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Here's an image of a restaurant in England.  If I try to translate the characters, I get "Stone family farm" but if I do a web search, I see 石家莊 is a city in China.

Is it the name of the restaurant, or a reference to the city?  If it's the name of the restaurant, how should it be translated to English? Or, how does it relate to "Norman House"? enter image description here

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  • 石家莊 is the provincial capital of Hebei
    – fat penguin
    Oct 3 at 5:22

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A business name can be a direct translation, however, many businesses have separate, or even unrelated Chinese and English names

石家莊 is the Chinese name of this restaurant here; Norman House is the English name of this restaurant,

  • "石家莊" literally means "Shi's Family House/Mansion"

  • "Norman House" in Chinese is "诺曼之家"

  • Both names refer to the same restaurant

My first job was at "Golden Country Restaurant" in Toronto. The original Chinese name of this restaurant was 金漢酒樓 (literal: Golden Han Restaurant). It changed hands three times with a new Chinese name each time, but the English name "Golden Country" remained the same (I suspect "Golden Country" was the registered legal name and the Chinese names were all unofficial.)

Actually, There were three Golden Country Restaurants owned by the same business group. The other two were 金海 and 金莎, All their English name was "Golden Country"

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  • Indeed, sometimes they can be strikingly different. A local on to me is purple dot cafe in english and 綠島餐廳 in chinese-- it always stood out to me because the palm tree island by the chinese name was also all purple haha.
    – zagrycha
    Oct 2 at 5:34

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