Transliteration of names into Asian languages

When translating texts such as those for tourism material, many place names are included such as Christchurch, Te Anau, Auckland etc. To transliterate names into an ideographic language means selecting those characters which result in the best phonetic translation. In doing so, care must be taken by the translator to ensure that the characters selected, each of which has its own meaning, do not result in the transliteration of say Queenstown into a word which is either silly or negative in its meaning.

A recent example of the transliteration of a name was the launching of the Google Chinese site in early 2006. The transliteration is "Gu Ge." The first character means cereal, grain or millet; the second means song or sing. Google were quoted as saying;  it carried the connotation of a "harvest song" trilled "after a fruitful search experience."

Additionally, for those unfamiliar with the correct pronunciation of names such as Whakatane, Armagh Street or Lake Wakatipu, a correct transliteration is impossible. Where such names occur within a text to be translated, Blue South uses proof readers who live in NZ who know the correct pronunciations to ensure that the final result is correct.