For a long time, many scholars hold the opinion that "the person's name or name of an object is independent of the language, and there’s no meaning or connotation because of their untranslatability."(Feng Ruizhen, 2008) According to this theory, one of the best names translation methods should be the simplest way, transliteration. In general situation, especially in daily communication and language use, the translation of the foreigners were treated with much is direct transliteration method; even these names have different meanings in other contexts. Such as Will Smith (威尔-史密斯rather than威尔-铁匠), Raja Bell (拉加-贝尔 rather than 拉加-铃铛), etc(Qian Gechuan, 2011).
But with the development of modern society and human culture, a more complicated system of language is forming. Transliteration can no longer fit all translations between these cultures (Chen Yi, 2008). More and more people began to explore a new, humanity way of their culture. Through observation of the recently popular literature translation, we can find that the combination of transliteration and free translation methods to translate names began to become increasingly popular. Names as an important component of social language, is also a kind of cultural carrier, has the deep formation of long history and rich cultural connotation, embody a concentrated reflection of national cultural characteristics. With large capacity, etymology, allusions, people’s names includes a mass of culture variation and complicated history, language, psychology, religion, custom, moral, ethical and other aspects of the information.
In translation practice, therefore, we can't use the translation of names simply. We need a method to deal with, especially to distinguish the daily communication and literary or art names translation criterion. Otherwise we will ignore much important cultural information, due to lack of these culture observations, or even make some terrible mistakes. So, we should according to the text genre and application scope, make a combination of transliteration, free translation, domestication and foreignization strategies. That also means we should choose appropriate translation methods properly.
1.2 Some Examples of Different Name Translation
      As mentioned before, vast communications between China and foreign countries require us build an “invisible bridge” to achieve a connection. In public situation, media are supposed to play this important role and provide their audiences with an accurate, detailed “route” to the other end of the bridge.
      The following two lists are provided by NetEASE and Dongqiudi APP. Both of them are well known football media, and have a large number of readers. After a detailed observation, it’s not difficult for us to find some translation differences between them.
桑德兰               
号码    中文名    英文名    位置    国籍
1    潘蒂利蒙    Costel Pantilimon    守门员    罗马尼亚
2    比利-琼斯    Billy Jones    后卫    英格兰
3    范安霍尔特    Patrick van Aanholt    后卫    荷兰
4    布里德卡特    Liam Bridcutt    中场    苏格兰
5    韦斯-布朗    Wes Brown    后卫    英格兰
6    卡特莫尔    Lee Cattermole    中场    英格兰
7    塞巴斯蒂安-拉尔森    Sebastian Larsson    中场    瑞典 人名翻译的陷阱与突围以国外足球运动员姓名汉译为例(2):http://www.751com.cn/yingyu/lunwen_23856.html