This is a mildly amusing article from the AP about translating ballots into Chinese for districts with large Chinese speaking populations in Massachusetts. Here's the rundown of names mentioned (with a couple of guesses as to the Chinese characters):

Mitt Romney: "Sticky rice" or "Uncooked rice" (nuo4mi3, 糯米)
Fred Thompson: "Virtue Soup" (tang1shan4, 湯善)*
Barack Obama: "Oh, Bus Horse" (o1__ma3, 喔_馬)**
Boston Mayor Thomas Menino: "Sun Moon Rainbow Farmer" "Imbecile" or "Barbarian Mud No Mind of His Own"***

From the article [emphasis mine]:

"To try to make rhymes or approximations in Chinese, you can have unintended negative meanings," [state Secretary William] Galvin said. "It leads to confusion. You can render it with a good meaning or a bad meaning."

To add to the confusion, Galvin said, the ballots have to be offered in two major Chinese dialects, Mandarin and Cantonese, leading to even more potential variations of candidates's names.

But advocates for minority voting rights say Galvin's objections are misdirected. If the translations are awkward, they say, the candidates should be free to offer variations, or look to the way Asian language newspapers already transliterate their names.

"We are looking to make sure Asian Americans are able to vote for their candidates of choice," Glenn Magpantay, staff attorney of the New York-based Asian American Defense Fund, told the Boston Globe. "This is difficult to do when voters with limited English proficiency cannot find those candidates."

Cynthia Magnuson, spokeswoman to the Justice Department's civil rights division, said a system is needed to let voters with limited English vote without the aid of election monitors.

"This will allow them to vote independently," she said.

Galvin said he supports translating the bulk of the ballots into Chinese as required by a 2005 agreement with the justice department, as long as the names of the candidates' names remain in Roman letters.