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The translated name is quite different from the original in sound, and it might be attributed to the original sound of the word in the original language-Russian, but the same criterion will not apply to the case of the name of the sitting president of France, Macron（马克龙）, which should have been 马克红 according to the pronunciation of the original language-French. So in China are there two different systems of translation?

Other examples of name mistranslations frequently found in Chinese media from mispronunciation:

Trump,correct:川普, incorrect:特朗普

Obama,correct:欧巴马，incorrect:奥巴马

Celts,correct:塞尔特人, incorrect:凯尔特人

JK Rowling, correct:劳玲, incorrect:罗琳

Jerome Salinger,correct:萨林泽,incorrect:塞林格

Henry Kissenger, correct:基辛泽, incorrect:基辛格

Elon Musk,correct:一龙马斯克,incorrect:埃隆马斯克

Andy Murray, correct:安迪默里,incorrect:安迪穆雷

Novak Djokovic,correct:焦科维奇,incorrect:德约科维奇

Eve,correct:伊芙, incorrect:夏娃

NanningYouth
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    Your "mistranslation" and "mispronunciation" examples assume the origin is English and the translation is for Mandarin. Unfortunately, neither assumption holds true consistently. – xiaomy Jun 15 '23 at 19:52
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    How did you decide which is correct and which incorrect? For instance, "JK Rowling, correct:劳玲, incorrect:罗琳" seems backward to me. (In English, "Rowling" rhymes with "Bowling (ball)", not with "Howling (wolf)".) Similarly the "incorrect" Kissinger sounds more correct. As for Macron, why not "Róng"? – Ray Butterworth Jun 16 '23 at 00:41
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    @RayButterworth You can find out whether Rowling is R-au-ling or R-ou-ling from BBC Radio 4, which is what I did a while back. "R" in French sounds like "H" of Pinyin, that's why I think 红 is closer to the original than 龙. – NanningYouth Jun 16 '23 at 06:36
  • @xiaomy That makes sense. Would you point out which of the above is not English in origin? – NanningYouth Jun 16 '23 at 06:38
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    I am French and I find that 龙 is much easier to pronounce / closer to usual French sounds than both 红 and 荣, so it fits a transcription from French much better. – Stef Jun 16 '23 at 07:25
  • @NanningYouth: [pronounce rowling - Google Search sounds exactly like pronounce bowling - Google Search. – Ray Butterworth Jun 16 '23 at 12:57
  • How is 凯尔特人 supposed to be ‘incorrect’? Given that Celts is pronounced with a [k] sound as its first consonant (not an *[s] sound), it is if anything 塞尔特人 that’s wrong. As for ‘Rowling’, the correct pronunciation is by definition the one used by JK Rowling herself, and that is unambiguously /ˈrəʊlɪŋ/, with the vowel of go, not that of how – as Ray says, it rhymes with bowling, not howling. Something like 喽玲 would be closer to the English pronunciation than either of your versions. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jun 16 '23 at 13:01
  • (to answer your question) As a comment below pointed out, 夏娃 is Hebrew -> Cantonese. – xiaomy Jun 17 '23 at 11:26
  • @Stef It may be easier to pronounce exactly for French people, but the Mandarin /l/ (an alveolar liquid) is definitely not closer to the standard French /ʁ/ (a uvular approximant/fricative/trill) than the Mandarin /h/ (uvular/pharyngeal approximant/fricative). The latter pair are phonetically much closer than the former. /l/ would be closer to the dialectal alveolar realisation [r] still found here and there in the south of France, but that’s hardly ‘standard’ in French anymore. At any rate, what’s easier for the French doesn’t affect how the Chinese represent the sound. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jun 17 '23 at 13:40
  • @JanusBahsJacquet Doesn't it? I'd be embarrassed if I traveled to China and was unable to pronounce my own name. – Stef Jun 17 '23 at 13:51
  • @Stef No, it doesn’t. How Mandarin speakers transliterate and represent French words in Mandarin is based on which sounds they consider the closest match, not which sounds French speakers consider the closest match. What you choose as your own personal Chinese name is an entirely different matter – you’re choosing a name to go by – one that may or may not have any relation to your French name – not transliterating a French word to be used in Mandarin. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jun 17 '23 at 14:07
  • @JanusBahsJacquet Another two such examples for your critique, Argentina阿根廷, Mexico墨西哥, which in my opinion should be 阿汉提纳 and 墨希可 following their Spanish sounds. – NanningYouth Jun 20 '23 at 03:37
  • @NanningYouth Well, those two were clearly borrowed through an intermediate language (probably German or English), which is also quite common – compare the English name Japan, which was borrowed from Cantonese, not Japanese, or indeed China itself, which has an extremely winding history (< Portuguese (influenced by French) < Persian < Sanskrit < probably 秦, though no one really knows). If you wanted to match the Spanish sounds of Argentina and Mexico as closely as possible, it would be something like 阿尔很迪纳 and 美希果 (Spanish /k/ = [k] = Mandarin /g/). – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jun 20 '23 at 08:43

3 Answers3

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Putin (Путин) is pronounced as /ˈputʲin/ in Russian. Note the /ʲ/ (palatalization) after the /t/.

Russian differentiates between hard and soft consonants. The soft consonants are palatalized, which means that the tongue is pushed up towards the hard palate during the articulation of the consonant.

When /t/ and /d/ are palatalized in Russian, they are also slightly affricated. The actual pronunciation of /tʲ/ and /dʲ/ are closer to [tʲsʲ] and [dʲzʲ] respectively. In Chinese ears, they sound like /tɕ/. That's why Putin is translated as 普京.

You can listen to the Russian pronunciation of Putin on Wiktionary.

alephalpha
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    Agree, a lot of Chinese translation for names of people or countries come directly from the original Language itself so they may not make sense to English speakers. In Путин‘s case, I think 普京 is a better translation phonetically than Putin( English pronunciation). For country's case, for example: Greece is 希腊（xi la）in Chinese, because it was called Ἑλλάς (Hellas) back then. – Archeosudoerus Jun 15 '23 at 16:33
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    This is also true of the two transliterations of the Hebrew name חַוָּה (Ḥawwā); via Greek Εὔα and Latin Eva, we get 厄娃, as used in Catholic translations; direct from Hebrew through southern topolects (presumed from Shanghai, Ningbo, Guangzhou and Xiamen, as in the 1850s Delegates' Version), we get 夏娃, as used in many Protestant translations; from Arabic حَوَّاء we get 哈娃 as used amongst Muslims. – Michaelyus Jun 15 '23 at 16:59
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It's Americanese: transpose d and t: Pudin in Americanese.

The d of Vladimir becomes 基 jī， so, to be consistent, the d of -din (= -tin) in Pudin becomes 京 jīng

俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔·普京

弗拉基米尔·普京
fúlājīmiěr pǔjīng

ДаДа!

Pedroski
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Some of your examples make sense, but there are also some that I am not sure whether your correct/incorrect is justified. I would just explain what I know about translating foreign names.

it might be attributed to the original sound of the word in the original language-Russian

This is what translation tries to stick to. If Macron is not translated this way (i.e., w.r.t. French pronunciation) then it is incorrect, given that if Macron is a native last name in France. <- Right, this is also often in consideration, that names originating from the same name often have only one translation. I am not sure if this is specifically related to this case, just thought about this and FYI.

In some other cases, the correct original pronunciation does not have an exact mapping in Mandarin, so there is some convention for translating them into something that sounds similar. Note that "similar" might be different w.r.t. original language's speaker vs. Chinese speaker. E.g., a Chinese speaker might think "thank" sounds like "sank", while many English speakers think it sounds like "tank".

Plus, sometimes, the translation was not done to Mandarin, but to Cantonese. Then Mandarin users just used the translated Chinese characters as is, resulting in strange pronunciation.

At the end of the day, what we need is a translation that is somewhat related to the original pronunciation, does not have overwhelming indications, and all users agree upon it. Some translations were not correct, pronunciation-wise, due to the limitations of the translator. However, once conventionalized, it is the de facto standard and it is correct.

Andrew T.
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王博龙
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    Those who pronounce "thank" as "tank" are most probably South Asian people, like Indians, Pakistani or Bangali. The examples I listed in my original post are all in Putonghua or Mandarin, and whether there are such cases in Cantonese, I will keep an eye on that. – NanningYouth Jun 15 '23 at 13:53
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    The Irish often say, "Tank you very much!" "I tink you are right!" "I'm gonna take a bat." (bath). Maybe you know the old joke: 2 Irishmen are looking for work in Canada (加拿大). They see a sign: tree-fellers wanted. Sean says, "Hey Paddy, dat might be sumtink for us!" Paddy says, "No, dey want tree fellers, but there's only 2 of us!" – Pedroski Jun 15 '23 at 21:35
  • @NanningYouth There are native English speakers who told me "thank" sounds more similar to "tank" than "sank". – 王博龙 Jun 16 '23 at 07:55
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    @NanningYouth The fact that the transliterations are used in Mandarin does not mean that they originated in Mandarin. Many of the characters now used as standard correspondences to transliterate especially English words originated in Cantonese, Min or other southern Chinese languages. Such transliterations were then borrowed wholesale into Mandarin, and from that the individual characters gradually became standard for particular sounds, even if Mandarin happens to have closer correspondences. Using 夏 for ha is a good example: 夏威夷 makes no sense as Xiàwēiyí, but Haa⁶ wai¹ ji⁴ works. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jun 17 '23 at 13:54