The British Consulate General Hong Kong is the sole governmental agency currently tasked with offering professional formal English-to-Cantonese name translation services to British officials. No similar services are offered by UK diplomatic missions within the Greater China area. The practice has its origin in the aftermath of the distasteful translation of the name of colonial governor Edward Stubbs, which has since evolved into a long-standing tradition for the British government to provide such translations for cabinet members and other officials. The translation process follows a set of principles to avoid taboo, undesirable, or embarrassing translations, as well to make translated names more relatable, approachable, and agreeable to Hongkongers. These translated names are widely adopted and used by Cantonese media outlets in Hong Kong and Macau as well as their foreign correspondents and bureaus, which spread these names to Cantonese-speaking expatriate communities including Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Background
It was not uncommon for British officials to be given translation of their names in history. Before getting a new translation, the name of the very first Hong Kong colonial governor, Henry Pottinger, was originally translated as 煲顛茶 or Bōu Dīn Chàh in Cantonese which phonetically rhymes with his family name Pottinger but literally means "to brew crazy tea" or implies "a nutter brews tea". Some of these degrading translations have survived into modern times: Lord William Napier and Sir Edward Belcher had their names translated into 律勞卑 or Leuht Lòuh Bēi and 卑路乍 or Bēi Louh Ja respectively, and both have multiple demeaning literal meaning or rhyming elements to it, such as "to discipline the servant inferior" for the former or "an inferior road for the cunning" for the latter. The 16th Governor of Hong Kong, Sir Reginald Stubbs, was first given a particularly distasteful Cantonese translation for his name. 史塔士 or Sí Taap Sí was the original Cantonese translation, literally meaning "history; a tower; a vassal". However, the first and the third characters of 史 and 士 share the same archaic pronunciation of the character 死 (sí), meaning "to die", and more troublesomely, the same pronunciation of the character 屎 (sí), meaning "shit". Also, Cantonese speakers sometimes call a toilet bowl 屎塔 (sí taap), being homophones to the first two characters of his newly translated name. Thus, Stubbs's first Cantonese name translation rendered a wide variety of somewhat unpalatable translations and interpretations, like "toilet bowl's shit", "shit tower's death" etc. Stubbs, as a result, became the very first governor given a formal Cantonese name translation, 司徒拔 or Sī Tòuh Baht. For native English speakers, 司 (sī) may still sound very much the same as 屎 (sí), but as the two different tone marks show, they are different. This difference in tones changes a lot in the meanings, given the fact that Cantonese is a tonal language. And at the same time, Stubbs believed having an authentically translated name would create an approachable image and help the colonial government build a closer relationship with ethnically Chinese Hongkongers and indigenous villagers. A new governmental tradition of English-to-Cantonese name translation for British officials was thus born.
Translation service Prior to Hong Kong's sovereignty transfer in 1997, it was the joint effort of the Chinese Language Division of the colonial Chief Secretary's Office and the British Trade Commission in Hong Kong to come up with seemly name translations for British officials. It is now the responsibility of the Hong Kong British Consulate-General, and they usually supply the press with a list of translated names when there is a new cabinet.
General guidelines
The early translation method mainly focused on phonetic or homophonic translation of an official's family name. As the system matured, the official's given names started having a role to play. The translation process has become very sophisticated in modern times. There is a considerable emphasis on localisation and domestication instead of phonetic imitation of the English pronunciation. Furthermore, matters that are culturally only significant to local Hongkongers, especially for the middle-to-upper class, but not so much to foreigners, like aesthetic values of different calligraphic styles of the characters on an East Asian seal or chop, divinatory feng-shui and suan-ming assessment of the character total stroke count, etc. are all part of the translation service. The Consulate-General has revealed some general guidelines that they now follow for the process:
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