HuaweiLooking at Business Week’s list of the Top 100 Companies in China, it struck me that many of the names we see every day here in China are either “pinyinized” into English, or abbreviated in their official English translations. Why don’t they translate the full names? It’s an interesting study, and here are three that stuck out to me:

  1. Huawei (华为) – This company received international attention recently as news of its potential acquisition of Palm hit the West. Huawei sounds confusing and meaningless in English, but its Chinese name is far more significant – in Mandarin, it means “China Alone.”
  2. Tsinghua Tongfang (清华同方) – Tongfang is a term used extensively in Chinese philosophy, meaning “unifying everything”. This seems to be a common aspiration on the part of many aggressive Chinese businessmen, who see their businesses as picking up where the “Great Revolution” left off.
  3. Datang International Power Generation (大唐国际发电股份有限公司) – Datang is the name of China’s most successful and international era, the Tang Dynasty. Its use in company names shows the extent to which many business leaders desire to see China become the “New Da Tang” (新大唐).

Some companies are obviously state-owned, and thus obligated to have the name “China” or “national” somewhere in their title. However, there are also many other publicly-traded and privately-held enterprises that also use similar names. They often include nationalistic slogans, or patriotic phrases, or other Sino-centric imagery in the labeling of their companies.

So why do so many companies have nationalistic names here in China, but then obscure their meanings for foreign business? What would these companies have to hide? Why don’t they translate the meaning of the characters? Perhaps, if they did, the West might be more resistant to them buying out American companies… like Palm.