When combined, 音译词 (yīnyìcí) literally means “sound-translate-word.” This is a perfectly descriptive name, as it's a word created by translating the sound of a foreign word.
音译词 (yīnyìcí) are windows into cultural exchange. They chart the history of China's interaction with the world, especially since the 20th century. The influx of words for technology (马克 an mǎkè, “mark”), philosophy (逻辑 luójí, “logic”), and modern lifestyle items (咖啡 kāfēi, “coffee”) shows the powerful influence of global, particularly Western, culture. A key difference between this process in Chinese and English is the writing system. When English borrows a word like “sushi” from Japanese or “croissant” from French, it can adopt the original spelling using the Latin alphabet. Chinese, however, must find characters to represent the foreign sounds. This leads to a creative process where the chosen characters can be purely phonetic or, in the most clever cases, also add a layer of meaning. This contrasts beautifully with the American/Western concept of a “loanword.” The most celebrated examples of 音译词 are “phono-semantic matching,” where the sound and meaning are well-matched. The classic case is 可口可乐 (kěkǒu kělè) for “Coca-Cola.” It sounds very similar to the original brand name, but the characters also mean “delicious and fun/joyful.” This is a linguistic and marketing masterstroke that simply isn't possible in the same way in English.
音译词 are ubiquitous in modern China. You'll encounter them constantly in daily life, from ordering food to using technology.
Using these words correctly shows that you are in tune with modern Chinese life. They are generally neutral in connotation and used in both formal and informal contexts, depending on the specific word.