The Chinese writing system mainly uses ideographic characters (表意文字) rather than alphabets.
A common way to translate a foreign term is to choose Chinese characters that sound similar while ideally also carrying a related meaning. For example, “积盒” (literally “lego box”) is sometimes used for “GitHub.”
Question
What would be a good Chinese-character name for “Typst”?
In the official Typst Chinese Community, no Chinese-character equivalent of “Typst” is provided.
Following this principle, I think “泰斯聚珍” could be a reasonable (classical-style) Chinese name for “Typst.”
editing system = 聚珍
The pronunciation of “Typst” ([taɪ p s t]) can be approximated as something like “泰 普 斯 特.” However, such a four-syllable transliteration doesn’t convey much meaning to native Chinese speakers. In my view, a four-character name (like “蘭氏聚珍”) sounds more elegant than a longer five- or six-character one. “泰斯” seems the best choice here, partly because its meaning works nicely among the available options.
“泰” is the name of the hexagram ䷊ (peace) in the I Ching (《易經》).
“斯” appears in the idiom “有條斯理,” which means “well-structured.”
the pronunciations probably do not match the original pronunciation of the English name. but with consideration that Chinese characters are ideographic as you mentioned. I believe their meaning is more important rather than the pronunciations.
牒 (diap): small, thin bamboo or wooden card for recording text in ancient China
帖 (tiap): a note or card bearing brief written words; a bookmark written on silk; by extension, a rubbing from stone or wood carvings; also a model copy used for practicing calligraphy or painting.
葉 (iep): simply means “page”
梓 (tsi): a type of tree whose wood was traditionally used for making printing blocks; by extension, the carved wooden blocks used for printing books.
it should not be changed as per official statement. Typst should be recognizable, and since it’s not very popular, an even less popular Chinese-only variant of writing and pronouncing it will fracture the unified name. I can say that in Russian the lazy people usually use transliterated Russian equivalent of whatever thing is in English or other language. It is not always very close in pronunciation, but thankfully, Typst can have a pretty much 1:1 transliteration: Тайпст. Though again, as a technical person, I never write it (or anything else) like this, unless I have to (or unless no one will literally be able to read it because the original name is, e.g., in Chinese, like a Chinese person’s name).
I’ve seen a few Chinese repositories (probably more than 10 or 20), and I think a lot of proper nouns are just not translated, they are written as-is in English. So why bother with changing something that is common sense?
Tinymist is an outlier here, as it was initially and still has an official Chinese equivalent. Or I’m pretty sure it’s the origin, just like with touying – Typst Universe, which was transliterated to English, IIUC.
I also tend to keep Typst as it is. A unified name facilitates cross-language communication.
For example, I can’t understand Japanese, but if I see an article named {打倒LaTeX !!} 生まれたての組版システム’Typst’の使い方と便利な機能を実装した話(2023.10), then I know it’s about Typst. When I have time, I can read the article with a machine translator and see if there is anything applicable to Chinese. However, nothing will happen if the author transliterate Typst into Katakana/Hiragana (I don’t know the exact term). Typstについて – Typstドキュメント日本語版 is another example.
That’s true, but in Japanese katakana has a few special uses, one of them is writing loan words/foreign names. And considering that the English level is usually very basic, it is probably easier to read in katakana, rather than hard-to-pronounce words in English. But I feel like most people can at least read English (even if it’s hard), but pronunciation can be all over the place. So yeah, it’s the same problem with Russian, but here older people can’t read English at all, while younger people generally can’t talk/comprehend any non-beginner level English, they can still read, even if the pronunciation is wrong. And since Typst has so many consonants, they are very hard to hear, so usually people who try to say it, say something like Тайп (Typ/type) Тайпс (Typs). Which is unfortunate, but it’s what it’s. If it becomes mainstream, then it probably won’t be an issue.
I’m asking for a name in Chinese characters
like “谷歌” for “Google”, “推特” for “Twitter”.
“Typst” is a sequence of alphabets, not ideographic characters, so it will never be something that I’m looking for.
I’m asking this because this technology is often used for academic purposes. Mixing languages is often discouraged in classes and exams. Some authorities impose policies that obliges teachers to use one single language to conduct classes. Having a consensus on how we’re calling typst among Chinese speakers would help in classroom situations.
Wow, that’s…something new. We sure have no such restrictions around here. Moreover, I just checked one of my pending articles (about Typst), and it now has a draft-like version which does indeed still have a Japanese bibliography item (even though the font is completely different). I was afraid it would be removed or have tofu, but it all turned out to be just fine. So yeah, even Japanese in bibliography is OK, at least in that particular conference.
Now this can be a valid argument for the Chinese name.
I think your 2nd one is better than mine because it’s shorter and yet captures some meaning of a writing system, with “帖” having the beginning “t”.
“帖” is more commonly used (on the Net) than “牒”
The 3rd one reminds me of “Duolingo”, and I don’t think the “多” sounds smart.
That can be true for higher education, but not all places accept that. Of course we’re free to mix languages in our daily lives (to make life easier), but when it comes to formal written usage, especially in Chinese, people often prefer a Chinese-character name.
I appreciate your sharing, but I don’t see the relevance of your experience with my core question, because what I mean by “Chinese name” is a name in Chinese characters, not Latin alphabets.
