The Telegraph reports that Chinese businesses have gone nuts over President-Elect Barack Obama and that businesses are registering to use his name as a trademark on everything from instant noodles to children’s clothes, to coffee and even wooden logs.
None of the applications has so far been approved, and the likelihood of success is slim: all politician’s names are censored in China. To get around the block, some companies are already producing clothes marked “Aobama”, which is phonetically similar in Chinese.
I’m looking forward to some fun “Aobama” stuff on Engrish.com in the coming years.
Incidentally the 3 characters for Obama in Chinese* is: 歐巴馬 (or sometimes 奧巴馬)
The 3 characters for Barack in Chinese is: 巴拉克
And “Yes, we can” is translated to: 是的,我們能做到.
*I try to use the traditional characters whenever possible. I hate the simplified characters.
NOTE: 8Asians.com is a community, and we thank you for being a part of it. While we welcome and appreciate differences in opinion, if you're rude or you're promoting spam, we have a right to edit or delete your comment. Read our comment policy for more information.
If you see a comment that violates the 8Asians.com comment policy, you may flag the comment by mousing over the comment and clicking "FLAG."
Feb 16: Adam WarRock and Kirby Krackle: West Cost Tour Dates!!!
Feb 17: (Los Angeles, CA) All My Sons
Feb 18: (Stanford, CA) Stanford’s 16th Listen to the Silence Conference
Feb 25: (Los Angeles, CA) Past Present I Future Imperatives: Queer Space Time
Mar 3: (New York, NY) Vong Pak’s ‘Electric Shaman’ Concert
Apr 30: (Sacramento, CA) California Asian Pacific Islander Policy Summit 2012: iAdvocate
[...] to talk about than Asian Noodles. 8asians has of course written about instant yakisoba recently and even had a discussion about instant noodles in reference to Barack Obama. This week the Atlanta Journal-Constitution did a review of instant noodles and the Fort Worth Star [...]