Re:Where are you planning on working? (Score 1)

The Chinese name of "Coca Cola" literally means "Tasty (Ke-Kou) and Pleasurable/Happiness (Ke-Le)". It's a phonetic approximation of the English words and a smart brand name invented by some marketing people.

Most other adaptation are just literal translations of the foreign words. The two characters of "Ying Die" means "hard" and "disk/plate".

"Yin Biao Ji" means "form printing machine". "Yin" is print. "Bian" is ambiguous by itself but putting in context, form will be the best back-translation. "Ji" is used for all kind of machines and automatic devices. A more popular translation is "Da-Yin-Ji", which just means printing (Da-Yin) machine (Ji).

"Hou Xian Dai Zhu Yi" is also a literal translation of post-modern-ism. "Hou" is "post" or "after". "Xian Dai" is "modern", which can be used as a noun or adjective. "Zhu Yi" is for all systems of philosophy or ideology... Like "Structuralism" is "Jie-Gou" (structural) and "Zhu-Yi" (ism).

Chinese characters are and can be used for phonetic translation of foreign language. There are words in Chinese which are phonetic translation of foreign words, like "Mo-Da" is a phonetic approximation of "Motor", "Di-Shi" means "Taxi" or the popular word for "Hacker", "Hei-Ke". It's just most Romanic languages have too many syllables to be comfortably pronounced in Chinese. All living languages have to introduce and incorporate foreign elements into themselves. Chinese can't really be the exception.