Decanter World Wine AwardsChristie's to translate whole of Bordeaux 1855
- Tuesday 19 April 2011
Grand-Puy-Lacoste - at the Sign of the Crocodile
Image: Bordeaux Undiscovered
Bordeaux chateaux, Burgundy domains and Champagne houses are known by a mishmash of oddly-rendered names in Chinese, the auction house’s head of wine in China, Simon Tam, told Decanter.com.
Some are obvious: Chateau Beychevelle is known as ‘Dragon Boat’ because of the Viking longboat on the label, and Angelus is ‘Golden Bell’.
But while dragons are auspicious in China, crocodiles are not. So Grand-Puy-Lacoste, known as ‘Crocodile wine’ because of the association with the Lacoste clothing brand’s logo, which is not related to the chateau in any way, is not in the best position.
‘Crocodiles are not popular animals in China,’ Tam said. ‘They didn’t even make it into the top 12 for the horoscope.’
Such solecisms can do serious damage to a brand, Tam says. ‘We are simply not going to put Crocodiles, Dragon Boats and Golden Bells in our catalogues. It is not what Christie’s is about.’
Most popular translations of wine name involve saints, kings, dragons and gods, Tam says. ‘Dom Perignon is known as King of Champagnes. It’s cliched Chinese.’
Christie’s project – in Bordeaux to start with – involves contacting members of the 1855 classification.
They find out how much they looked into the pitfalls of translation – the differences between northern and southern Chinese, Taiwanese and Hong Kong Chinese, for example – and whether they are registered in China or not.
The team is putting together a list of faithful phonetic translations of the chateau names. ‘It’s a question of having the language and the cultural knowledge to find the right characters,’ Tam said.
‘It’s essential for our catalogues to be accurate and to have relevance.’
Have your say!
Andre Kok
June 12 09:29
David, although your comments are understandable, don't forget that the English, French, Spanish, Dutch etc all use the same Alphabet. A lot of Chinese people just do not recognize the letters we use, same as we do not recognize their written language. I agree that translating names to popular animals, mythological figures and such is bogus, but I don't think a literal, phonetic translation could hurt. The names would be pronounced the same (somewhat) but written in the Chinese language so that the common folk in China can read the label.
John
April 26 12:20
Fantastic Comment Above, I most certainly agree.
We have to learn all the french names and pronunciation so why cant they.
David Marra
April 21 11:37
This whole thing is dumb. Have you ever seen a bottle of "BeautifulCastel Castle, Pope's-New-House" instead of "Chateau de Beaucastel, Chateauneuf-du-Pape?" No, you haven't. Why? Because it would be STUPID! This whole idea of translating Chateau names is moronic. The French (rightly) wouldn't do it for the English or Americans, nor should they do it for the Chinese. If the Chinese can't learn the names of the 20 wines they buy, tough doo-doo.
What it really comes down to is a cynical attempt to position their brand based on some name that means "good luck" in Chinese. Why not let the wines speak for themselves and let people learn a few new words.