Say 可口可乐 (Kěkǒu Kělè) aloud; slowly is fine. You may hear something familiar in the sound: Coca-Cola. Now look at the characters and imagine being asked to choose a name that people could recognise when they heard it and read when they saw it on a bottle.
Copying English letters would be one option. Finding a Chinese name gives you more decisions to make. Should it resemble the original sound, carry the original meaning or suggest something new? A familiar label can turn into quite a good language puzzle.
The Open University’s Chinese course uses Coca-Cola as an example of a name chosen mainly for its sound. The company has also described its Mandarin name as carrying the sense of “delicious happiness”. That cheerful phrase comes from the company’s own 2008 Annual Review. It is a corporate description, rather than a precise word-for-word translation to put in a language test.
Compare it with an apple
The same course gives a contrasting example. Apple’s Chinese name is 苹果 (píngguǒ), the ordinary word for the fruit. Here, following the meaning of the English name matters more than reproducing the noise of somebody saying “Apple”.
You can see the difference by imagining the task before either answer exists. With the first approach, you would listen carefully to the original and look for a recognisable sound in another language. With the second, you would begin with the idea of an apple and find the word that names that fruit. You are translating different parts of the same label.
This helps explain why comparing the number of letters with the number of characters won’t tell you very much. The translator isn’t matching each printed mark to another printed mark. They are deciding what a reader should recognise, and recognition can come through hearing or meaning.
Neither approach is automatically better. A name might be remembered because of its sound, its meaning, a picture beside it or years of seeing it used. Those are possibilities to think about, rather than proof of how any particular customer responds to these two brands. We aren’t conducting an advertising experiment; we’re looking at the language choices on the label.
What do you want to keep?
The same question can become personal. Imagine someone called Rose who wants a version of her name in another language. She might prefer a similar sound because that is what her friends call her. She might like the flower connection, or she might think people already make far too many flower jokes.
The useful answer would depend on what Rose wants to preserve. Knowing the dictionary word for a rose would not, by itself, settle the choice. Names belong to people, so a sensible translation conversation includes the person whose name it is.
Brand names have their own aims, which is another reason not to treat a company slogan as a general language rule. Coca-Cola’s description tells us how the company presents its name. The Open University example helps us compare translation strategies. One isn’t a replacement for the other.
A small label worth looking at twice
Next time you see a familiar international name written in Chinese characters, try listening to its pronunciation before deciding that you already know the answer. Then find out what the name means. You may recognise a sound without knowing the meaning, or understand a meaning without recognising the sound.
You don’t have to guess from the appearance of the characters. A reliable language source can explain the pronunciation and translation, and somebody who knows the language can help you hear what you missed. The fun is in finding which part of the original has travelled.
There is a lot to notice in four characters on a bottle. Once you have heard the familiar sound, the next interesting step is to ask how it got there without assuming that every other name followed the same route.
Brand translation and a name in an app offer two other naming questions: Can a brand name be translated? and Can an app give you a Chinese name?.
Sources
- The Open University: Beginners’ Chinese: translation of foreign and company names
- The Coca-Cola Company: 2008 Annual Review, PDF cover/page 1