The Chinese word **桑巴 (sāng bā)** is a direct phonetic transliteration of the Portuguese (and internationally recognized) term **"samba,"** referring to the Brazilian genre of music and dance. It is formed by selecting two Chinese characters whose pronunciations, when combined, closely approximate the sounds of the source word—"桑" (*sāng*) for "sam" and "巴" (*bā*) for "ba." This is a standard method for importing foreign loanwords into Chinese, where the characters are chosen for their sound rather than their literal meanings (which, in this case, are "mulberry tree" and "to hope/attach," respectively, and are semantically irrelevant to the dance).