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I am trying to translate this address

1 Gustave L. Levy Pl, New York, NY 10029

into Chinese. Not only I have trouble with "pl", but also the former part of the address. I am wondering if there are some certain rules in China when translating addresses in English.

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4 Answers 4

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In English, as we all know, there are many ways of saying a "way", like road, avenue, street, boulevard and place of course. They all have different and specific meanings. However, in Chinese, we do not use that many different words. Therefore, what you would basically do is to just translate "place" into "街" or "路" and that is it!

Also, as the rule says, in Chinese, address is written from biggest to smallest, thus as for yours, it would be translated to

美国,纽约市,古斯塔夫·L·利维街一号,邮编:10029

Though the name of the street can be translated into Chinese by its pronunciation, it is suggested to include the English name of the street in order for people to locate the address easier.

For your curiosity, please refer to this link for Chinese correspondence of many types of "way" in English.

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I think that, since the receiver is American, the address should be in English anyway, or the postal services won't even be able to read it. So it should be:

1 Gustave L. Levy Pl, New York, NY 10029, 美国

That's how I buy and receive stuff from China.

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  • Write it in the language/style of the sender country's postal service, until the hierarchy hits where the recipient country's postal service needs to read it, then follow their rules. Nobody in the US will deliver to 古斯塔夫·L·利维街一号...
    – Nimrod
    Commented Aug 2, 2018 at 17:50
  • Other than postal services, there are still other situations an address should be translated into another language, such as translation of a novel or movie. Such as movie title "10 cloverfield lane" can be translated as 科洛弗道10号
    – River
    Commented Jul 20, 2020 at 5:56
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No set conventions for everything as far as I know, but how about --

  • Road 路
  • Avenue 街
  • Street 街道
  • Way 道
  • Boulevard 大道
  • Drive 径
  • Lane 巷
  • Alley 弄
  • Place 处
  • Circle 湾
  • Square 口
  • Point 头
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I basically agree with the accepted answer that all these different abbreviations can be translated as 路 or 街。

But there is one exception that in some places the convention already exists. For example in Manhattan, New York, all East to West roads are called "street" and are translated as 街. All North to South roads are called "avenue" and are translated as 大道. The translation conversations are set by Chinese folk who live there. It's better to check if there is already such a convention. I will say, if there is not a China Town, then probably there will not be such a convention.

Other than that, just translate them in the same way regardless of the actual meaning of the abbreviations. I don't think there are exact counterparts in China cities. The most recommended is 路,then 街.

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