4 Comments

1. 

   Justin Zhao

   February 1, 2017 at 11:35 pm

   Having lived in the UK, USA and Mainland China and having 2 different translations of my name ‘Justin’ it seems to me the UK/USA explanation made sense. I did just sort of intuitively assume that when I first heard it. CCTV does like using British English like its the most proper (as their Beijinghua CCTVhua is to China I suppose) but my Scottish Auntie would say Trump more like ‘Te-rl-umpa’ [the r/l thing in china but in fact the UK also does the softfalling ‘T-r’ sounds nearly L-like]

   Yanks will hit the ‘r’ strong. Yes, if you were trying to Chinese the American version of ‘Trump’ it really needs that ‘CH-RuMPA!’ that TR is nailed hard.

   I guess we might need to remember Chinese strongly rely on the phonetic alphabet – its ‘their pinyin’ and it seems to me when other students tried to sort out my Chinese variation of ‘Justin’ one gave me [sorry i never saw it written] but a Jia xia tin but others insisted on a kind of ‘Ju shi ten’ but the point being it seemed to depend on what version of phonics reference they had handy.

   (I wonder what an Australian one might sound like!)

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2. 

   David

   March 7, 2019 at 1:19 am

   This explanation is totally false. There is hardly any difference between the UK and US pronunciations of Trump. It is simply that the mainland Chinese like to come up with a different version from that in Taiwan.

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3. 

   Alexander

   May 16, 2019 at 10:54 pm

   Another important reason why mainstream media in China use 特朗普 instead of 川普 is because 川普 in Chinese is also the abbreviation for 四川普通话, which means Mandarin(普通话) with Sichuan(四川) accent. So to avoid confusion and show respect to foreign leaders, media in China use 特朗普 in formal publications.

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4. 

   Curious Language Explorer

   March 23, 2026 at 3:48 am

   I always wondered why some Chinese media outlets used ‘Tèlǎngpǔ’ while others preferred ‘Chuānpǔ’ – this clarifies the historical and regional factors behind the variation. It makes me curious about how other foreign names get adapted into Chinese characters.

   Reply