Speakers of European languages often have fun with translations on Chinese menus that sound decidedly odd in the target language. But, of course, the translation hilarity goes both ways. Plenty of words in European languages are difficult to render accurately in Chinese, while some words, if rendered phonetically in Chinese, have meanings that might raise eyebrows.
Let’s stick with English names for now:
Nicholas sounds like ‘Ni kou si le’ in Mandarin and translates to ‘You are so stingy’
Isabella, pronounced ‘Yi sheng bei la,’ means, ‘The doctor got arrested.’
Martha sounds like ‘Ma hua,’ which is ‘Fried doughnut twist.’
Chinese people living abroad often adopt European names, as well as their own Chinese names, because they are easier for speakers of European languages to pronounce and avoid confusion. Do Europeans in China do the same thing? It sounds like some of them certainly should!
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