Most street names in China are translated into "roads" or "streets" in English; however, in the 9th Meeting of Place Names in Nine Cities, China is seriously thinking about putting "Lu"(the Chinese word for road or street) to take the place of its English counterparts.
"It is not international practice to translate place names totally in English, and our laws don't regulate so, either," said Dai Junliang, the director of the Department of Place Names of the Ministry of Civil Affairs. "Furthermore, in a resolution made by the UN earlier, all the English translations of place names in China should be based on Han Yu Pin Yin."
For example, Vienna is an international city, but all the road signs there are written in German, and all the road names in Paris are put in French, too. Why can't China's place names speak their native language?
Being one of the biggest and most internationalized cities in China, Shanghai needs to carefully consider the "road name translation" problem first. After all, about 1,500 new place names come into being there every year.
(Chinanews.cn November 16, 2006)
