Discussion Why translate chinese names to English?

Why translators translate chinese names into English? I personally feel keeping them in pinyin is better. Because I noticed many names that translated into English are ridiculous and sounds stupid. It's frustrating and cringy reading them.

 

To make some readers remember their name easier

 

depends, some names are meant to be translated cause the name function as a description of the character or as a joke, example of this are wastelanders names in godfalls chronicles whose name are simply two objects/animals mad dog, cloudhawk or under heaven family in against the gods where the kids are unpparallel underheaven, undefeated underheaven, etc

 

Depends on the novel, I'd say. Certain names are intended to be titles, as far as I know. Emperor's Dominion is a good example with a good number of the emperor names, and certain Chinese novels will have an ancestor named "The strongest" or something like that. I do agree that it doesn't fit with the majority of stories though.

 

It's like how western fans remember manga/anime by it's english name.
I personally remember kanji or hiragana though

 

Because then you wouldn't be able to be friends with Fatty zhao

 

Racism?

 

Those names are still Japanese though. Since they are translated to Romanji. Pinyin is the equivalent of Romanji. AKA Romanized stroke letters.

 

Ah, sorry. I meant romaji and kanji
Was wondering something seems to be wrong

 

I just treat it like all the First Nations names. I deal with people named "shot with both sides", "Eagle child", ect. so that kind on literal translation is pretty familiar to me anyways. If it's a Chinese name I just won't remember it since I'm not familiar with them.

 

Example?
case to case may result different opinion

xiao wu and lil wu seem no problemo for me

 

I've been reading chinese novels for years and I can barely remember the names of any characters, in some cases even main characters!

So the answer is to make it readable for the audience.

Even more so because chinese names pinyin poorly to english. There are multiple chinese characters which have the same rominization in pinyin but different characters in chinese. So the end result is you have Yun Yu saying hello to Yu Yun.

If you want your characters relatable, translate them to english. Of course you should pick a name that matches its symbolic meaning at least.

 

I was liké westernized name are usually in katakana , names in Kanji are japanese and not changed so didn t understand ya xD

 

Personally, if they were written in Chinese (pinyin), I wouldn't be able to remember them whatsoever. Because I don't know the language, pretty much every instance of pinyin would blend together for me, and the only way i'd be able to see when the story is talking about different characters would be by direct comparison of the pinyin characters.
In other words, I'd stop reading CN if they were done this way. Too much hassle.

 

Rather than people's names the ones I find cringy are the names of there moves translated to English. I dont know about you people, but imagining somebody yell out "flying tiger sleeping lion jumping monkey palm" seems much worse than its pinyin translation.

Also I always have to just imagine it as a palm strike because its impossible to imagine a flying tiger, a sleeping lion, and a jumping monkey launching at sombody.

 

Pinyin name are pleplep to read

 

This is stupid, even racism, Why do everyone can't dislike you for ANY reason they want? "ah, but i can't change" fuck off, deal with it. This world is becoming so strange, everything is strange today, I'm not feel that I belonging for this world. My country has a word for kill woman now, even delegacies just for woman and everyone think is normal. Kill someone is normal, everyday die a people, but when kill a woman became a disaster "OMG, someone NEED protect the women, STOP killing... women".

Edit: "Why do everyone can't dislike you for ANY reason they want? ". The better question is "WHY DO EVERYONE NEED LIKE YOU?" If you dislike someone fat, you are that, if is black, you are that, if is woman, you are that. Fuck, why do this shit matters?

 

Calm down mate, having a bad day or what ?

 

Sounds like that one classmate that snaps in an anime tbh.

 

Idk, nothing makes sense