Everyone knows it’s hard enough to learn Chinese in the first place. But then regional dialects impact upon the way things are spoken as opposed to how they are written. And to make matters worse, the Romanisation of Chinese remains something of an inexact science.
每个人都知道学习汉语一开始就很难。但地方方言影响的是说话方式，而不是书写方式。更糟糕的是，中文的罗马化仍然是一门不精确的科学。
Before I was first sent to China in 1993, my boss at the time would talk about a place called Peking in one sentence, and Beijing in the next. I thought they were two different cities.
1993年我第一次被派往中国之前，我当时的老板会一句话说起一个叫北京的地方，下一句又说起北京。我以为这是两个不同的城市。
That’s the first problem, as we will come to later. Now on to Nanjing. No, Nanjing. Aren’t they the same thing? No. One is here in Jiangsu and the other is in Fujian Province. The difference, of course, lies in the Chinese characters for their names, the former being “南京” and the latter “南靖”. So, yeah. Pinyin is already revealing its inadequacies.
这是第一个问题，我们稍后会谈到。现在去南京。不，南京。它们不是同一件事吗？没有。一个在江苏，另一个在福建。当然，区别在于他们名字的汉字，前者是“南京”，后者是“南靖”。所以，是的。拼音已经暴露出它的不足。
While the pinyin for our smaller cousin to the south is 100 percent correct today, 100 years ago, it may well have been “Nanqin”. That’s because before its standardisation as pinyin in the 1950s, there were countless ways to render Chinese characters as Roman equivalents, based on their pronunciation.
虽然我们南方小表亲的拼音在今天是 100% 正确的，但在 100 年前，它很可能是“Nanqin”。这是因为，在 20 世纪 50 年代将其标准化为拼音之前，有无数种方法可以根据汉字的发音将汉字转换为罗马字母。
As yet another barrier to those wishing to learn Chinese today, there are still many examples of these archaic Romanisation systems in use today. As our first witness, we call Tsingtao Beer (青岛啤酒) to the stand, as the brewer retains on its bottles the old Romanisation to this day, while the rest of the world simply flocks to the beaches of “Qingdao” (and that brewery).
对于今天希望学习中文的人来说，另一个障碍是，今天仍然有许多这些古老的罗马化系统的例子在使用。作为我们的第一个见证人，我们将青岛啤酒叫到了展位，因为该啤酒制造商至今仍保留着古老的罗马字母，而世界其他地方则涌向“青岛”（以及该啤酒厂）的海滩。
A bit further north, in their excuse for a capital, there are Peking University (北京大学) and Tsinghua University (清华大学), respectively “Beijing” and “Qinghua” today.
再往北一点，在他们对首都的称呼中，有北京大学和清华大学，分别是今天的“北京”和“清华”。
The most fun of all, however, is to be had when local people completely ignore that the authorities decree to be a place’s official name, believing quite rightly that they know better. For example, many a student in Nanjing will tell you that Hehai University (河海大學) is of course pronounced, “Hohai University”, and would not in a million years contemplate going by anything else.
然而，最有趣的是，当地人完全无视当局颁布的作为某个地方的正式名称的法令，并正确地相信他们更了解这一点。例如，很多南京的学生会告诉你，河海大学当然发音为“河海大学”，一百万年后也不会考虑用别的名字。
Elsewhere, over in Hebei Province, there’s a place called Leting (乐亭). But that’s silly to the locals, who prefer the moniker, “Laoting”.
另外，在河北省，有一个地方，叫乐亭。但这对当地人来说很愚蠢，他们更喜欢“乐亭”这个绰号。
Even more complicated, there are places which change their pronunciation but are unable to fllow suit with the pinyin. To our southeast, in Zhejiang Province, find Taizhou (台州), the “Tai” of which locals pronounce using first tone, not second tone. The same goes for Lishui (丽水), where they use third tone to say, “Li”, not forth.
更复杂的是，有些地方改变了读音，但与拼音不相符。在我们东南部的浙江省，有台州，当地人用第一声而不是第二声来发音“台”。丽水也是如此，他们用第三声说“丽”，而不是向前。
Saving the best for last. Nanjing’s finest example of the local dialect for a place name not following its official version is our northerly district of Liuhe (六合). The Nanjinger renders it thus, but perhaps we should forgo the continuity on which we pride ourselves in this case, since the entire populace says, “Luhe”.
把最好的留到最后。南京地名不遵循官方版本的当地方言的最好例子是我们北部的六合区。南京人是这样表述的，但也许我们应该放弃我们引以自豪的连续性，因为全体民众都说“六合”。
And as can be seen above, the local pronunciation has become such an accepted part of the lexicon that the Nanjing authorities have paid homage to the fact in the English on its road signs. Perhaps Pinyin has its uses, after all.
从上面可以看出，当地方言的发音已经成为词汇中被广泛接受的一部分，以至于南京当局在路标上用英文表达了对这一事实的敬意。也许拼音毕竟有它的用处。
