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How would you pronounce Kristalina Georgieva?
克里斯塔利娜•格奧爾基耶娃(Kristalina Georgieva)這個名字的發音是怎樣的?
The first name of the managing director of the IMF is easy enough for English speakers. The second is another matter entirely.
國際貨幣基金組織(IMF)的總裁的名字對於講英語的人來說很容易。而她的姓則完全是另一回事。
For years, I have heard people pronounce it with one and often two soft Gs, like the sound of the ‘s’ in measure, as in Zhore-zhee-ay-vah.
多年來,我聽到很多人發音時使用一個或兩個軟音G,就像measure中的's'的音,例如Zhore-zhee-ay-vah。
But having just been to the COP28 climate conference in Dubai, where name mangling was a constant menace, I can report this is completely wrong.
但是,我剛剛參加了在杜拜舉行的 COP28 氣候大會,會上經常出現名字這個被讀錯的情況,我可以向大家報告,這是完全錯誤的。
It has two hard G’s, as in Gyore-gee-ay-vah, and the Bulgarian-born economist is very pleased whenever anyone gets it right.
它有兩個硬G,就像Gyore-gee-ay-vah一樣,每當有人發音正確時,這位出生於保加利亞的經濟學家都感到非常高興。
“I would like people to pronounce my name correctly,” she told one of my colleagues who checked on the matter in an interview with her during the conference.
「我希望人們能正確地讀出我的名字,」她在會議期間接受採訪時對我的一位同事說。
In an effort to make it clear the Gs were hard, Georgieva said she once tried to spell it with a U after each G, so it looked like Gueorguieva. But this caused so much confusion she reverted to the original. “Luckily my first name is very easy to pronounce, so I encourage people to just call me Kristalina.”
爲了明確G的發音是硬音,格奧爾基耶娃說她曾試圖在每個G後面加上一個U,這樣看起來就像是格奧爾基耶娃。但是這引起了很多混淆,她又恢復了原來的寫法。「幸運的是,我的名字很容易發音,所以我鼓勵大家直接叫我克里斯塔利娜。」
Georgieva denied rumours that she took a dim view of underlings who mauled the pronunciation and, as the bearer of a tricky name myself, I suspect she is very used to answering to all sorts of permutations of the original.
格奧爾基耶娃否認了她對那些發音不準確的下屬持負面看法的傳言,作爲一個自己名字很難發音的人,我懷疑她已經習慣了對原始名稱的各種變體作出回應。
(For the record, my name is pronounced Pill-EAT-ah, as opposed to PILL-eat-ah or, as automated voice transcription services are fond of writing, Polluter.)
(順便說一下,我的名字Pilita的發音是Pill-EAT-ah,而不是PILL-eat-ah或者像自動語音轉錄服務喜歡寫的那樣,Polluter。)
Still, Georgieva’s story underlines the hazards of mucking up names at work, and not just if the owner of the name is one’s boss.
然而,格奧爾基耶娃的故事強調了在工作中搞砸名字的危險,不僅僅是當名字的所有者是自己的老闆時。
At COP28, I moderated a panel of speakers that included the acclaimed Ugandan climate activist, Vanessa Nakate, whose second name is constantly pronounced Nah-KAH-tay.
在COP28上,我主持了一個由演講嘉賓組成的小組討論,其中包括備受讚譽的烏干達氣候活動家瓦妮莎•納蓋特(Vanessa Nakate),她的姓氏經常被髮音爲Nah-KAH-tay。
Just before the microphones went live, I leaned over and asked her if that was definitely correct. No, she said, “it’s NAH-kah-tay”, with a slight emphasis on the first syllable.
就在麥克風開啓之前,我俯身過去問她那是否確實正確。她說:「不,是NAH-kah-tay」,重音在第一個音節上稍微加強。
This was a flummoxing piece of news to receive as the microphones switched on, and a reminder of the perils of assuming anything when it comes to names.
當麥克風打開時,我得到了這個令人困惑的訊息,同時也提醒了我,在名字方面,任何假設都是危險的。
For this reason I was pleased to receive an email from a woman in the COP28 president’s media team in Dubai named Nikkie Shike.
因此,我很高興收到了來自杜拜COP28主席媒體團隊的一封來自Nikkie Shike女士的電子郵件。
Her email signature included something I hadn’t seen before: “Nikkie Shike pronounced: Ni-ki Shi-kay.”
她的電子郵件簽名中包含了我以前從未見過的內容:「Nikkie Shike 發音:Ni-ki Shi-kay。」
When I caught up with her later, she said she works for the PR firm Edelman, which had done a campaign on the importance of getting names right for Race Equality Matters, a group that tackles racial inequalities in the workplace.
後來我聯繫到她時,她說她在愛德曼公關公司工作,該公司爲「種族平等事務」(Race Equality Matters)組織做了一個宣傳活動,宣傳正確使用姓名的重要性,該組織致力於解決工作場所的種族不平等問題。
Polling shows name botching is common at work, and irksome, so the group suggested spelling out the right pronunciation on email footers and social media sites such as LinkedIn, which lets you add a recording of your name on your profile.
民意調查顯示,在工作中常常出現名字發音錯誤的情況,這讓人感到惱火。因此,該團隊建議在電子郵件底部和社群媒體網站(如領英(LinkedIn))上詳細說明正確的發音,領英還允許您在個人資料中新增您的名字的錄音。
Shike was among a number of Edelman staff who took up the email signature idea, which she says has been very useful.
Shike是愛德曼員工中的一員,她表示採用電子郵件簽名的想法非常有用。
“I’ve found that since I’ve used the signature, my clients get it right, my colleagues get it right, so it’s been a nice prompt,” said Shike, who has a Japanese father, an Australian mother and recently moved from Melbourne to Brussels.
「我發現自從我使用了這個簽名後,我的客戶和同事都能正確地稱呼我,所以這是一個很好的提示,」Shike說道。Shike的父親是日本人,母親是澳洲人,最近從墨爾本搬到了布魯塞爾。
When I mentioned the email explanation idea to another economist at COP28, Bogolo Kenewendo, Botswana’s former trade minister, she immediately saw the benefits. That makes sense considering how many people get her name wrong, even in Africa.
當我在COP28向波札那前貿易部長Bogolo Kenewendo提到電子郵件解釋的想法時,她立刻看到了好處。考慮到有多少人甚至在非洲都把她的名字搞錯,這是有道理的。
It’s pronounced “Bo-HOH-low,” with a ‘hoh’ that “sounds like a Spanish J”, and she still remembers studying ballet as a teenager in the US where, for an entire year, her teacher called her “Bungalow”.
發音爲「Bo-HOH-low」,其中的『hoh』發音類似於西班牙的J音,她仍然記得在美國青少年時期學習芭蕾舞,整整一年,她的老師都叫她「Bungalow」。
“I didn’t have the guts to correct her because I was new,” Kenewendo told me, adding that she had done a spectacular bit of name-butchering herself at COP28, when she referred to French climate envoy, Stéphane Crouzat, as “Stephanie”.
「我當時沒有勇氣糾正她,因爲我是新來的,」Kenewendo告訴我,她補充說她在COP28上也犯了一個非常嚴重的名字錯誤,當時她把法國氣候特使是斯蒂芬•克魯扎特(Stéphane Crouzat)稱爲「斯蒂芬妮」(Stephanie)。
“He said, ‘It’s Stephane!’” she hooted. “And I said, ‘Well why is there an ‘e’?”
她大笑道:「他說,『是斯蒂芬!』」我說,『那爲什麼有個『e』呢?』」
That’s a fair point. But so is the reason that Kenewendo, who used to go by her middle name Joy because it was easier to pronounce, decided to switch back to Bogolo.
這是一個公平的觀點。但這也是Kenewendo決定改回Bogolo的原因。Kenewendo曾經用她的中間名Joy,因爲它更容易發音。
“As I got older I realised the power that comes with my Setswana name,” she said. “It’s a daily reminder of who my parents hoped I would be.”
「隨著年齡的成長,我意識到我的塞茨瓦納名字所帶來的力量,」她說。「它每天都提醒我,我父母希望我成爲什麼樣的人。」