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itude they may lose many potential customers.
English or pinyin version of trademarks will be useful in attracting foreign customers. To the surprise, many China-made products have no English version of their trademarks at all, even without pinyin. The author was confused when he saw among them some famous brands such as “步步高”, “两面针”, “脑白金” and “立白”. These enterprises are so “shy” to put the English version on the products. This kind of products can not attract those foreigners who do not know Chinese. It is not a wise practice in today’s domestic or overseas market.
4.2 Improper translation
Transliteration, literal translation and semantic transliteration, i.e., “a combination of phonetic transcription and semantic manipulation” (Hu Qingping, 2001.) are three most commonly used approaches in trademark translation. However, not all the trademarks translated into English or pinyin are successful. Actually, some of them even cause negative effects rather than bring profits to manufacturers.
Comparatively speaking, transliteration is the easiest job for translators. In today’s market, most of the Chinese trademarks are transliterated, such as Chunlan (春兰), Meiling (美菱) and Changhong (长虹). Although transliteration maintains the original pronunciation of trademarks, it cannot convey the meaning of the original trademarks to customers. Therefore, pinyin spelling is usually meaningless to those foreigners who do not know Chinese at all. On the other hand, they are usually difficult to pronounce and remember. Here are some typical examples of abused transliteration: “正大青春宝” is translated as “Zheng Da Qing Chun Bao”, “云山复方鲜竹沥” as “Yun Shan Fu Fang Xian Zhu Li”, “Huang He Lou” for “黄鹤楼”, and “Shou Xi Hu” for “瘦西湖”.
Sometimes, a pinyin spelling may coincide with the spelling of an English word or a word in other languages. In that case, translators should be especially careful to avoid arousing misunderstandings of customers. A story about trademark translation in Yangtse Evening Post is a good example: “卡卡”, the trademark of a kind of China-made biscuits, was translated as “KAKA”. When the products arrived Russia, the Russian loaders got shocked to find that all the boxes printed with “KAKA”, because in Russian, “KAKA” refers to shit! Another similar example is “马戏” playing cards, transliterated as “MAXIPUKE”,which turn to be a funny English trademark, indicating “to puke maximally”! “芳芳” is a beautiful Chinese trademark of children’s talcum powder, but the pinyin “FangFang” turns to be terrible, because “fang” is also an English word, which refers to teeth of wolf!
4.3 Cliche transliteration
Compared to Chinese-English trademark translation, trademarks translated from English to Chinese are more flexible and successful. Among them, some classic ones get so popular that they have become household vocabulary, such as “可口可乐” (Coca-Cola) and “百事可乐” (Pepsi Cola). Nevertheless, problems are also found in English-Chinese trademark translation.
Transliteration, the usual method in English-Chinese trademark translation, often brings customers a kind of foreign style, indicating high quality of products. When those trademarks first occur in the market, they might inspire customers’ curiosity. Since they are easy to read and remember, they became popular in China. However, having come across too many trademarks with a “foreign style”, customers will become less interested in them. Nowadays, we have to