An application to register a mark that comprises non-English wording must include an English translation of that wording. This requirement also applies to trademarks comprised of two or more distinct words that are represented as one word, in which one or more of the words in the mark appears to be non-English wording that would clearly be perceived as a distinct word(s) within the compound. A satisfactory translation must be some normal English expression that will be the equivalent in meaning of the term in the other language. For example, the English equivalent of the phrase "mais oui" in French is "why, certainly," or "why, of course,", and not the literal translation "but yes."
If the trademark also includes non-Latin characters, a transliteration of those characters must be included along with the translation. A transliteration is the phonetic spelling, in corresponding Latin characters, of the word(s) in the mark that are in non-Latin characters. For example, the transliteration of the Chinese character “文” is “Wen” and it means “culture, writing” in English.
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