The Chinese word "玛莎拉蒂" is formed solely through phonetic transliteration of the foreign brand name "Maserati", with each character selected to approximate a syllable of the original pronunciation: "玛" (mǎ) for "Ma", "莎" (shā) for "sa", "拉" (lā) for "la", and "蒂" (dì) for "ti".