Today's bit of linguistic fun
Non-Tolkienists probably won't want to know.
So, completely by coincidence and through channels that shall remain unnamed (*cough* dA *cough), today I learned how the Chinese translators of the Silmarillion rendered Maedhros in Chinese, namely, 梅斯罗斯 (mei(2)si(1)luo(2)si(1)).
Of course, that translates to nothing sensible, just being a rough approximation of the sounds of the Sindarin to the sounds of the Mandarin, so to say. (When you transliterate foreign names into Chinese, there are basically two options: Either, you try to come up with something in two characters that distantly invokes a related sound but otherwise isn't really similar; however, it will feel reasonably "Chinese" to speakers of Chinese. Or you come up with something utterly non-Chinese that may look a bit more like the original. An example for the former would be 徳国 (de(2)guo(2), "Germany") - this looks like a Chinese name for a country, but sounds nothing like "Germany", or even like Deutschland (although that is, of course, why they chose a character that reads de). An example for the latter would be 法兰克福 (fa(3)lan(2)ke(4)fu(2), "Frankfurt") - this sounds roughly the same, but immediately parses as "foreign", and really just means jibberish. But the main point is, these strings of characters have been chosen to represent these names in the Chinese language.)
But of course, the individual characters have a meaning of their own. So when coming up with such a "translation", the translators try to find characters that vaguely fit the concept they're looking at. That failing, they try to flatter. For instance, 可口可樂 (ke(3)kou(3)ke(3)le(4), "Coca-Cola") literally reads "nice-mouth-nice-amusement". (de(2)guo(2) is "virtue-country", and fa(3)lan(2)ke(4)fu(2) is "law-orchid-victory-fortune".)
So of course I could not resist looking up the characters for mei(2)si(1)luo(2)si(1), to find out what the nice Chinese translator had considered suitable for Maedhros.
"plum-like-silk-like", that's what.
Aside from my initial AHAHAH, THAT'S SUCH A GIRLY NAME, this is actually quite clever; Chinese plums tend to be on the reddish side, and silk, as we all know, has a lovely texture, so, for a name that's originally supposed to mean "well-shaped copper", this is a reasonably good match (as these things go. I mean, you have to find characters that sound right AND mean something useful - even with the crapload of homonyms in the Chinese language, especially when you leave out the stresses, that can't always be easy. I mean... "law-orchid-victory-fortune", anyone?).
But... IT'S SUCH A GIRL'S NAME. XD
(Also, plums have now become "my" Maedhros' favourite fruit. Just because.)