Something about translation of some Chinese names*

依恋北京

Something about translation of some Chinese names*

How to translate Chinese names into English? We often call the name of a street with our Chinese Pinyin when we express it,but what we should use about STREET, ROAD, COUNTY. etc? Is it better to use Pinyin or use English words? For example, XX Street or XX dajie? Can we discuss it?

* Here it figures especially STREET,ROAD or COUNTY,etc.

清一色

well, you are sure those clumsy foreigners won't get lost...

丹峰

It's up to the audience. For foreigners who have been staying in

China for a couple of months, we could use Hutong, Jie, Lu and

Dajie, because they hear Chinese people say, for example, "Jian Wai

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Da Jie" instead of "Jianguomenwai Avenue". They could understand and

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find the way if you say so. But for the people who does not have the

kind of experience, the better we use lane, street, road, avenue for

胡同、街、路、大街, especially for publishing materials.

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[此贴子已经被作者于2006-1-9 11:28:55编辑过]

依恋北京

But I have seen some signs saying XX Jie. XX Fan dian. So I am a little confused.

I find also that when we post letters or sth. from abroad we use Pinyin ,too.

弘德皇帝

It's better to use English here, as those streets are not special for Chinese. But I suggeste that we use pinyin to translate Chinese unique culture such as Hutong, Gugong, Yuanmingyuan and so on.

靳京

My experience tells me that when I am waiting and recieving mails from overseas, I would rather have my mail address written in Pinyin, for st., Rd and District instead of English because when the mail is actually in China, the deliverer must be a Chinese who mis-understands English easily. Even though the mail is eventually figured out, it is much delayed and/or lost. You'd better leave your cell phone no. on the paper work.

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As in China, it's very flexible for foreigners to get used to what names we frequently use in Chinese Pinyin here instead of different and funny English translations, which are quite misleading.