i say tomato, you say xi hong shi.
you say oubama, i say 奥巴驴！

It seems the best way to avoid problems is to already have a Chinese name, like Kevin Rudd.

Does Hu Jintao have an English name?

I can see it now: "no, no, please Barack - call me Nigel"

The ōubāmǎ one is actually the transliteration used in Taiwan.

As long as Obama does not go to Taiwan, he will remain 奥巴马。欧巴马 is mainly used in Taiwan and Hong Kong. All mainland Chinese media call him 奥巴马。

I once wrote a post on this confusion of "one country two characters", if interested:

link

This is a very interesting article, but it omits discussion of a very important factor in Chinese name transliteration, namely dialectal pronunciation. Many of the conventions of transliteration derive from Cantonese, because historically it was Cantonese-speakers who had the most contact with Westerners. The foreign syllable "o", as in Olympics, was rendered with the closely matching Cantonese syllable OU, written 奧. When that written character is pronounced by Mandarin speakers, however, it comes out as ào. That's why "olympics", translated via Cantonese, is àolínpǐkè in Mandarin today.

Even though new transliterations are usually created directly by Mandarin speakers today, certain correspondences established in the late 19th and early 20th century via Cantonese remain standard and feel natural to Chinese speakers. So even though we might think that the Mandarin syllable ōu matches the first syllable of Obama better, Chinese speakers are used to the correspondence of Mandarin ào to English "o".

AFAIK, oubama 歐巴馬 is the transliteration used in the Taiwanese media.

'The article calls Swahili a fangyan 方言, the same word used to describe local "dialects" of Chinese.'

Interesting.
Actually they use this word for local languages unrelated to Chinese as well like the Tai languages in Guangxi, and Yao and Miao. I've seen English speakers use "dialect" for African languages too, and I think the implication is (in English and Chinese) that the writer or speaker somehow perceives them as of less worth than the European or Chinese "languages".

As for Obama, Hell will freeze over before Xinhua accepts anything invented in Taiwan or HK as a standard. They're still trying to teach people to say 計算機 for computer when ordinary people have said 電腦 for years.

Both the literal meaning and connotations of Chinese "fāngyán" (方言) and English "dialect" are different, even though the two terms are usually considered equivalent when translating. "Fāngyán" literally means "regional speech" (or, if you prefer a fancier, term, "topolect"), and has been used with this meaning for at least 2000 years since Yáng Xióng wrote his famous book of that name. As such, the term is applied equally to regional forms of Chinese and to regional forms of non-Chinese languages. Generally speaking, the term does not have the kind of pejorative sense of "non-standard" that the term "dialect" carries for many speakers of English.

In more technical linguistic usage, English "dialect" refers to a speech form that is mutually intelligible with another speech form, i.e. not a distinct language. In Chinese, however, mutual intelligibility is not a criterion for labeling something a "fāngyán".

Thus the reference in Chinese to Swahili as a "fāngyán = regional speech" of Kenya is perfectly reasonable, and it neatly sidesteps the language vs. dialect issue. I don't think it's meant to be denigrating at all.

"the term does not have the kind of pejorative sense of "non-standard" that the term "dialect" carries for many speakers of English."

That's true of non-specialist use, I should have added that the pejorative term was confined to non-linguists. In English technical use "dialect" is a great equaliser meaning "any variation of a language shared by a group" including any state-sponsored standard such as Putonghua/Guoyu. Chinese doesn't have any term corresponding to this, 語言變體 (yuyan bianti) seems to come the closest, but I don't think non-specialists would use or even understand that term, but I've never tried it out on any passers by, so I don't know for sure.

How about 呕霸骂?

Swahili is not a "fangyan-regional speech". Rather, it is a "yuyan-literary language", with written as well as spoken forms, and is one of the official national languages of Kenya (the other being English).

欧巴马, hmmm, any relation to 欧巴桑？

no idea why he abandon a perfectly normal and standard looking foreigner's name into something that's so easy to make fun of.

奥 is standard in translating foreign sounds and names, think "Olympics". Granted it doesn't sound as close as 欧, but there is kind of a convention people follow for non-chinese words.

What about 沃巴马 Wo Ba Ma?

Keep in mind that when possible, transliteration of names takes characters with "good" assocations, rather than random (neutral/bad) characters that preserve phonetic accuracy. Hence Viagra = WEI GE, "great brother", rather than WEI YA JIA LA, which seems less marketable.
OU is traditionally used for "Euro-". OUYUAN = euro currency, OUZHOU = Europe.
AO is already used for the first sound of Olympics, Ao lin pi ke. Though OU is phonetically closer, I'd think that AO for Olympics is a better sell than OU for European, esp. for the name of the first African-American POTUS!

Hmmm....

Aren't these just phonetic transcriptions?
What is a "standard foreigner name" ?

Would any self-respecting country really leave it to a local news agency to translate the name of its national leader?

This seems an absolute no-brainer - or am I off my rocker???

Names published by one country are automatically accepted in other countries. right or wrong?

Isn't that why we have translations like Hatoyama,Medvedev, or even Hu in English?

Just imagine if those countries left the decision to Fox News?

Hsinhua's obstinate refusal to recognize a world leader by his official name is not only disrespectful and will only make it harder to tell Who's Hu.

I've always thought Kobe Bryant's name should be translated as "扣比" instead of 科比.
扣比 literally means "slam dunk competition" in Chinese basketball terms while 科比 actually means "science contest".
At least they didn't use "口鼻" (Mouth Nose), which is what my computer selects from pinyin when I type "koubi".

My Chinese friend in Orlando worked as a calligrapher at the former "Splendid China" theme park where his job was to translate guest's names into Chinese characters. He once told me of an amusing dilemma when one day he was asked to come up with a translation for a lady named "Debbie Nima". He finally decided to only translate her first name, 德比, and omit her surname altogether because he didn't like the sound of "Ni De Bi" or "Ni Ma De Bi".