The Chinese word 亚特兰大 is formed through a process of phonetic translation, specifically to represent the sound of the foreign place name "Atlanta". Each character, 亚 (yà), 特 (tè), 兰 (lán), and 大 (dà), was selected not for its literal meaning, but because its pronunciation, when combined in sequence, closely approximates the English syllables "A-t-lan-ta". This method of creating words by matching sounds with existing Chinese characters is a standard convention for transliterating foreign names into the language.