经济学家读译参考中英对照-3.docx

（17）：告别“红兵”——也谈取名限制Farewell the red soldiersLONG gone are the days when Chinese parents often chose such names as Hongbing (Red Soldier), Aihua (Love China) or even Kangmei (Anti America) for their children. （1）They are still limited by the custom of using no more than two Chinese characters for given names. But growing numbers now prefer to choose highly obscure ones to avoid the common phenomenon, given a ★paucity [1] of surnames, of ★bestowing [2] a name already used by countless others. The police, however, have plans to stop this. 很久以前，中国的父母常常用“红兵”（红色士兵）、“爱华”（爱中国）乃至“抗美”（抵抗美国）来给他们的孩子起名。如今，他们取名时仍按约定俗成不超过两个汉字，但是由于中国姓氏少，为了避免与许多人同名，越来越多的人倾向于选用生僻字。然而，公安部门正计划阻止这种情况的发生。The problem is that commonly used software for inputting Chinese characters, including that used by police departments responsible for issuing identity cards (which every Chinese must carry), cannot handle very rare characters. In China, the usual way of writing a character on a computer is to enter its pronunciation using Roman letters, then choose from a list of possible options (most characters have many ★homonyms[3]). A rare character might not show up on the list.问题在于，包括负责制发身份证（每个中国人都必须领取）的公安部门所用软件在内的汉字通用输入软件无法处理罕见汉字。在中国，要将汉字写入电脑，通常是用罗马字母输入汉字拼音，然后从提示字单选项（大多数汉字有许多同音异形字）中选择所输汉字。字单中不一定会有生僻字The tens of millions of Chinese with rare characters in their names （2）have long suffered the consequences, experiencing problems with everything from buying airline tickets to opening bank accounts. A Chinese graduate student says none of her examination certificates has ever recorded her full name, Chen Minqian. The rare “min” character, a poetical term for “autumn”, has been represented by zeros or ★asterisks[4]. Many computers once had problems generating the name of Zhu Rongji, Chinas former prime minister, thanks to his “rong” character, which is an unusual variant of a character meaning “smelt”.为此，名字中含有生僻字的数千万中国人长期以来麻烦不断，从购买机票到银行开户都饱受困扰。一位中国研究生说，她的考试证书没有一个把她的名字填写完整。她叫陈旻倩，“旻”属于罕见字，是一个颇具诗意的汉字，意为“秋天”，这个字在她的证书中要么空