Candidates' names translated into Chinese

Maybe pictures (along with regular English names) would be the most useful. Anyone who has seen a tv ad or campaign poster would recognize the person, even if they don't speak English.

there was once a study about mugshots of african american suspects held up to a white victim. I think you could readily guess the outcome. why would it be different for another ethnic group? we only recognize to a large extent to those whom we socialize with.

I don't follow. You're saying that the pictures wouldn't help because they'd all look the same to the people from other ethnicities? I am talking about people who had already been campaigning. You can't see a campaign poster without seeing a uniform picture, and a name. I think it's strange to assume that someone wouldn't recognize the name and picture of the person who is on their tv and on everyone's lawns, even if they don't understand the message that's written below it.

Don't you think it's more confusing to see pictures of Mitt Romney, labeled with his name, hear blah blah blah "Mitt Romney" on the radio...all for months surrounding the election, and then go to vote and only see a candidate named "Sticky Rice"?

It may mean Sticky Rice, but phonetically it must sound like Romney.

Well, I wonder how exact that would be. Romney and its Japanese version don't sound much a like--but I can't comment on Mandarin or Cantonese. But you have a point. But what about the cases where a name translates to Imbecile (as noted in the article, I didn't make that up)?

I wonder what percentage of US citizens who are Chinese speakers are unfamiliar with the Latin alphabet. Just guessing, but I suspect it's fairly low. I think #1's suggestion for photographs with the regular English names is the best approach.

As an aside, it seems odd that the Chinese have not developed a standardized way to represent foreign words and names in their language without relying on similar-sounding words that may have other unintended meanings.

One thing you have to realise is that if you take Chinese people's names literally then they sound ridiculous.

Chairman Mao's surname means 'fur'. The famous writer Lu Xun's surname's primary meaning is 'stupid'. 'Car' and 'abalone' are common surnames that seem strange if you take them literally.

<blockquote>Quote
<hr>it seems odd that the Chinese have not developed a standardized way to represent foreign words and names in their language without relying on similar-sounding words that may have other unintended meanings<hr></blockquote>The only way to standardize names and foreign foods etc is to catalogue them, which has been done to some extent.

There are websites where you can look up your English name and it will give you a Chinese version. John is usually yuehan, Tom is tangmu etc.

There are also a few archaic or unusual characters which are now used almost exclusively to represent foreign words. Therefore there are some foreign names for places, people or food which you can translate into Chinese and be very confident that anyone else translating that word will come up with the same combination of characters.

Do you have "how-to-vote cards" in the US?

In Australia, outside every polling booth there will be a sea of campaign workers handing out "how-to-vote" cards for their candidate, which you are free to take into the polling station (or free to throw in the trash if you want). The how-to-vote card will have a big photo of the candidate, their name and a clear diagram of the ballot paper showing you which box to mark if you want to vote for that candidate. It also usually has a big party banner, but not always - sometimes a particular candidate is popular locally but the party is on the nose more generally, so a decision will made not to include any overt party symbols.

In areas with lots of non-English people how-to-vote cards will be available in various languages.

How-to-vote cards partly exist because voting methods in Australia can be much more complex than in the US (e.g. if compulsory preferential voting is used you need to vote for every candidate in order of preference) and they are a method to ensure that people vote correctly. But by and large they perform the same task as some of the others have suggested - they allow candidates to have photos of themselves, information in languages other than English, etc, without there having to be many different forms of the ballot paper. I don't know about in the US, but the form of a ballot paper can be argued about endlessly between different candidates and parties, so the whole idea of having more than one form of a ballot paper (particularly with the issues outlined in the article) seems like a bit of a nightmare.

"Barbarian Mud No Mind of His Own." Very cool.

What will happen if people in China ever get to vote on a national parliament? A candidate from, say, Beijing would be known throughout the country as Mr. such-an-such character combination, but the pronunciation of the characters could be different in every region.