Marco Cimarosti wrote:

>
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > > I was talking yesterday about a table of Chinese characters used
> to transliterate foreign names into Chinese, which I have seen on
> > > [Coulmas 1999].
> > > [...]
> >
> > Typically mis- or underinformed statement from that book (1996,
> > BTW, not 1999).

(Library Journal reviewed it together with WWS, but I don't know what
OUP could have provided to LJ's reviewer, since there were never bound
galleys and the publisher never asked to see anything beyond a sample
article or two, and LJ's policy is not to assign books for review after
their pub.date.)

> Well, I don't think you believe that Coulmas could have *made*up*
> that table... But I agree that it would have been much better to have
> more details about the origin and the scope of usage of that table.

Look at just about any paragraph on some writing system you know well
that's outside his own sphere of knowledge (Japan and East Asia more
generally). You'll be very disappointed. But on the sociolinguistics of
writing, he can't be outdone.

> > Quite a few (well-known) foreign names are rendered in Chinese
> > with characters that not only have a relevant pronunciation, but also
> > have meanings that are literally, metaphorically, or ironically
> > relevant.
>
> Certainly. E.g., I remember a lengthy article about how the Chinese
> translators of Harry Potter's books transcribed the names: they
> carefully chose the characters(=hanzi) whose meaning hinted about the
> character(=moral quality) of each character(=personage) in the novel.
>
> (BTW, don't you think that English has too many meanings for the
> word "character"? :-)

Usually not a problem in context ... which characters would express the
true characters of the characters in the story?

> > Examples can be found in most of the semi-introductory books
> > on Chinese writing or even the Chinese language. This table would
> > only be for quotidian usage.
>
> That's my guess too. I don't think Chinese journalist would use that
> table to transcribe names of people such as George Bush or Vladimir
> Putin: probably the decision of how to transcribe such very names
> requires a meeting of the editorial staff (if not a memo from the
> ministry of foreign affairs).
>
> But what if a Chinese journalist is asked to review a book by a
> certain "Peter T. Daniels" from America, or to report about (TOUCH
> WOOD!) the murder of a certain "Marco Cimarosti" from Italy, and she
> is given half an hour to deliver the article...

That's what I called quotidian usage.

Do you have a way of interesting a publisher in publishing a book by me?
Marketing tells Editorial that there's no market for such a thing -- yet
crap like "Language Visible" (the pbk.'s title has been changed to
"Letter Perfect," but copies under the old title do exist) and
"Alphabeta" keeps coming out.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...