An Analysis Of Transliterated Brand Names From English To Chinese

As the embodiment of commodities, brand names are becoming a more important part of our life. With the intensification of international exchange and severe competition, more and more foreign brand names, esp. English brand names have been pouring into China. However, the present study of English brand name translation, esp. the transliteration, is far from satisfactory. The present paper focuses on the transliteration of English brand names and attempts to penetrate a little further in this field.Starting from the definition of brand names, the common properties of brand names are displayed with the basic principles of brand name formation, i.e. brevity, novelty and readability. English brand names are loan words in nature. Based on the ways of loan words translation, four means of brand name translation, i.e. transliteration, semantic translation, transliteration & semantic translation, and others (containing abbreviation, a mixture of Chinese & English, etc.) are put forward. As among important ways of brand name translation, the definition of transliteration is a little bit controversial, while the process of transliterating English brand names into Chinese is more complicated. With the help of Catford's transliteration theory a common pattern for English brand name transliteration is demonstrated.With a further step to the comparison of the English and Chinese sound systems, some ideal equivalents are matched theoretically on the level of phonemes. And the English and Chinese syllable structures are also compared. Some other efforts are made to seek for the English corresponding equivalents on the level of syllable to meet the fixed final structure of Chinese. It seems that the theoretical equivalents are not sufficient at all in practice. To make the ends meet, the characteristics of Chinese brand names and cultural factors, including the designative meaning, the linguistic meaning and the pragmatic meaning, are better to be known. And the cultural obstacles originating from different beliefs, different thought patterns, different concepts of values and different figurative associations should be concerned as well.Finally, the overlapped part of English brand names and English proper names is covered. A hypothesis of an ideal transliteration pattern of English brand names is put forward and discussed with the causes of difficulties in Chinese itself.