It’s always good to see that the news business is getting the most out of its content producers.

Here’s an article from a textbook of mine, publishing date 2006:

And here’s the Xinhua article (link) from October 2007:

The titles differ by one word and the articles have changed a word here and there, but they’re virtually the same.

I know, I know, it’s hardly the first time this kind of thing has happened in the news business. It’s just that it’s more fun when it happens close to home. Here are the details, side by side:

In Xinhua’s defense: October 2007 was pre-financial crisis, pre-Olympics — pre-history, practically, so you can hardly blame them for reaching deep into the files during a slow week. Still, you’d think they might have picked something a little newsier.

But Sinoglot’s about language, not about creative re-use of language, right? Well the only reason I even discovered the online article is that I was curious about the “expert” quoted in the article:

帕特里克 • 霍尔福特
Pàtèlǐkè Huòěrfútè
Patrick ??? ___ford [update: thanks, Tony, for finding the answer within 10 minutes of the time I posted. See his comment below for the spoiler]

The article was such nonsense I wanted to look up the fellow to see if he was anyone of note in the nutrition business. Apparently, though, 霍尔福特 is either not that common a name or not that common a hanzification of a common name. Searching Google you get mostly references to various Fords, since 福特 (Fútè) is how that’s written. Then if you search using quotes around “霍尔福特”, one of the first results is actually the Xinhua article above and several other plagiarized versions of the same article.

None of which satisfy my original curiosity. Who’s 霍尔福特? Anyone know if there’s a database somewhere dedicated to foreign names written with Chinese characters?

4 comments

1. Tony

   August 31, 2010, 9:52 am ^∞

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Holford

   Reply
2. Tony

   August 31, 2010, 9:57 am ^∞

   I just took a guess and Googled the English. I know “尔” is used to transliterate English “r” and “l” sounds and “霍” means it starts with an “Ho” or “Hu” (but not “Ha” since that would probably use a different Chinese character).

   So really the only possibilities are: “Hor” “Hol” “Hur” “Hul”

   Reply
3. Syz

   August 31, 2010, 10:17 am ^∞

   Tony: nice sleuthing! I’d considered Haw too — although it would probably use different characters. The direction you’re going is probably right, too, that for most names you’d be able to figure out part of it and then narrow things down to an answer. Still, it’d be nice to have a real database.

   Reply
4. HRB

   September 21, 2010, 3:03 am ^∞

   I would expect that such a database already exists. South Korea has one, not of personal Koreanizations but of those deemed correct by the language regulating body. From time to time they add names to their list.

   Reply