Attributing Chinese names to non-Chinese speakers

There are two quite different traditions in attributing Chinese names to non-Chinese speakers.

In mainland China, our convention is to employ the most literal phonetic translation available. For example, George Washington's name would be translated to Qiaozhi Huashengdun. Such names, however, may or may not bear any meaning in Chinese and are generally easily identifiable as direct translations from a foreign language.

The tradition in Hong Kong, on the other hand, is to seek an actual Chinese name that approximates the foreign tongue and has a semantic meaning. These names are richer and more easily remembered, but may sound so different as to be unrecognizable from their foreign roots.