Sachen vs Thin Chen vs Shèng qiān

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NewRisingSun
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Sachen vs Thin Chen vs Shèng qiān

Post by NewRisingSun »

Sachen's name in Chinese is given as 聖謙, which in Pinyin would be Shèng qiān. So how does one arrive at the "Sachen" and "Thin Chen" readings? Or are they just made-up words to sound better as a company name?
Revenant
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Re: Sachen vs Thin Chen vs Shèng qiān

Post by Revenant »

"Chen" is pretty close to how I understand "qiān" would be pronounced by a Mandarin speaker. The other half is probably meant to be a similar (if inaccurate) approximation.
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Gilbert
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Re: Sachen vs Thin Chen vs Shèng qiān

Post by Gilbert »

Considering that Sachen is a Taiwan company, it is understandable to not use the more mainland Pinyin spelling.
Also, there is ABSOLUTELY no official standard (no matter what people tell you) for romanising Chinese characters, so whatever sounds close (and cool) is okay.
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Myask
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Re: Sachen vs Thin Chen vs Shèng qiān

Post by Myask »

we can just call them Modest Monk and pretend they're a chant-rock band? (/joke)
NewRisingSun
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Re: Sachen vs Thin Chen vs Shèng qiān

Post by NewRisingSun »

Gilbert wrote:Also, there is ABSOLUTELY no official standard (no matter what people tell you) for romanising Chinese characters, so whatever sounds close (and cool) is okay.
I understand that. What I don't understand is why put two different romanizations on the same title screen.
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Gilbert
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Re: Sachen vs Thin Chen vs Shèng qiān

Post by Gilbert »

NewRisingSun wrote:two different romanizations on the same title screen.
Where?
tepples
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Re: Sachen vs Thin Chen vs Shèng qiān

Post by tepples »

An image search for sachen title screen brought two examples.

Image
Middle School English
Push Start
Sachen®
©1989 Thin Chin Enter. Corp.
By: L.C. Tchakvosky
Image
Millionaire II (Chuugoku Taitei)
Start
Continue
Sachen®
©Thin Chin Ent.Co.,Ltd.
A few other games, such as The Penguin and Seal, have "Sachen" on its own screen followed by a title screen with the Thin Chen copyright notice.
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Gilbert
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Re: Sachen vs Thin Chen vs Shèng qiān

Post by Gilbert »

I don't see any abnormality there.
Sachen is the English name of their company as shown in their logo.
Thin Chen is their Romanised pronunciation of the Chinese name of their company.

The English name of a Chinese company is not necessarily the same (and not even necessarily related) as how it's supposed to be pronounced in Chinese.
tepples
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Re: Sachen vs Thin Chen vs Shèng qiān

Post by tepples »

Case in point: How do you romanize "Hon Hai" to "Foxconn"?

Later games published by Bunch Games, such as Tagin' Dragon, Mission Cobra, and Galactic Crusader, credit "Sachen Inc." on the title screen. Might that be Thin Chen's export subsidiary?
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Gilbert
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Re: Sachen vs Thin Chen vs Shèng qiān

Post by Gilbert »

Actually in Mandarin Chinese (not otherwise actually, we non Mandarin speakers are actually baffled by this) sometimes treat sounds beginning with H and S interchangeable, and that H and F interchangeable, so one official Chinese translation for Sherlock Holmes sounds somewhat like "Halok Furmosi" to us (admittedly that this is more like how that would sound in Cantonese; if you read it in Mandarin it's closer to the original English).

Moreover, as shown in that wikipedia page you linked to, the company is actually more widely known as 富士康, which sounds VERY close to Foxconn.

Just on a related note, which is what's happening now here, that the content provider (and the big N itself) insisted on name changes to match the Mandarin version in Pokemon Sun+Moon (which sound awful unless pronounced in Mandarin, and this already happened in the games themselves), which caused the TV channel to rage quit and consider not to air the S+M anime after XYZ ends.
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