The Chinese word **切尔西** (Qiě'ěrxī) is a **phonetic loan translation** formed by selecting characters whose combined pronunciation closely approximates the English proper noun "Chelsea." Each character is chosen primarily for its sound rather than its literal meaning (切=qiē, 尔=ěr, 西=xī), resulting in a standard Mandarin transliteration that follows common conventions for rendering foreign names. The formation exemplifies how Chinese adopts foreign terms through **disyllabic or polysyllabic compound words** where the individual semantic meanings of the characters are typically disregarded in favor of collective phonetic imitation, with the entire construct functioning as a single, fixed lexical unit for the specific referent.