Chinese Translation for iPhone? It Doesn't Translate Well, Both Literally and Figuratively

2009-11-03 19:57:11 - China Unicom has signed up only 5,000 iPhone customers so far. Perhaps it is because iPhone does not translate well into Chinese. Indeed, there is no Chinese translation at all for iPhone, according to Chinese translation experts.

Chinese telecom carrier Unicom has signed up only 5,000 iPhone customers since the device went on sale in the world's most populous nation, China, last week. If 5,000 seems small to you compared to the 1.3 billion population that China has, perhaps it is because iPhone does not translate well in Chinese. Indeed, there is no Chinese translation at all

for iPhone, according to Chinese translation experts at Abacus Chinese Translation Services.

by Teresa Wong
October 24, 2009

Unicom, one of the iPhone non-exclusive distributors in mainland China, reported last week that it had already signed up 5,000 iPhone customers. If 5,000 seems small to you compared to 1.3 billion, the population of China, perhaps that you should take a look at several factors, one of them being the iPhone does not translate well in Chinese.

iPhone', unlike its maker, 'Apple', does not have a Chinese translation." says Samuel Chong, one of the Chinese translators at Abacus Chinese Translation Services. "Only a few words come to China without Chinese translation. The word 'iPhone is one of them.

Google, after a few years of struggling of opening the Chinese market, made a Chinese name, Guge. Walmart's Chinese name, Woerma, is the transliteration of its English name. Dell's Chinese name is Daier, while Coca Cola's Chinese name is Kekou Kele, meaning "tasty and happy drinking".

iPhone, on the other hand, has yet to have a Chinese translation of its name. On all materials promoting iPhone, the word "iPhone" is left as it is, without any Chinese translation.

"Chinese language is vastly different from Japanese and Korean, in this sense, that it tries to translate everything according to the meaning, while Japanese and Korean just borrow foreign words directly." explains Chong. "It is especially evident in computer and technology related words, such as 'modem", in which its Chinese translation is 'tiaozhijietiaoqi', meaning the 'device of modulation and demodulation'. The word 'computer', is 'diannao', or 'electric brain' in Chinese. The word 'Internet', is 'hulianwang', or 'interconnected net', while the word 'Blackberry' is translated as 'heimei', meaning 'black-berry.

Will iPhone have its own Chinese name? We will wait and see.


This article can also be found at www.certifiedchinesetranslation.com/09/1103-Chinese-translation- ..