[Photo provided to China Daily]

Industry leaders from across the Chinese wine and spirits industry gathered in Hong Kong recently to discuss the role of language and brand awareness in the rise of the Chinese wine and spirits sector. At the event, led by the Wine & Spirit Education Trust for its alumni, a key difficulty identified by all panelists was the complication with translating brand names and specific phrasing.

Hong Kong-based master of wine Jeannie Cho Lee (right) commented: "I have about 20,000 wine notes that are translated into Chinese so I face this difficulty every day. The question is are you taking the name that's registered by the importer, are you taking the name that's being used by the local media, are you taking the northern Chinese version of that name or are you catering to the whole province? The translation is a huge issue and I think the only way to really solve that in my mind is always to have the original name in parenthesis in English next to it if you have any doubt. Wine description is about nuance and about being able to relate in a cultural way, and so if you take something literally it actually doesn't translate, so you have to be slightly poetic in the way you translate. Names in Chinese don't go more than three syllables and yet you have these place names and producers that are 10 characters long because they are translated phonetically and it doesn't make sense."