The Chinese word 博洛尼亚 is formed through phonetic transliteration, where each character is selected solely for its sound to approximate the Italian city name "Bologna": 博 (bó) for "Bo", 洛 (luò) for "lo", 尼 (ní) for "ni", and 亚 (yà) for the final "a", resulting in a syllabic imitation of the original term.