With the rise of China’s global influence this decade，comes the increased visibility of Chinese culture worldwide, and the prominence given to Chinese New Year in the world’s media is testament to this.

In the 1990 movie Havana, Robert Redford tells Lena Olin, "A butterfly can flutter its wings over a flower in China and cause a hurricane in the Carribbean." This might exaggerate China’s influence a little, but the Year of the Sheep truly made headlines the world over this year.

Year of Sheep, Goat or Ram?

Dubai's Burj Khalifa is lit up in red to celebrate Chinese New Year. [Photo/Xinhua]

Before Spring Festival came this year, the world puzzled over what the animal of 2015's zodiac really is. According to the Chinese lunar calendar, the animal that represents the New Year is named yang, but Westerners were left scratching their heads as to what exactly this translates into.

"An entire year has been lost in translation," says the editor of The Independent in the report Chinese New Year 2015: Is it the year of the ram, sheep or goat.The Chinese character yang can be translated into sheep, ram or goat in English, while in Chinese, it literally means a "horned animal." For the New York Times, the ambiguity proved "a can of worms for English speakers."

To answer the question, CNN did a feature story on the translation of the year of yang by quoting Isaac Yue from Hong Kong University: "The Chinese character yang can be translated as all of these animals -- even the gazelle is called yang in Chinese." The scholar concluded that he prefers the goat to the sheep for the translation because "if you look at the way the character yang is written, even in its ancient form, you can see that there is a pair of horns so it more closely resembles a goat than a sheep."

However, the decorations CNN reporters found on the streets of Hong Kong subverted this conclusion, as they found cartoon sheep, rams and goats everywhere. Things are different in other countries in Asia. In Vietnam, people mostly used goats, in South Korea, rams flooded the market, while Japanese dressed their pets in sheep’s clothing and sent postcards with sheep printed on them.

To avoid misunderstanding, most foreign media took the trouble to specify "the year of the Ram/Goat/Sheep" in their headlines, which Chinese readers found quite amusing.The Washington Post even greeted the first day of Lunar New Year with "Happy Year of the Ruminant."

As varied as the opinions are, it is generally agreed that yang is the most docile of the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac, and it expresses peace and prosperity for the upcoming year.The USA Today reported that the year of the sheep is a peaceful and stable year for small businesses, and would bring success to those who are tough, intelligent and creative.