea". However, the tendency within China was to fit new groups into the existing structure, so that, for example, "Yi" eventually became a word for any "barbarian" and the name "Yue" (戉 & 越), originally applied to a people northwest of the Shang, was later applied to a people south of the Yangtze and then to many cultures as far south as Vietnam. Interaction with the states of Chu, Wu, and Yue during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods of the later Zhou brings the first certain evidence of transcription: most famously, the word jiāng (江), originally krong, derives from the Austroasiatic word for "river".