Big companies get their names translated into Chinese
The allure of the Chinese market is prompting western companies and business locations to have their names translated into Chinese. It is a ticklish task, since Mandarin characters can have both phonetic and descriptive meanings.
Guernsey is one of a second wave of western organisations seeking meaningful identities in China. Big consumer brands went in years ago. Pizza Hut, according to Mr Lin, adopted a transliteration of its name with the dual meaning “always triumphant guest”. That had connotations of customer service, but was a little elliptical. So the stuffed-crust titan added characters that stood for “happy canteen”.
According to the China Daily newspaper, Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, has meanwhile chosen a Chinese name that inspires queasiness because its sounds like the word for “sickness” in Mandarin.
Eager to dodge such pitfalls, Notebook commissioned an evocative Chinese translation of its own name from Mr Lin. He came up with: Apparently that means “tube of ten thousand patterns” or, more simply, “kaleidoscope”.