You are slow and un-informed, don't blame others

In my last post, I blasted some poor soul for a poor translation job on the chinese name of Seoul, capital of Korea. Well, it turns out that I am that lousy, un-informed, mountain-tortise who should be doing some fact checking before judging on others.

It appears that around late January this year, Seoul decided to rename their city's chinese name from 汉城 to 首尔, for the reasons of 'avoiding confusion'. Apparently, they think that others might mistake it to be a 'Chinese city' in China. Talk around the internet seems to say that Koreans felt that the name 'Han City' is derogatory. Wow... that's heavy man...

While I don't know the origin of the name 汉城; some said it was so named because the city was built along the Han river (汉江). Honestly, I felt that it is a nicer name than a cold, purely-phonetic translation of 首尔.

不过话说回来, 城市是人家的. 名称人家要怎么翻译,怎么称呼, 都是人家的自由. 翻译本身其实是一项不容易的学问. 很多时候照着发音而翻译往往只是一种go through motion的运动, 其原意和精髓能不能保留下来似乎已不重要了.

"临汉江而建的城市" -- 汉城--怎样都比硬梆梆的"首尔"好听, 有意思.