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(Via Ruan YiFeng's Blog.)

Ahead of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, the Beijing Tourist Bureau announced a draft of new guidelines for the English translation of 2753 names of Chinese foods.

Although Chinese restaurants are numerous in the United States, the names of Chinese food items are sometimes awkward. Unlike the Italians, who call a pizza a pizza, or the Japanese, who call sushi sushi, or the Indians, who call a naan a naan, or the Koreans, who call kimchi kimchi, the Chinese seem too eager to abandon the original Chinese name of their food items and go with something that's easier to understand.

(The same phenomenon happens the other way around too. Guess what "foreign persimmon" is?)

A chief example is Chinese dumplings, which encompass a whole category of foods, each item with a distinct original Chinese name. The new draft addresses this problem by adopting the different Chinese names in their pinyin form. Thus we have jiaozi (Chinese dumplings) and guotie (fried Chinese dumpling).

Although the guidelines is meant only for restaurants in Beijing, I hope the proper Chinese name will spread worldwide.