The Chinese word **史蒂文** (*Shǐdìwén*) is a **phonetic transliteration** formed by selecting three Chinese characters whose sounds closely approximate the syllables of the English name "Steven." Each character is chosen primarily for its pronunciation rather than its meaning: **史** (*shǐ*) for "Ste," **蒂** (*dì*) for "ven" (with a closer match to the "di" sound), and **文** (*wén*) to complete the final "n" sound. This is a standard method for rendering foreign names into Chinese, resulting in a new compound where the individual meanings of the characters (which here could loosely be interpreted as "history," "stem," and "writing/language") are generally disregarded in favor of the collective phonetic representation.