Prior to President Obama’s official visit to China in November 2009, the US authorities had requested, in vain, the Chinese government to change the official Chinese transliteration of Obama, from ??? to ???, or from Ao-ba-ma to Ou-ba-ma.
The reason for the Americans is a simple and obvious one: the translation is incorrect. When “Obama” was incorporated into Chinese characters years ago, the spelling of ??? (Ao-ba-ma) popped up and stuck. Apparently, the word ? does not represent the vowel as in “O-ba-ma” but ? does.
Chinese is a tone language in which the way a sound goes up or down determines the meaning of the word. That is to say, most of the words are differentiated solely by tone. The standard Chinese has four tones. Its amazing effect can be felt in a typical example in the word “Ma” which means – respectively in its four tones – “mum”, flax”, “horse” and “curse”.
The complexities are further compounded by the fact that Chinese words are often polysemous where one word sometimes has two or more different meanings.
The seemingly straightforward matter between the US and China has been viewed as something much more than its linguistic feature. The western media matched the incident to the “ideal metaphor” for the new reality of US-China relations. The moral is, as cited in The New Yorker, “when you can’t even get your counterpart in a negotiation to spell your name right, you are probably in for a rough ride.”
The New York Times went further: “China effectively stage-managed President Obama’s public appearances, got him to make statements endorsing Chinese positions of political importance to them and effectively squelched discussions of contentious issues such as human rights and China’s currency policy.”
Considering the history of US-China relations with each having been good at the “ping pong diplomacy”, the “name game” may well be a good indication of the new reality of the relations between the two giants.
In the New Zealand context, we are in a similar situation but purely in a linguistic sense.
Prime Minister John Key’s name in the Chinese transliteration roughly had two versions. “John” has been used in China for many years and its translation, being accurate, has long been accepted and adopted. The only issue is how to get “Key” translated. The very first version was in two syllables: ?? or Kai-Yi but was quickly dropped because of its inaccuracy. The second, which is now the official version, is a single-syllable word ? or Ji, which is undoubtedly phonetically correct. The word “Ji” was said to have been firstly used and adopted by China’s Xinhua News Agency and the rest of the media followed.
However, remember the features involving the tone language further intrigued by its polysemous words? The word “Ji” does, by all means, remind you of positive words such as “base”, “core”, “foundation” or “fundamentals”. However, it is inevitable that by the sound of it, the word is apt to connote “chicken”, “chick” or in the worst case scenario, an offensive word “whore”.
I took exception to the likely connotation. I have also requested, in vain, some Chinese media I can access to drop the Chinese translation.
Whether we should make an official request or use the request to test our relationship with China in a similar vein will remain to be seen.
Very cool post. I’ll go further: very very cool post.
i don’t think john key cares how its spelt raymond he’s got better things to worry about like the economy but good that your thinking about the important stuff
The very reason I fail at Mandarin and Vietnamese for that matter Raymond. Tonal languages are too difficult especially for us Kiwis who seem to raise our tone at the end of every sentence as if it were a question.
but good that your thinking about the important stuff
Raymond, I’d like you to think about this: On Christmas Day, thousands of Auckland chinese suddenly descended on Uretiti Beach in Northland and took thousands of paddle crabs. They left the beach covered in rubbish and left toilet paper and faeces and disposable nappies in the sand dunes, there were chicken carcasses all over the place and they left thousands of crabs dying above the high tide mark.
Many got stuck in the sand and when locals helped them out, they were rude and offensive. One was waving a knife. They made the access ramp almost completely undriveable. Then they went back to Auckland.
Locals, including local iwi, were very upset and disgusted. We found out later that a local firm who has a quota and legitimately sells crabs to retailers in Auckland found that the market dried up over this period. One of the chinese collectors on the beach reportedly said that he was getting paid by his boss in Auckland to take as many crabs as he could get.
Our beach is going to die if this keeps happening.
Only one Auckland Chinese leader has come forward and said anything – Estella Lee. All she has said, however, is that its very exciting for the Chinese to be able to collect free food. The NZ Chinese Association president, Steven Young appallingly has made no comment at all. And Raymond, you have made no comment at all thus far.
So, Raymond, who is speaking for and to the Chinese? Who is taking responsibility for educating them about New Zealand ways and New Zealand conservation?
Because now that locals are wise to it, if it happens again I suggest there’s likely to be trouble and people will take the law into their own hands. It needs to be headed off before it happens.
Thank you very much Bea. FYI, I have attended 6 meetings on this so far. Estella has been actively involved in protecting our environment for many years.
Mel you are wrong , John Key isnt thinking about the economy.. thats so last year!
He has said, just days ago, that his focus will be on improving educational ’standards’ this year.
A spelling bee perhaps? LOL
As for the economy,he doesnt want to seen or photographed near it.
To Illuminatedtiger: appreciated! I feel lucky that I don’t have to study Chinese as a foreign language! I have a Kiwi friend who studied Chinese for many years and he told me the most difficult part was that 1+1 = something else, ie one character plus another meant totally something else. Bear in mind, many Chinese people who study English have similar, if not equally, problems too.
@Bea. I’m interested in knowing from what confirmed resource you claimed that ‘thousands of AKL Chinese’ had been the black hands leading that crab-massacre? Though according to the news I read they were people with Asian faces–not necessary were all Chinese.
I hate to see people collecting crabs out of limitation. But just simply labelling the collectors as Chinese is unfair.
Meanwhile Stella Li has wrote an open letter to all Chinese communities, asking people to be aware of this shameful crab issue and urging all Chinese to protect the natural resource and the environment as much as they could. There have been many discussions amongst the Chinese communities follow Stella’s letter and many Chinese-NZers have been critizing the greedy crab-collectors and felt been let down by the crab-collectors.
It’s always easy to blame/label the whole lot Chinese residents. Above just for your reference.
Bea , you should have seen the mess left after 000s turned up at the Big Day Out.
Sorry a mistake in my former comment: the name is Estella Lee
,not Stella Li— regarding writing an open letter to all Chinese community.
And you didn’t notice ‘has wrote’?
Hmmmmmmmmmmm.
Thanks Adolf. yep should be’has written’. — An good example for showing you how careful we should be in dealing with a second language …
And thank Budda at least this spelling thing is less seriously than ‘Primary Chicken’
a good example. Not ‘an’ –Again, blame my too active fingers please.
Glad to hear it, Raymond. I hope the meetings have some effect.
Fieldwest, the Northern Advocate believes they were mainly Chinese, and the news of paddle crabs to collect was spread around the Auckland Chinese community via the internet. Estella Lee’s comments indicate they were Chinese. I think you’ll probably find Raymond thinks they were Chinese. My local Chinese friend tells me they were mostly Chinese. And your comments indicate you think they were Chinese.
I personally don’t care about the flex and tone of the Chinese language, but I do care about our crabs, what about the crabs, Raymond?
Thanks Paul 2.0 but this post is about chicken, not crabs. I care about our crabs – together with our oysters and other assets (airport, seaport, railway, natural resources …)
But no one is stealing our Chickens, are they, Ray? SURELY you didn’t get picked to stand for Labour just to gather the Asian vote?
What concrete ideas to you have to prevent the blatant and offensive pilfering on the beaches?
I am completely taken out on the polar differences between Asian languages and English.
Where Raymond gets his Chinese characters from inside his computer eludes me.
I have to go to North Thailand and then Laos, and I have been worried about language,
Even Americans can not understand me, especially call centre Latino, for Amtrak bookings.
I suppose will have to write everything down,
Many Asians can read our heiroglyphics.