Good Characters, Inc. Blog

In the United States, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the 4th Thursday of November, which this year (2006) is November 23rd. 

• See it and Hear it
• Learn how to say and write Happy Thanksgiving in Chinese

The Chinese press is always happy when foreigners, particularly Americans, take notice of events in China. Andy Chuang keeps up on what is going on in China, and that got him noticed in the news.

The event was a simple contest put on by the city of Jinan. City officials invited the public to suggest names for 19 of its streets. Since Andy is in the business of naming, he entered the contest, submitting a few ideas for names. The city must not have expected entries to come from as far as the U.S. because Andy’s submissions appeared in no less than 12 news Web sites in China!

Whether any of his names will be one of the winners remains to be seen. When the contest closed, Jinan had 500 names to choose from!

Links:

• Street-naming Contest (Chinese)
  我给无名路起名活动结束 共征集路名500多条
• Street Naming Contest Has Received Suggestions from as Far Away as America (Chinese)
  征集名称已达400个，海外游子送来芳名, 无名路征名备受关注:
  远在美国的庄志鸿先生，通过网络得知泉城济南为无名路征名的消息后，他与身边亲朋好友一起集思广益，为这19条无名路分别起了名字。
• Street Naming Contest Ended with 500 Name Candidates (Chinese)
  征集名称500条 我给无名路起名 活动圆满结束:
  另外，本次征名活动也受到海外的关注，远在美国的庄志鸿先生，通过网络得知泉城济南为无名路征名的消息后，他与身边亲朋好友一起集思广益，为这19条无名路分别起了名字邮寄过来，并表达了要到泉城一游的愿望。
• Nineteen Unnamed Streets Are Waiting for You to Name (Chinese)
  19条无名路等你起名
• Help Us Name Nineteen Unnamed Streets (Chinese)
  19条无名道路请您起名
• Jinan: Naming Streets is Not an Easy Task (Chinese)
  济南： 老街巷消失 新街名何以信达雅

Do these Chinese brands sound like any names you know? A car dubbed Hongda? A retail store called Wumart? A Redberry wireless e-mail device? Some non-Chinese companies think so. And they are not happy with what appear to be attempts to capitalize on their good names.
 
The imitation of well known brands is probably not really an effort to defraud. Many Chinese companies are just beginning to venture into the international market, and they are not used to the branding competition there. With little effort or originality, they simply choose names they hope will allow consumers to recognize the type of product or service they offer.

So a Chinese automobile manufacturer produces a car that looks like a Land Rover and calls it “Roewe.” Another car maker builds a vehicle very similar to the Chevy Spark and names it “Chery.” The Chinese Internet company Baidu.com features BaiduSpace and Baidupedia. A coffee retailer uses the name “Xingbake,” which is “Starbucks” in Chinese.

Whether innocent marketing choices or deliberate attempts to cash in on someone else’s success, these names are angering the companies they imitate. Those companies are expressing that anger in complaints and lawsuits.

As Chinese firms expand their international business, they will need to learn how that market works. Consumers, especially Western consumers, want brands they know and trust. To sell to them, Chinese companies will need to develop and promote their own brands. They will need the sophistication, expertise, and experience of brand-consulting services.

Links:

• Copycat Chinese Brand Names Drawing Multinational’s Ire
• From Hongda to Wumart, China Brand Names Have Familiar Ring

As China gears up to host the Olympic Games, it has created five mascots. They are cartoon figures of a fish, a panda, a Tibetan antelope, a swallow, and the Olympic flame. They represent five features of nature: sea, forest, fire, earth, and sky. Each mascot has a two-syllable name in English, and combining the first syllables from all five produces the greeting “Beijing Huan Ying Ni,” which means “Beijing welcomes you.” They seemed the perfect characters for the international event.

But what to call them collectively in English? The Olympic committee settled on the name “Five Friendlies” for the friendly little creatures. But the name caused confusion and negative feelings. “Friendly” is a word in English, but “friendlies” is not. It sounds like “friendless,” something no one wants to be. And when written, it looks like “friend lies,” something no one wants his or her friend to do.

So the Olympic committee renamed the mascots “Fuwa.” Combining “fu,” good fortune, with “wa,” baby, the word means a good and fortunate child. It is a popular expression in southern China. Fuwa may not mean “friendly,” but it is certainly a more user-friendly term for five very cute mascots.

Links:

• Olympic Friendlies Come Under Fire
• Mascots Renamed “Fuwa”
• Chinese Olympic Mascots Renamed as Transliterated Pinyin Name Fuwa (Chinese)
  奥运福娃改译名 传递信息更丰富

The Shanghai Automotive Industrial Corp. (SAIC), China’s second-largest carmaker, has announced it will call its first self-made car the Roewe. The name seems to be similar to “Rover,” the BMW brand SAIC tried to buy earlier in the year. The sale, however, went to Ford instead.

The official word is that the name Roewe is inspired not by the Rover, but by 创新 (innovation), 殊荣 (honor and glory), 威 (might, power, or prestige), 仪 (appear), and 四海 (four seas, or, the whole world). When written in Chinese characters, it is 荣威 (rong wei). Its literal meaning is glory and power. But according to the official explanation, this Wei should be translated as prestige.

The name might seem prestigious in Chinese, but in English, Roewe, or Rong Wei, sounds like Wrong Way. Is this a good name for a car you hope will take you to the right place?

Could this be another Chinese-to-English Translation Blunders?

Links: 

• Rong Wei? Funny Name, Serious Car From SAIC of China
• Rover becomes ‘Roewe’
• The Shanghai Automotive Industrial Corp. Announces Rong Wei (Chinese)
  创新传塑经典，上汽自主品牌“荣威”全新亮相
• New Name Roewe Explained (Chinese)
  荣威 (Roewe) 品牌命名诠释
  This article explains the meaning behind the English Roewe and Chinese Rong Wei names. It says Roewe’s R is associated with “royal” and “-we” hints at we, us, representing unity and meaning “unity of will is an impregnable stronghold.” The English pronunciation of Roewe sounds like Rong Wei in Chinese; the Spanish pronunciation sounds like the Chinese term “ru yi,” meaning “as one wishes.”

If you do, it would be important to run a Chinese linguistic test before deciding on a new name, even if you are not planning to launch your product in China. This is to minimize the chance of creating a name that sounds profane or has negative associations in the various Chinese languages.

A name should be tested under Mandarin (the official Chinese language), Taiwanese (also called Minnan or Hokkien), and Cantonese. These are the three most widely spoken languages by Chinese in China and in countries that have a million or more Chinese in their populations - the United States, Canada, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand.