The difficulties of translating your name into Chinese

Chinese can be tough for many reasons, but the most frustrating issue has to be that of what should be a very simple task – translating a western name.

My Chinese name has been an issue since day one. First, there was the translation of my Hebrew name to something easily pronounceable in English. My friends took care of that, giving me the nick name of fiLi, which is a combination of my first and last name. Although I later found out that fiLi actually means things in English (a female horse, for example), it was still easy to use – most foreigners that I met abroad could pick it up immediately.

Problem with Chinese started from day one in my Chinese class as my Taiwanese Chinese teacher told me that my name sounds like the Chinese sound for Fillet (steak). I tried out all the "Get a Chinese name" websites and discussed this issue with my Taiwanese friends for long while, trying to figure out what might be a decent name to use. There was no escaping the Fei-li sound, but finally there was somesort of agreement as to what my name should be. I thought that would be the end of it. This is what I came out :

Thing was, and still is, when I use this name with people from China the first response I get is a weird look suggesting that it sounds bad. When my China-origin Chinese teacher heard the name she hesitated for a while before saying "Oh, well, what matters is that somebody who loves you gave it to you". When I tried to understand what the matter was, she replied saying that it’s not that bad. That made me worry. When I met the Chinese students studying Hebrew in Israel and told them my name they said that it sounds like the Chinese slang for someone who doesn’t treat women nicely, and they still joke about that every once in a while. So, the Chinese name that I get from someone in Taiwan might have a different meaning in China or for a western-born-Chinese. That really convinced me that I need to find a very common Chinese name used in both China and Taiwan that I like instead of trying to make my Hebrew/English name translate into Chinese. I’m still working on that.

-

There’s an Israeli forum for Chinese language and culture on Tapuz that I sometimes read, and it’s funny to see that 25% of the messages posted there by new comers are from Israelis who are trying to get help in translating their names to Chinese. It’s hard explaining to someone who doesn’t study Chinese why this is an extremely difficult task. To give an example for a misunderstanding, here’s my translation of an email forwarded to me by a friend in response to the Chinese tattoo mistakes in Israel :

The girl :

"Hello,

I saw on the website that you’re helping people install Chinese on their Windows 2000. I can’t install the Chinese!

I’ve been looking for someone who can write Chinese for a very long time!My boyfriend and I want to tattoo our names in Chinese.

I would be grateful if you can help me…"

The friend:

"Hey,

I’m a bit confused. I don’t understand the connection between Windows 2000 Chinese installation and tattooing your name in Chinese. You do know that having Chinese in your computer won’t help you with your name unless you can read/write and speak Chinese, right? can you explain to me what it is exactly that you’re trying to do?"

The girl:

"Oh, damn! I don’t know! I’m looking for a way to translate my name to Chinese but I still haven’t found how!

Hmmm… I thought that if my computer would support Chinese then I would be able to use Word Translation to translate the name from English. Isn’t this possible?"

Oh dear.