A controversy is brewing in Massachusetts over whether the surnames of the U.S. presidential candidates should be translated into Mandarin and Cantonese on the 2008 ballots. The federal government has insisted that Massachusetts join New York and California as states who provide Chinese-language ballots in accordance with a 2005 consent agreement between the U.S. Justice Department and the Massachusetts secretary of state. While on the surface, this seems like a wonderful idea aimed to encourage non-native English speakers to vote, some feel that the transliterated names may favor certain candidates. See the thing is, when English names are translated into Chinese, each syllable is given a Chinese character that resembles the English sound of that syllable. For instance, my Chinese name is da wei, a direct Chinese transliteration of my English first name, David. Translators use these same methods for names like Obama and Giuliani, however in Chinese, as you will see in the graphic below, the meaning of the transliterated syllables aren’t always so great. Furthermore, the Chinese names that the AP and ABC News used for their funny translations aren’t even the actual Chinese names used in China for these candidates. As Flumesday’s Translational Expert points out:

There exists in Chinese a set of characters that are always used to phonetically represent foreign names, and the names of prominent people are standardized in the Chinese media using the same characters. These names are accepted by newspapers, television, radio, etc. so that Chinese speakers know whom the article/report was about. Boston has at least two Chinese papers, one of which, the World Journal, I read frequently, and a glance around their related websites confirm that they conform to the standard transliterations of politicians’ names found in Chinese media around the world. The translator preparing the Chinese election ballot and the translators for the AP and ABC News have ignored these conventions and provide asinine and grossly inaccurate translations. In general, saying that such-and-such a name sounds like such-and-such is fun (my name in Chinese sounds like both “to be in love” and “to pity”), but no one would seriously include such alternatives on a ballot sheet.

Thanks Flumesday’s Translational Expert. My question would be, if a Chinese guy went to the polls knowing he was going to vote for, let’s say, Mitt Romney, isn’t it safe to assume that he would know the name “Mitt Romney” in English? And if all the signage on the streets around the polling place and in the buses that would take a Chinese-American to the polls is in English, I think a Chinese person could handle an English ballot. I consider myself pro-diversity, pro-democracy and pro-any measure that gets people to vote, but isn’t this all a bit much? It somewhat insults the capacity of Chinese voters to know even the most well-known English names. But anyway, here are the translations from the Massachusetts state election officials. And keep in mind, these are not the names used in China nor by the Chinese-America media.

	Hilary Clinton "Tired Forest"
	Barack Obama "Profound Horse"
	Rudy Giuliani "Peaceful Nun"
	John McCain "Triumphant Wheat"
	Fred Thompson "Virtue Soup"
	Mitt Romney "Sticky Rice"

•ABC: Lost in Translation or Chinese Food for Thought?
•AP: Candidates’ Names Are Tough in Chinese

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