The Chinese translation of Thai brand names and the selection of Chinese characters to represent product features

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to analyze how Thai brand names were translated into Chinese and to analyze the selection of Chinese characters to represent the features of products through the collection of 546 names lists of Thai brands that had been translated and named in Chinese from the following 3 sources (from October 2012 to July 2022): Chinese-language magazines in Thailand, online shopping websites in China, and popular shopping centers for Thai products among Chinese tourists. In addition, all brand names were analyzed according to the principle of translating foreign names into Chinese as well as the principle of selecting Chinese characters to translate foreign-specific names.

It was found that there were 8 ways to translate Thai brand names into Chinese: 1.) transliteration, 2.) incremental transliteration, 3.) word-by-word transliteration, 4.) interpretation, 5.) incremental interpretation,   6.) word-by-word interpretation, 7.) mixed transliteration and interpretation, and 8.) re-naming. The most common translation method, however, was transliteration, being used with 290 names, followed by the translation of 192 names, 29 names translated by using a mix of transliteration and interpretation, 10 names that underwent re-naming, 8 names that underwent   word-by-word transliteration, 4 names that underwent word-by-word translation, 2 names that underwent incremental transliteration, and 2 names that were subjected to incremental interpretation.  In addition, there were 9 brand names that were found to have had more than 1 method of translation applied to them. In terms of selecting Chinese characters to translate Thai brand names, it was found that Chinese characters were chosen to represent the product's features in 5 aspects, which were: 1.) using the character “泰” to represent a Thai product, 2.) using the relevant Chinese characters to indicate the type of product, 3.) using the relevant Chinese characters to indicate that the product was for women, 4.) using the relevant Chinese characters to indicate that the product was for men, and 5.) using the corresponding Chinese characters to indicate the advantageous features of the product.