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I am working on an art project that I would like to collect the hundreds of different transliterations of 「中文」 zhōng wén in Mandarin Chinese. (Pronunciation available here: https://translate.google.com/#zh-CN/de/中文)
How can I transliterate zhōng wén in Spanish? (For example, "zhong wen" would be the closest pronunciation in English.)
Wikipedia indicates that
There have been many systems of romanisation throughout history. However, Hanyu Pinyin has become the international standard since 1982. Other well-known systems include Wade-Giles and Yale.
So I would stick with pinyin.
My guess is that there must be a standard somewhere that you should follow. Otherwise... you're in problems...
"zh" in Spanish has no meaning besides the sound of a "z" followed by the sound of an "h" (which has no sound at all. So "zhong" in Spanish would be read as "thong" in English.
The closest sound to "zh" that I can think of would be the English "sh". In "standard" Spanish "sh" has no particular meaning, so you end up with an "s" sound (s + h = s + 0 = s). In ríoplatense Spanish you could write "yong" or "llong" and both would be read "shong", but in other regions they would be read "yong" or "lyong" respectively.
So you are left with "chong" which would be pronounced quite close to the way it is in English, with an initial affricate consonant (like "chimney").
Your best bet there would be to just go with "shong" or "zhong" and trust the Spanish speakers to realize that you mean it in a different way than in Spanish spelling.
For "wen" you have "wen", "uen" and "huen". All three have the same pronunciation. "wen" looks a bit foreign because the W is extremely rare in Spanish, but it is clear. "uen" is OK, and perhaps the best one. "huen" respects the "traditional" way of writing that sound, present in words such as "hueso" (/weso/, bone) and "huevo" (/wevo/, egg). But the same people that could understand "sh" or "zh" would feel inclined to pronounce that "h" like in "he", "her" or "hen".
For the tone, we have no representation in Spanish. So you en up with:
zhong or shong
and
uen or wen
and then... well I would just follow English and go with "zhong wen".
But first, I would google for a standard...
Following your link and pressing the speaker icon beneath the text to try to hear how it is pronounced, if I were to write what I hear in Spanish, I would probably go for:
Chongüen
Or maybe something like the following to try to use some other combination of consonants apart from the most typical in Spanish:
Schonwen
I understand that you are aware of the existing of an international romanisation system called Pinyin, and I also understand that you are asking what would any Spanish-speaking person write when hearing that (the average Spanish-speaking person does not know how to transliterate in Pinyin).
Going by similar questions you’ve asked regarding other languages, the string of letters you’re probably looking for is choñuen. Most varieties of Spanish should produce a similar sound.
The sounds written in IPA (sans tones) would clarify exactly what is different:
This should be fairly pronounceable to a Spanish speaker. (And if you’ve noticed, it’s also the same IPA for the Italian pronunciation.) Each part can be found in native Spanish words like:
