There was a post in the Hong Kong Wine Lovers FB group about Burgundy issuing an official list of translations for Burgundy Appellations in traditional Chinese (en usage a Hong Kong). Apart from Burgundy being transliterated from the French Bourgogne, someone noticed that the translated names are actually different to the ones in simplified Chinese for the mainland market. Now simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese should only differ in the shape of the characters, a bit like changing the font in a European language. Yet because Hong Konger speak Cantonese whilst Mainlanders speak Putonghau (or Mandarin), it is absolutely understandable that a name like Gevry-Chambertin will result in a different group of characters when the spoken dialects are also dissimilar.
To complicate matters, although the Taiwanese also speak Mandarin, there is often a different transliteration to that used on the Mainland, with the the potential for another traditional Chinese version for Taiwan!! This Chines translation / transliteration business is really getting seriously confusing, in wine just like in every other sphere of life. I once presented 6 different Chinese translations for the Intensive Care Unit, but still missed the one they used in Zhongshan!!
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