The Chinese term "塔利班" (Tǎlìbān) is a direct phonetic transliteration of the English word "Taliban," formed by selecting Chinese characters whose pronunciations closely approximate the original sounds—塔 (tǎ) for "Ta," 利 (lì) for "li," and 班 (bān) for "ban"—without conveying the inherent meaning of the individual characters, in a standard linguistic process for adapting foreign proper nouns into Chinese.