[parineum]

I'm confused at what you think isn't a fair take. It is pretty screwy to replace existing English translation (useful to people who speak English) with phonetic transcriptions of Chinese words into Latin characters (useful to... who?). Sounds dumb to me.

> Mandarin is unlike other languages in that it's written form is famously ideographic. Phonetic translation is all that is done in any pair {L, M}. I assure you there is no such thing as a literal translation in any language.

There's no Mandarin/English translation for a "STOP" sign? I expect there is such a thing as a literal translation for most short instructions, the type of which you might see on a sign, for instance.

[lozenge]

They're talking about street names specifically, not traffic signs. What's the point in having a street name that none of the locals know because they know it by a completely different name?

Btw, based on Wikipedia, China uses symbols for traffic signs like Russia and Europe. US and Canada are the exceptions who use text and only a small few symbols.

[laserdancepony]

Btw, the STOP sign is both a shape and text.