@culturedalchemist According to wikipedia: "In the x, j, q series, the pinyin use of x is similar to its use in Portuguese, Galician, Catalan, Basque and Maltese and the pinyin q is akin to its value in Albanian; both pinyin and Albanian pronunciations may sound similar to the ch to the untrained ear."
So that's why it's so unintuitive for a romance language speaker. This conflicts with the purpose of translation, to convey the authors meaning and intent as seemlessly as possible without reader conscious of the fact that this is not the original language. While I normally scoff at the idea of localization, there is a clear reason why most English readers would struggle with names written in pinyin. It follows completely different rules that you can't expect them to know. Reading up on pinyin, while it's clearly better than Wade-Gilles romanization, it was never intended for English speakers.