权力的游戏 - Game of Thrones names - latest episode - SPOILERS So I'm practicing by reading Game of Throne tweets and it's the names and naming that gets me. Here's the tweet and 5 questions on names and naming conventions.

权力的游戏S04E08。野人袭击鼹鼠村；拉姆斯夺下卡林湾，得到波顿家族合法子嗣的地位；珊莎撒谎消除贵族对莱莎之死的怀疑，小指头提出让罗宾出巡领地；猎狗和艾雅到达艾林谷，却被告知莱莎已去世；乔拉的身份曝光，龙女命令其永远离开；奥柏伦在比武中重创魔山，但魔山笑到最后，小恶魔被判死刑。

https://twitter.com/alexchen4836/status/473504458500882432

小指头 - Littlefinger. Why not 小指?

拉姆斯 - Ramsey? How does this sound like Ramsey Bolton?

猎狗 - The Hound. How do people come up with this translation?

艾林谷 - Eyrie Valley? How does this sound like Eyrie?

小恶魔 - Tyrion. Again, how do people come up with this translation?

EDIT: My bad: 艾林谷 is Arryn Valley. It's the Vale of Arryn.

============================================================

野人 - Wildlings

鼹鼠村 - Mole town

卡林湾 - Moat Calin

波顿家族 - THe Boltons

珊莎 - Sansa

莱莎 - Lysa (of the Vale)

罗宾 - Robin

艾雅 - Arya

乔拉 - Jorah

龙女 - Mother of dragons

奥柏伦 - Oberyn
First of all, I'm Chinese and I'm a big fan of the Game of Thrones. I've read both the English and Chinese version of the novel.

For Ramsey and Eyrie:

Ra-m-sey,  to mimic the "Ra" sound, because there is no such sound in Chinese, we use 拉（La1) instead. Actually a funny story is that there are a lot Chinese dialects in which people pronounce "R" as "L". One of my friend from Fujian always say 热死了(re4 si3 le1) as le4 si3 le1. This works for the "m" too. Chinese is a monosyllabic language. Almost every word is pronounced as "consonant+vowel"(耳 and other er sound words are the exceptions). So when we meet a single "m" in a name, we always translate it as 姆(mu3）. There is also no sound like "sey" in Chinese. So we translate it into 斯(si1).

Eyrie follow the same rule because there is no sound like "rie" in Chinese.

For Tyrion, he is translated as 提利昂(a translation for the closest sound in Chinese). The "小恶魔" is a translation for his nickname "the Imp" actually.

Actually, as a Chinese, I think the translation for the name of characters in the Game of Thrones are pretty good. My favorite translations in the books are the names of the bastards.

River: 河文
Snow: 雪诺
Flower: 花佛
Stone: 石东

In these Chinese name, the first character is the meaning of the name and the second word is a sound mimic. And they read great in Chinese.

And also, what do you think is a better translation for the Hound？