I'm probably the only person in all of Arda who cares for this, but.

[oloriel]

Apparently, the Chinese have given up transcribing Tolkienish names. Hm. While that was always fun (Éomer = Yīǒumó; literally: Europe-paintbrush-hero *no comment*; Aragorn = Àlāguǒ ("Asia-ragged-country")) to decipher, it usually wasn't exactly... fitting. So now they just use romaji? That's probably a good idea. But of course, it steals a lot of the exotic touch. And it would have been fun to see how they'd have transcribed the Valar. Eheheh.

(They have not even transcribed "Mary Sue". How disappointing.)

(thanks to limyaael for the link, and congrats on having your story translated into Chinese!)

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Es scheint, als hätten die Chinesen die Transkription der Tolkienschen Namen aufgegeben. Hm. Es hat immer so viel Spaß gemacht, die Namen dann zu dechiffrieren (Éomer = Yīǒumó; wörtlich: Europa-Pinsel-Held *kein Kommentar*; Aragorn = Àlāguǒ ("Asien-zerlumpt-Land")), aber besonders ... passend waren sie nie. Also jetzt nehmen sie romaji? Das ist vermutlich eine gute Idee. Aber natürlich wirkt es dadurch nicht mehr so exotisch. Und es wäre so interessant zu wissen, wie sie die Valar transkribiert hätten. Eheheh.

(Nicht mal "Mary Sue" haben sie transkribiert. Wie enttäuschend.)


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Comments

[etoilepb.livejournal.com]

I have a couple of Chinese LOTR promotional materials. Even though my Chinese wasn't good enough (I only took a year of it) to figure out exactly what it all said, I was amused by some of the characters that showed up. :)

[ninquelote.livejournal.com]

It sounds like a "Bite the Wax Tadpole" thing. (I've never gotten confirmation on whether the Bite the Wax Tadpole story is allegorical, but it's a good example of what CAN happen when you try to render things into non-western writing systems according to the closest sounds...)