In English language science fiction, if you want to name your alien planet or species you can just stick together a few different letters – Zvelfromiks, for example – and get a word that doesn’t exist in English at all but can be articulated with some effort.
But what do languages – specifically, the Chinese languages – do when their writing system is non-phonetic? I already know that the Chinese don’t usually import a foreign word for some new technology, but usually stick together a couple of their words that already exist (such as dian nao, “electric brain”, for computer). I’m NOT interested in Japanese examples, as the Japanese have writing systems that can, however inadequetly, be used to cobble together syllables. Are Chinese scifi writers just shit out of luck? Do all aliens have oddly Chinese sounding names?
pseudo-phonetically by taking it syllable-by-syllable and replacing it with a word sounding like it (much like japanese).
sometimes, though, they have been known to just print out the english for it in the subtitles.
In Chinese, they use Chinese characters that have the same phonetic value as in syllables of the foreign language. Chinese words have one syllable, so you can just pick a word that matches each syllable of the foreign word.
Fred Pohl wrote about this when he came across a Chinese translation of “The Wizard’s of Pung’s Corner” and had it retranslated. Thus the foreign word “Schenectady” was rendered in Chinese with a series of characters that meant “This pagoda will take over the Earth” but which were pronounced in Chinese as something similar to “Schenectady.”
I would assume Chinese SF writers would do something similar, though they would be aware of the meaning of the characters and choose accordingly.
Freelance Chinese/English bilingual translator here.
Forget alien names, I have a tough time translating regular names. Not only do the characters have to sound vaguely close to the original name (already quite difficult), I have to pick characters that have neutral, if not positive, connotations.
Names are Serious Business for Chinese people. If you give someone a “bad name”, you’re either cursing them with misfortune or trying to “hide” them from even worse demons (hence the practice of naming children “Doggie”, “Kittie”, “Little Bit” or what have you until they’ve survived long enough).
If you have any questions for specific examples, I can look up the relevant information on the internet and analyze the name for you, but in general name translation priority the meaning of the characters can sometimes override how close it sounds. You can get some nice bilingual bonuses out of names this way. For example, the most commonly accepted translation for “Lisa” uses the character for beautiful, 麗, as the “li” sound equivalent, but for the name “Lily”, 莉 (white jasmine) is more often used instead.