Foreign names accompanied by transliteration

[antorve]

Hi,
I'm editing an art catalogue in Chile which will go to China, and it will be entirely in Chinese. I have a huge doubt concerning credits.
Although the Spanish names of people involved in the exhibition and catalogue were translated into Chinese, and in some cases the translation already exists, most of them only get a phonetic translation. My question is whether it is right to put the names only in Spanish or whether they should be accompanied by their translation, even if it does not have a meaning.
I appreciate very much any comment about this.

 

[avlee]

The translation of names is always a headache for me.
Usually, people were wondering, "How do I call the foreigners?" and so translators make every effort to find suitable characters which have the closest pronounciation of the names.
Since most characters are meaningless except the pronounciation, sometimes the original names are still enclosed in the translated version for reference.

 

[antorve]

It has been quite a headache for me too!
Thank you very much for your answer, Avlee
I think I'll use both the original and the translation, the latter between 《》

 

[greenriver]

When translating foreign names, Chinese translators use Phonetic translation most. You might get translated foreign names in Chinese by searching the name you'd like to translate in searching engine web in Chinese language.

For example, to seek the translate result of the name "Robert White" in Chinese, you could search "Robert White" in Chinese seaching webs and might get the answer in the form "罗伯特.怀特（Robert.White）" or "Robert.White（罗伯特.怀特）". So search foreign name with "( )" will get more exact result.

You could search on google.com with "Advanced Search" only searching web in Chinese or baidu.com, a Chinese search web. And you could search " 姓名 翻译" on these web, blank for the translate source language.

Hope this could help.

Greenriver

 

[DavidCornell]

The usual practice is to use the Chinese translations with the original language in parentheses, e.g.

安东尼奥·本德拉斯（Antonio Banderas）

It has been quite a headache for me too!
Thank you very much for your answer, Avlee
I think I'll use both the original and the translation, the latter between 《》

 

[DavidCornell]

Oh, one more thing. Don't forget the dot between the first name and the family name. It is a dot in the middle of the line, not the full stop.

Hi,
I'm editing an art catalogue in Chile which will go to China, and it will be entirely in Chinese. I have a huge doubt concerning credits.
Although the Spanish names of people involved in the exhibition and catalogue were translated into Chinese, and in some cases the translation already exists, most of them only get a phonetic translation. My question is whether it is right to put the names only in Spanish or whether they should be accompanied by their translation, even if it does not have a meaning.
I appreciate very much any comment about this.

 

[antorve]

Thanks greenriver and DavidCornell, your suggestions have been very helpful!