Brand Name Translation in ChinaAn Overview of Prac.doc

Brand Name Translation in China: An Overview of Practice and eory1.Importance of brand name translation in ChinaIn an age of economic globalization when international brand names becomethe norm, businesses around the world spare no e ort to market their productsor services in the world marketplace and to build their brand images on a glob-al basis. Before entering into world market, developing the right internation-al brand names has become a very important marketing strategy to most busi-nesses. is article, however, will not study how to develop new internationalbrand names, but will only focus on translating existing brand names from onelanguage into another, here it is from Chinese into English.Whats in a name? When it comes to a brand, it means enormous value. Brand name is a fundamentally important choice of brand elements as it o encaptures the central theme or key associations of a product. Naming can be cru-cial to businesses. A good brand name can bring about unexpected advantagesjust like Apple, Pampers and Lux do, while a bad one can jeopardize the busi-ness just like Nova and Incubus do. So is the case for translated brand names. A well-translated brand name can adjust to local market, lingual, cultural, andlegal environments, can re ect brand image, can convey product information, such as Coca-Colas translation into Chinese 可口可 (ke-kou-ke-le), mean-ing tasty and happy. While a badly translated brand name can only evoke un-favorable association to customers, such as Lactogens translation into Chinese 勒吐精 (le-tu-jing), meaning forcing you to vomit the essence.As the term implies, brand name translation is one practical form of trans-lation. Unlike other forms of translation that involves whole text, brand nametranslation is the transfer of single word or few words, thus having its own spe-ci c requirements and characteristics. Translation of brand names is gettingimportant in todays globalization of economy, and is vital to companies thatdo businesses in foreign countries. It is an especially worthwhile subject mat-ter to study for Chinese brand names, as China is the largest developing coun-try with its economy steadily integrated into the world economy. Translation of brand names has become increasingly important and a critical strategic choicefor Chinese businesses who want to compete in the global markets.2.Chinese way of translating brand names into EnglishEnglish has become the international language, or lingua franca, in almost ev-ery eld of society, it is also widely used to name companies, products, and ser-vices because of its dominance in business communications (He Chuansheng2000: 305-306). Brand names in English can be recognized and identi ed within most of the global markets, and need no translation at all. Most of the west-ern languages are of the same origin Indo-European family, sharing many sameroots and morphemes, and they are all phonographic lan guages using alphabet, thus it is relatively easy to transliterate them. Brand names in these lan guagesmay not need translation. Siemens, Nestlé, Fiat, Nokia, and other non-Eng-lish brand names need no translation at all and work well in the world market-places.In the case of China, it is di erent. Admittedly, the Chinese language, though spoken by the largest population in the world, is not an internationallanguage; it is mainly spoken by the Chinese people in China and overseas Chi-nese. Brands named in Chinese characters can rarely, if never, recognized byconsumers of other countries. If Chinese characters are used for internation-al brand names, companies should rst spend a lot of money to advertise thebrand name in foreign countries. And unlike most of the western languages, theChinese language is an ideographic language made up of strokes, if customersdo not know a Chinese character, then they can not pronounce it. Foreign cus-tomers will not ask for them if they do not know how to say it.Aware of this, most Chinese companies, when their products sell world-wide, will translate their brand names into English so as to make it easily rec-ognizable and identi able in the international marketplaces. In the transla-tion of Chinese brand names into English, di erent approaches are employed, which show the developments of translation theories and practices, as well asmarketing science in China. Chronologically, we identi ed four approaches inthe Chinese way of translation of brand names, namely Pinyin, literal transla-tion, transliteration, and coining, which can roughly fall into two stages be-fore and a er the Reforming and Opening of China. Before the Reforming andOpening, the prevailing approaches were Pinyin and literal translation, a erthe Reforming and Opening, transliteration and coining become more popular.2.1The Pinyin approachBecause the Chinese language is a pictographic language, Pinyin system wasinvented to help people pronounce Chinese characters. Although Pinyin alsouses Latin alphabet, it conveys no meaning and does not conform to the inter-national phonetic system. Some of the Pinyin of Chinese characters look verystrange, and can not be uttered at all to foreign people, such as Xingqiu (mean-ing celestial body in Chinese), which is the Pinyin name of a famous Chinesecharacter brand name (星球®). Suppose that this brand product radio sets goes international, how to name it? Of course, it is unwise to use its Pin-yin because it can neither convey any meaningful information about productattributes, nor can it be pronounced or pronounced very awkwardly. In fact, itwas the case in which Xingqiu is used as its brand name for foreign markets. Sometimes, however, the Pinyin of a certain Chinese word may coincide withan English word, then it has meaning in the English language. If the meaning ispositive, then you are lucky, but if it is negative, then you are at a loss. Such isthe case of FangFang, which is the Pinyin brand name of a baby skin powder(芳芳®, meaning fragrance in Chinese) produced in Shanghai, unfortunatelyfang means the teeth of poisonous snakes in English e Pinyin approach has been very popular in the 50s to 60s of the 20thcentury, and cannot be considered as translation, rather it should be called tran-scription. Because of its fundamental defects, it was soon given way to anotherapproach, the literal translation approach.2.2The literal translation approachFor a long time, translators in China attach great importance to equivalent trans-lation, mainly in literal or meaning equivalence. In the preface to his translationof T. H. Huxleys Evolution and Ethics, Yan Fu (1854-1921), a pioneer in trans-lation theory and practice in China, summed up his principles for translationin three Chinese characters 信 (faithfulness), (expressiveness) and 雅 (el-egance). ese principles have been adhered to by almost all Chinese transla-tors (Ma Zuyi 1998: 377-378), of which the rst principle faithfulness is giventhe priority. Following this principle, most Chinese brand names were translat-ed literally into English. is approach is better and more reasonable than thePinyin approach because words in one language can be converted into anotherlanguage and have the same semantic meanings. For example, 牡丹 (Mudan)is a beautiful ower in the Chinese language, and its counterpart Peony in Eng-lish is also the name of the same kind of beautiful ower, so this name can beliterally translated between Chinese and English and both convey positive con-notations. Such is the case for the 牡丹®brand for TV sets produced in Beijing, and its English brand name is Peony.Sociolinguistics tells us that every language is unique and di erent andclosely related to its culture, some words in one language do not have counter-parts in another at all. e Chinese language abounds in words or sayings thatcan not nd counterparts in the English language, and vice versa. Sometimes, the word in Chinese has positive meaning, but it may convey a negative, or evenprofane meaning in English. In these cases, literal translations may cause trou-ble or di culty in brand naming. Here we identi ed three pitfalls in the literaltranslations of brand names.2.2.1Negative or profane meanings in cultural connotationsLekus (1969) listed several thousands of brand names that may have taboomeanings, involving more than 40 languages. Aman (1982) further summarizedfour possible sources of taboo meanings from the standpoint of English brandnames. David Crystal (1997: 115) also said: “International companies are nd-ing it increasingly important to develop brand names that can be used in a widerange of countries .and there is always the danger of unfortunate connotationscreeping in, because of the name overlapping with words of an irrelevant or ta-boo meaning”. In the same book, David Crystal (ibid. 348) criticized the liter-al translation of a Chinese brand name of farming equipment into East Wind. Due to geographical locations, east wind is a warm wind in China, but a coldwind in Britain.In the past, some Chinese companies made mistakes in translating theirbrand names into English because they failed in considering their cultural con-notations in English, such as Junk, which is the literally translated name of aChinese garment product. e literal translation of 白®pen into White Feath-er also failed in cultural connotation because white feather means a sign ofcowardice. In English, there is a phrase to show the white feather mean-ing to act like a coward from the belief that a gamecock with a white featherin its tail was a poor ghter. Other examples include Golden Cock (clock prod-uct), Pansy (male shirts), Five Goats (bicycle). English-speaking people canimmediately nd out the unfavorable cultural associations from these translat-ed brand names. e most notorious one is 白象®battery produced in Shanghai. It enjoyeda good reputation in international markets, especially in the U.K. market thanksto its high quality and low price. In 1976, the company management translatedit into an English brand name White Elephant, the literal translation of 白象in English. In ailand, as well as in China and other Southeast Asian coun-tries, white elephant is considered as a sacred animal. So, this brand name con-veys favorable meaning in the Chinese culture. But in Britain, sales droppeddramatically and the company did not know why. Later, someone pointed outto the management that White Elephant does not refer only to an elephant thatis white in its color; in English it also means a costly but useless thing. Nobodywill buy a commodity that is costly but useless (He Chuansheng 1997: 182).2.2.2UntranslatabilityUntranslatability is a common phenomenon in translation. Every language hasits own unique lexicon that is only indigenous to that culture. For example, theAmerican Indian people have hundreds of words for snow because there are somany di erent kinds of snow in their lands and snow is so important to theirlife. China is a country with a long history of more than 5,000 years, and is veryrich in tradition and culture. Some words, especially those concerned with his-tory and culture are only indigenous to the Chinese language and culture, with-out counterparts in foreign countries and foreign languages. erefore, thesewords cannot be literally translated into any other languages, including Eng-lish. And the Chinese people has a long a nity to these cultural words and liketo brand their products with them, believing that they can convey a feeling of national pride and trust to consumers. ere are numerous brands named a erthose culturally unique words. Such is also the case for other countries. Everypeople is pride of their civilization and it is customary to use these words asbrand names. For example in the U.S., we nd many car brand names relatedwith the Frontiers Movement, such as Dodge, Frontiersman, Mustang, Path- nder, Pontiac, etc. ese words are related to the Frontiers Movement, andcannot be translated literally into Chinese. 2.2.3Non-compliance with features of brand namesA good brand name should be simple, distinct, and easy to remember and pro-nounce, and preferably suggestive of product bene ts. Due to the syntactic andsemantic di erences in languages, a short brand name in one language, if trans-lated into another language, may render into a long sentence. A long sentenceis rarely, if never, used as a brand name because it is di cult to remember (we nd only one brand name in English that is made of a sentence Gee-Your-Hair-Smells-Terri c).® brand oor wax has long been an export product of China. e Chi-nese brand name means dash, or big progress in English. If it were translatedinto Dash, then it would be an excellent brand name in English (P & G produc-es a detergent under Dash brand name). But unfortunately, it was translated intoGreat Leap Forward. is name is too long, and conveys a negative associationto consumers that this kind of oor wax will make you fall heavily on the oor. Another example is a recent one of the Hengan Group, the largest producer of paper products in China. e company developed a new facial tissue in 1997and marketed it under the Chinese brand name of 心相映®, meaning heart toheart, someone translated it into Mind Act Upon Mind. Later the company realized that such a name does not comply with the criteria of brand names inthat it is too long. e company coined a new brand name for it Heartex, ap-parently imitating the famous Kotex brand name of Kimberly-Clark.2.3The transliteration approachAware of these cultural pitfalls in literal translation, more companies turn to an-other approach, transliteration. Transliteration is to write or spell a word, name, or sentence in the alphabet of a di erent language, mainly used to translateproper names from one language into another. When transliterating a Chinesecharacter brand name into English, the new name will be constructed from theEnglish alphabet by the phonetic rules of the English language. e new namewill sound phonetically almost the same as its Chinese characters, but is notits Pinyin. is approach proves to be a useful one in the translation of brandnames from Chinese into English.In the late 1970s, the Shanghai Jahwa Company developed a new line of products of cosmetics under the Chinese brand name of 美加®, which meansliterally Beautiful And Clean in English. is line of products were so suc-cessful that the company management intended to market them on the worldmarket.