William Galvin displays his ignorance

Mitt Romney's been called many things as he runs for president, but chances are "Sticky Rice" isn't one of them.

That's how his name might be read on some ballots, according to state Secretary William Galvin.

Galvin says the federal Justice Department is pressuring Boston election officials to translate candidates' names into Chinese characters in precincts with prominent Chinese-speaking populations.

But there's more than a little lost in translation, according to Galvin.

Since there's no Chinese character for "Romney," translators have resorted to finding characters that most closely match the sound of each syllable in the name.

The problem is that there are many different characters that could be used to match the sound of each syllable, and many different meanings for each character.

So Mitt Romney could be read as "Sticky Rice" or "Uncooked Rice." Fred Thompson might be read as "Virtue Soup." And Barack Obama could be read as "Oh Bus Horse."

Galvin's own name could be read at least two different ways, as "High Prominent Noble Educated" or "Stick Mosquito."

But perhaps the most perplexing translation would be for Boston Mayor Thomas Menino's name, which could be read as "Sun Moon Rainbow Farmer" or "Imbecile," or "Barbarian Mud No Mind of His Own."

"To try to make rhymes or approximations in Chinese, you can have unintended negative meanings," Galvin said. "It leads to confusion. You can render it with a good meaning or a bad meaning."

To add to the confusion, Galvin said, the ballots have to be offered in two major Chinese dialects, Mandarin and Cantonese, leading to even more potential variations of candidates' names.

But advocates for minority voting rights say Galvin's objections are misdirected. If the translations are awkward, they say, the candidates should be free to offer variations, or look to the way Asian language newspapers already transliterate their names.

As the article points out, these people already have names. I found these on the internet:

• Mitt Romney 米特• 罗姆尼 Although 米 mǐ does mean rice, it's also a surname in Chinese.
• Fred Thompson 弗雷德•汤普森 or Fred Dalton Thompson 弗雷德·多尔顿·托马斯. Yes, 德 dé is "virtue" and 汤 tāng is "soup", but 弗雷德 is the standard way to render "Fred" and 汤普森 is the standard way to render " Thompson" (as in "Emma Thompson", for instance).
• Barack Obama 巴拉克·奥巴马 Obama's last name is Ào bā mǎ, where "ào" means "inside" "mysterious", but is used in many names. "Bā" does not mean "bus" unless it's bāshì 巴士. By itself 巴 doesn't mean much of anything. "Mǎ" does mean "horse", but it also happens to be a surname.
• William Galvin has been translated as 盖文. For once, he nearly gets the translation right. 盖 gài means "cover", and 文 wén means literary, which he has extrapolated to "Noble Educated". The standard transliteration of "William" is 威廉 wēi lián; "wēi" means "authority" and "lián" means "honest".
  
• Thomas Menino is 托马斯．马尼诺. I don't know where the expressions in the article come from.

It seems as if William Galvin has been talking to someone who just started learning Chinese and is overly focussed on the meanings of the characters. Perhaps from that meeting that his name links to above? But the fact is, the Chinese don't pay that much attention to them. People can also make something out of our names. For example, take Bush. Omigosh, it means something. What about Clinton: Ho-ho! Clint means "limestone blocks that make up a limestone pavement." As for Galvin, you could say I was galvanized to write this. I hope he has a better grasp of public policy than he does of these names.