Who chooses Chinese versions of famous Western names?

Hi, the TV-stations have there own translation teams and they do all that stuff and they take care that for example there newsreaders pronounce it correct. And the people pick it up from there. hope that helps you (again a proof for watching TV makes you smart ;-) )

Thanks excuter. Excellent system. I assumed there was some equivalent of the French Academie Francaise, responsible for telling folks there that it's not 'email' it's 'courrier électronique' and other such impractical and unpopular translations of new words. Come to think of it, who decides on new (often technology-driven) words? I know computer can be both 电脑 and 计算机 for example. Is it a similar grass-roots process?

Surely there is some standard to go by for common names though? BTW you can find most western actors names in Chinese at www.cnmdb.com, most them also have the English name so you usually search by the English name.

Brendan, I'm p(r)etty sure that 电脑 is grassroots. Technocrats would have imposed some 可安屁的 kě ān pì de (sounds good, smells bad). It appalls me how debased the hànzi get as people are gradually forgetting the crimson glowing morning clouds (朝霞 zhāo xiá) to use fine characters of the like in transliterations. But what am I? Well, an I opening-closing. I know 安吉丽娜 朱莉 and 布拉德 皮特 won't disrupt the fabric of the language, but the buzz... Oh well. Don't worry about the Epidemie Française, we shall keep on interpreting its comment as a mustn't in popular speech. 大概 Frequency = "mail" 75% - "courriel" 25% - "courrier électronique" ... 40 ol' fogeys :)

LOL. Franch - I can only imagine how well you write in your own mother tongue, given how well you play with English and Chinese :-) I'm delighted to see that I share an initial character with Brad Pitt. I'm off to tell my wife! 布兰登 。

I find this issue interesting as well. How long does it take for a name to have a standardized version? So let's say, somewhere, say Belgium, somebody goes on a killing rampage and no one has heard of this person. For how many days will there be numerous versions of the same name? I for example was surprised to see that Paris Hilton is NOT 巴黎 (Bā lí) but apparently 帕丽斯 Something else interesting about names. I was recently at the Miss Universe pageant. Miss China, Zhang Ningning was VERY sweet and complemented my Chinese. The winner was Miss Japan, Riyo Mori, won. But instead of somehow trying to transcribe her name, they went strictly by the character pronounciations, so in Chinese she is 森理世 (sēn lǐ shì). I thought that was odd.