Yeah there's this viral NYT article from the 2000s about how the NYT's (and most US pubs') style guide for transliterating "Chinese names" as a whole bows to Mandarin cultural imperialism It gave the example of a random guy quoted in some NYT story as "Mr. Wu"
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Pointing out that, yes, this is technically correct, because his name is written in hanzi as 吳, and in Mandarin that's pronounced "Wu" But Mr. Wu, a working-class bus driver from Guangzhou, most likely *never* called himself "Wu" in daily conversation
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And his ancestors, for the vast majority of their family history, wouldn't have called themselves "Wu" either Because as a South Chinese family from Guangdong their actual native language was Cantonese, in which 吳 is pronounced "Ng"
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It's a difficult situation to translate into Western terms in modern times But it's like all these old-timey historical figures referred to only by their Latin names, names they'd never have used in conversation
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There is no "Christopher Columbus", there was a Cristoforo Columbo from the Republic of Genoa who later went by Cristóbal Colón when he became a Spanish subject There was no "Nicolaus Copernicus", there was a Polish guy named Mikołaj Kopernik Etc.
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And this isn't a neutral topic, this is a highly politicized topic The NYT style guide tells us to, for instance, use the "Mandarin names" of Hong Kong independence protesters who explicitly do not speak Mandarin and who view the imposition of Mandarin as a cultural attack
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i also remember reading about some Mandarin source insisting the city's name is actually pronounced Xianggang? >_<
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It's pronounced that way in Mandarin, yes
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yeah, but they insisted that this is how the city's name should be spelled/pronounced in english as well
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Yeah that's imperialism Mandarin is an extreme minority language in Hong Kong -- English is actually more commonly spoken -- and almost no native Hong Konger would find that a familiar pronounciation
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Of course, the whole point is they're trying to change that -- the government is trying to impose mandatory Mandarin-language education to accommodate an increasing number of "immigrant" families from the mainland
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Easiest parallel for some Americans to understand is forcibly anglicized Italian names. Marvel's Punisher, Frank Castle, family's original name was Castigliano.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellis_Island_Special …
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