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Has anyone had any experience with this?
It depends on the Brand Name you already have and whether that already sounds like something else in Chinese or not. But be careful if you do translate. There are some very funny instances of translations going wrong. For example, when Coke first launched in China there were two problems:-
1) Coca Cola translated phonetically meant something like "Bite a Wax Tadpole."
2) The Coca Cola slogan of "Coke adds life" was translated as "Coke raises your ancestors back from the dead".
Both of which did not go down too well.
The hurdles you have to overcome are Cultural as well as Linguistic. Some of the Chinese company names translated into English sound funny to us but are quite legitimate in Chinese. For example, the "Hintful Finance" company.
I think the best one I ever saw though was at the Great Wall a long time ago which read "The Great Wall of China Foriegn Tourist Exploitation Company". Says it all really.
Onya
Woz
Given the truth that more than 90% of Chinese do not understand English, even you don't translate your brand, the media have to use Chinese words to reach the people. Your brand will "naturally" translated into Chinese words by pronucation eventually by media and people using it. So it's probably better that you choose your own translation to avoid the confusion.
Holy cow!
Make sure you get yourself a darn good translator, and a second or third or fourth independent opinion!
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