Parts of Penang, Malaysia’s George Town are scheduled to get some new street signs that will include Chinese characters. (Penang has a high concentration of ethnic Chinese.) Controversy over whether to pick traditional Chinese characters or simplified Chinese characters has led authorities there set up an online poll to help resolve the matter.
Voting began today and will continue until Sunday, October 25, at www.heritageroadsign.com.
The site also provides some photos of signs.
The signage project, which involves putting up a total of 300 bilingual road signs on 82 roads, is expected to cost RM45,000 (US$13,400, or about US$45 per sign).
source: Online poll to pick Chinese road signs, The Star, October 10, 2009
KINABLOG.dk » Ugens Fem Klik om Kina: Pesticider, politiske t-shirts og kinesiske tegn i Malaysia said
[...] nye vejskilte. Og det har givet debat, om de skal skrives med klassiske eller simple tegn, skriver Pinyin News. Skulle du nu have en stærk holdning for eller imod det ene eller andet, så kan du faktisk stemme [...]
Jean-François said
Ho…very interesting, I though that Malaysia officially switched to simplified a log ago. Looking forward to see the result.
Pinyin Info said
And the winner is … traditional Chinese characters, by a landslide.
* traditional Chinese characters: 82% (2,499 votes)
* simplified Chinese characters: 18% (556 votes)
Of course, it’s an Internet poll and so is anything but scientific. Still, the numbers aren’t very large; so it’s unlikely that someone wrote a voting bot to rig the election.