楽天

We have a pro baseball team called ロッテ "Lotte" in Japan. I have heard from a Chinese friend of mine that it is named 乐天(樂天) "Le4 Tian1" in Mandarin Chinese.　We feel similarity, to some extent, in pronunciation between the two.

One new pro baseball team was lauched last year and they decided to call themselves 楽天 "Rakuten" in Japanese. They did not know that their rival team "Lotte" is translated into the same name as theirs in China; 乐天(樂天).　It is okay for Japanese but we wonder how Chinese people would try to translate "Rakuten" 楽天 into Chinese.