“中山门”在英语里究竟应该怎么表达

Beijing restores ancient city gate

Beijing started Wednesday rebuilding the Yongding Gate, a city gate built in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and demolished 47 years ago.

The project is scheduled to be completed in October this year, according to the Beijing Municipal Cultural Heritage Bureau.

The original Yongding Gate consisted of a watchtower in the front, a small town, which was actually an enclosure for defense, in the middle, and a city gate tower at the back.

The restoration project will focus on rebuilding the city gate tower and its foundation, which is 31.4 meters long from east to west, 16.96 meters wide from north to south, and 7.9 meters high. The whole tower building is 25.2 meters high.

A section of ancient city wall, 15.9 meters long, 12.7 meters wide and 6.2 meters high, will also be rebuilt on both sides of the city gate tower.

Yongding Gate was one of the seven gates of the outer city of Beijing during the Ming and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties. It is the southern tip of the 7.8-kilometer central axis line, along both sides of which the ancient Beijing city extended. The Drum Tower is the northern tip of the central axis line.

Nearly half of the facilities such as gymnasiums serving the 2008 Olympic Games will be located along the central axis line. The planned Olympic Park will be located at the northern tip of the extended section of the central axis line.

Yongding Gate was demolished in 1957 due to claims that it obstructed transportation and was a dangerous building.

However, archaeologists and experts of cultural heritage protection have long appealed for restoration of the ancient city gate.

The Beijing city government gave the green light to the restoration project in May of 2001.

从上述英语资讯报道，我们也许可以得出这样的结论，中国古代的城门，我们在用英文泛泛而谈称呼它们的时候，它们叫做city gate，这时候它们的意思是“城门”，但是，如果它们是表示某一个具体的城门的称呼时，比如说“永定门”，“中山门”，“太平门”，这时候的英文表达应该是城门的名称拼音加上英文单词Gate。至此，“中山门”英语译文是不妥的。而且，更为严重的是，该译文在City与Gate之间加上了一个英文连字符“-”，这就更加不妥，可以说是错上加错了，因为根据英语语言规则，单词之间以连字符相连接表示它们是作为一个单一单词使用的，只是它们可能是根据约定俗成原则中间以连字符号相接而已。其次，连字符号也是构词法中的合词法原则，即两个或两个以上的词按照一定的次序排列构成新词

至于“中山门”的另外两个译文，Zhongshan Gate比较符合当前的表达习惯，就如同上文提到的北京永定门的译文，而Zhongshanmen事实上并非是译文，只是汉语拼音而已，这一处理原则实际上符合上文提到的我国有关部门关于我国地名标志上的地名书写的原则，即使用汉语拼音。从这一点来说，将“中山门”标记为Zhongshanmen是符合有关规定的。目前南京市的所有街道名称全部用汉语拼音标记就是一个证明。不过，这种标记方式的一个缺点是，对于那些对中国几乎一无所知的“老外”来说，它们可能是毫无意义的，因为“老外”不能根据这些汉语拼音推断出这个名称表示的是什么意思。正因为如此，将地名这个专有名称以汉语拼音表示，而地名的属性则用英文来