US President Donald Trump is one of the most influential political figures today.
The Chinese rendering of his surname might seem like a mere linguistic issue, but in reality, it reflects a deeper struggle over discourse power and cultural interpretive authority.
In Taiwan, mainstream media typically translate his name as chuanpu (川普), whereas in China and the broader Chinese-language information system it controls, the name is uniformly rendered as telangpu (特朗普). This is not simply a difference in transliteration — it touches upon the values, identity stances, and narrative frameworks embedded within the language.
In the context of contemporary international news and the Chinese-speaking world, the translation of foreign names or places has long ceased to be a purely technical matter of phonetic conversion; it has become a cultural choice and a form of discursive construction.
Beyond the differing renderings of the Chinese transliteration of Trump are geographic names, such the Chinese and Taiwanese choices for New Zealand, Guatemala and the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台列嶼).
These cases reflect the cultural perspectives and political attitudes of different linguistic communities as they “name the world.” Translation is not merely conversion — it is a choice. A translated name is not only about correspondence — it is a stance.
Translation theorist Andre Lefevere points out that translation is a form of “rewriting”: While converting languages, the translator also reconstructs texts, conveys perspectives and recreates values.
Every choice of a translated name entails specific cultural stances and power relations within a given context.
If Taiwan uncritically adopts the names and terms from Chinese sources, it risks not only confusing the information, but also unconsciously accepting the linguistic logic and narrative constructed by China.
This might erode our own capacity of interpretation and subjective stance toward the world.
For example, the Wikipedia entry for Trump in Taiwan is entitled tangna chuanpu (唐納·川普), and Taiwan’s major media outlets like the Chinese-language Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) consistently use chuanpu. In contrast, China’s official media, such as Xinhua news agency and the People’s Daily, uniformly use telangpu, following standardized naming rules set by Xinhua’s translation office.
Many students, when writing papers, often unwittingly copy terms directly from Chinese sources, leading to Mozambique being rendered as mosanbiya (莫三比亞), the name used in China, instead of Taiwan’s mosanbike (莫三比克); Saudi Arabia as shate (沙特) instead of shawudialabo (沙烏地阿拉伯); and New Zealand as xinxilan (新西蘭) instead of niuxilan (紐西蘭).
Taiwan must maintain the stability and independence of its own naming system in translation. This is not just for the sake of linguistic consistency — the greater goal is to preserve our capacity to name the world and interpret reality.
Translated names serve as an important line of defense in safeguarding cultural subjectivity. We must not let linguistic laziness become the starting point of intellectual concession and ideological compromise. These differences in translated names reveal fundamental divergences across the Taiwan Strait in terms of linguistic subjectivity, cultural identity and discursive power.
As a sovereign and independent society, Taiwan should insist on viewing and describing the world in its own way.
Lee Ta-jen is an adjunct assistant professor at Shih Hsin University who lectures on international relations.
Translated by Lin Lee-kai
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