Transcription matters
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Marco Rubio has been named Secretary of State by newly inaugurated President Donald Trump, swiftly and unanimously approved by the United States Senate, and promptly sworn in by Vice President JD Vance. When it comes to China, our most formidable foe, however, there is a hitch — Rubio is under a travel ban by the Chinese government.
Zěnme bàn 怎么办？("What to do?")
Clearly this will not do. Even China knows that, so their Foreign Ministry has thought of a devilishly clever way to circumvent their own ban.
Beijing changes Rubio’s Chinese name, perhaps to get around travel ban
Changes to official translations are approved at a high level, and could be a way to ease sanctions indirectly. By Yitong Wu, Kit Sung, and Chen Zifei, rfa
2025.01.21
China's morphosyllabic script confronts the world, and itself — with unique challenges.
Beijing has changed the rendering of U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s name in Chinese, sparking speculation that officials might want to get around their own travel ban, in an apparent olive branch to President Donald Trump, analysts said on Tuesday.
The U.S. Senate confirmed Marco Rubio as secretary of state on Monday, unanimously voting in the Florida senator who sees China as the “biggest threat” to U.S. security, hours after the inauguration of Trump for his second term as president.
Rubio was slapped with retaliatory Chinese sanctions twice in 2020 after he criticized Chinese human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Hong Kong.
China has apparently changed one of the Chinese characters it uses to represent Rubio’s name in Chinese — lu, bi and ào.
A Ministry of Foreign Affairs news release dated Jan. 16 used the characters 鲁 (lǔ) 比 (bǐ) and 奥 (ào) in its official transcription of Rubio’s surname. Earlier official transcriptions had used 卢 (lú) as the first syllable.
Apparently, however, the Chinese aren't being overly fussy or fastidious about meaning, tone, or even pronunciation of Rubio's transcribed name. The lu– syllable is rendered either with 3rd tone or 2nd tone. the new lu- syllable means "stupid; rude; rash; crass; rough", the old lu- syllable signified a surname; the second syllable means "compare"; and the third morphosyllable means "abstruse; profound; southwest corner of a room".
Rubio's surname is pronounced roo·bee·ow in English. 奥 is pronounced ào in MSM The third syllable of Rubio's surname could have been better matched by Ōu 欧 ("Europe") or many other homophonic sinographs,
Suffice it to say that the Chinese transcription of "Rubio" and other Spanish, English, Russian, German… surnames is highly arbitrary. So it is easy to transcribe foreign surnames to make them mean many different things.
Though the "official" transcription of Kruschev's surname was Hèlǔxiǎofū 赫鲁晓夫 ("conspicuous, glowing, angry, grand, awe-inspiring; stupid, crass, rude, rough; dawn, know; husband, man), I remember one malign variant when Chinese relations with the Soviet Union were particularly bad (also used by anti-communists in Taiwan): Hēilǔxuěfū 黑鲁雪夫 ("Black Stupid Snowman").
Of course, normally you're not supposed to think of the meanings of the sinographs when they're being used for transcriptional purposes, but sometimes subliminal meanings cannot be avoided.
Yet there seemed to be some confusion as not everyone was using the new name. The foreign ministry repeated Rubio’s new Chinese name in its official transcript of Tuesday’s regular news briefing, but state broadcaster CCTV was still using the old version in news reports dated Jan. 21.
However, some records show that going back to 2016 in official Chinese media, both versions have been used.
A foreign ministry spokesperson in Beijing declined to say whether those sanctions — which include a travel ban to China — will now be lifted.
“China will firmly safeguard its national interests,” spokesperson Guo Jiakun told a regular news briefing in Beijing on Tuesday.
“At the same time, it is necessary for high-level officials from China and the United States to maintain contact in an appropriate manner,” he said.
…
The United States is not entirely a passive participant in Sino-American relations.
At his confirmation hearing on Wednesday, Rubio described China as America’s “biggest threat.”
“If we stay on the road we’re on right now, in less than 10 years, virtually everything that matters to us in life will depend on whether China will allow us to have it – everything from the blood pressure medicine we take to what movies we get to watch,” Rubio told the hearing.
“The Communist Party of China … is the most potent and dangerous near peer adversary this nation has ever confronted,” Rubio said.
…
The change in Rubio’s Chinese name will have been approved at a high level, former Chinese diplomat and defector Chen Yonglin said.
“The translation of names of important figures in China is determined through the translation office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the translation office of Xinhua News Agency,” Chen told RFA Cantonese on Tuesday. “It seems that a decision was made about this name after internal discussions.”
He said the move could be a face-saving way for the Chinese authorities to allow Rubio to travel to the country despite sanctions, without having to withdraw them.
“China is now in trouble domestically and internationally, and has begun to go back to softer tactics,” Chen said.
British Chinese writer Ma Jian said the government is playing “word games,” as usual.
“This kind of name change is very typical for China,” Ma said. “It’s also normal behavior for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is using it as a way to compromise.”
“It’s the only solution they can find … because if the relationship with the United States hits a new low, this will be a huge blow to the Chinese Communist Party, so they need to save face right now,” he said.
…
A final note, many of the statements quoted above misuse the word "translation" when the speakers mean "transcription", but that is the reflection of a well-nigh universal linguistic misconception by non-specialists about transferring information from one language to another. At least I didn't notice any occurrences of another much abused term of this sort, namely, "transliteration".
Selected readings
- "Transcription vs. transliteration vs. translation in cartography" (2/24/23)
- "Sino-Russian Transcription and Transliteration" (9/17/08)
- "Transcription and digraphia in the rapidly changing linguistic landscape of China" (10/24/20) — with a long bibliography
- "Transliteration follies" (7/30/14) — Hindi, Devanagari
- "Sinographically transcribed English" (12/26/10)
- "Middle Sinitic in Indological Transcription" (10/28/23)
- "Handsome court — translation / transcription hybrid" (2/4/24)
- "Automated transcription-cum-translation" (12/17/18)
[h.t. rit malors]
J.W. Brewer said,
January 22, 2025 @ 8:22 pm
It was almost 40 years ago when in the context of an Introduction-to-Sociolinguistics course (taught in the university's anthropology department rather than linguistics department for obscure academic-turf-battle reasons) I learned that it was reasonably common cross-culturally for people afflicted with disease or other misfortune to sometimes change their name, which might successfully fool the evil spirits who would then be unable to keep causing trouble for the renamed person. (You needed to make sure everyone in the village was on board, consistently referred to you only by the new name, and didn't slip up and use the old name.) But my impression was that the name changes involved were not quite so minimal/subtle as the change-of-transcription reported here.