When translating western names and places, the chinese frequently manage to match a meaning to a phonetic approximation for the name. A good example of this is with country names.
In Chinese, USA is translated as Mei guo — which roughly sounds like America, and translates to “Beautiful land.” England is referred to as Ying guo — “Heroic land”; France is Fa guo — “Lawful land”; Germany, De guo — virtuous.
Portugal? Pu tao ya — which roughly translates to “Grape tooth.” How appropriate.
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Good observation!
This is also true when it comes to movie names. like the classic movie “Brigde”, if directly translated into Chinese, well, does not make much sense compare to its romantic Chinese conterpart “Part at the Blue Brigde”.
wang kaiwei ’s movie ‘ mood in love’ translate into ‘hua yang nian hua ‘which is ‘ the life likes flower’