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 奥巴马 to 欧巴马, 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 奥巴马 (Ao-ba-ma) popped up and stuck. Apparently, the word 奥 does not represent the vowel as in “O-ba-ma” but 欧 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: 凯宜 or Kai-Yi but was quickly dropped because of its inaccuracy. The second, which is now the official version, is a single-syllable word 基 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.
![K[1]](http://blog.labour.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/K1-499x385.jpg "K[1]")
From time to time, I am requested to attend functions in various forms to raise funds for charitable purpose. We also organized such functions in Botany, Auckland in October to support those affected by the Pacific tsunami and South-East Asia earthquake.
