Lost in translation

The star mixed doubles event held in Chengdu, China in July has been reported by our staff  PeterDoggers. The winners were Zhu Chen and Seirawan. In one of the remote corners of China, an internet forum got it wrong by transforming Seirawan into “Sierra Wan”. Now that Wan is not an uncommon surname in China, people may have got the impression that the former chess queen from China teamed up with another Chinese player. Evidently, the one contributing the forum had not checked related websites for the correct info.

Another incident long ago saw similar confusion with names. Soon after Xie Jun took the women’s world champion title in 1991 , a Taiwan newspaper got her name wrong. “Xie” , besides its status as a surname, also means “to thank” . The Chinese medium newspaper changed it to the character “Shao”, another not uncommon surname in China ( which means a  Chinese traverse flute ). The problem here is that the writer of that column got the information from some English media and did not check the corresponding info from mainland China. Taiwan  and mainland China use two different  systems to represent Putonghua in English  and that adequately explains the error. 

Oh what a mistake!😶