Category Archives: Kaohsiung

Gaoxiong education chief backs city retaining Tongyong

Posted on by
15

The news on Taiwan’s romanization situation has been coming in fast over the past few days. Unfortunately I’ve been too busy to report much on this. But rest assured that I am trying to get some things done behind the scenes … for all the good that will do given Taiwan’s piss-poor record on this issue. Still, I’m trying to remain hopeful.

Last week the deputy chief of Gaoxiong’s (Kaohsiung’s) Bureau of Education said that he was in favor of the city adopting the international system for romanizing Mandarin, Hanyu Pinyin. But on Friday his boss, Cài Q?nghuá, slapped down that idea.

Cai said that almost no schools reported problems with Tongyong Pinyin. I have no idea what that has to do with anything. But that was part of his justification for backing Tongyong.

He also said it would cost too much money to change, throwing out a reportedly conservative estimate of NT$900 million (US$28 million), which I think is likely a gross overestimate.

Here’s the story:

G?oxióng shìzhèngf? dàod? zh? bù zh?chí Hàny? P?ny?n? G?oxióng Shì Jiàoyùjú zh?ng Cài Q?nghuá zuóti?n bi?oshì, quán shì y? sì w? su? huíbào xuéxiào zh?ng, zh?y?u sì su? tíjí T?ngyòng P?ny?n sh?yòng de wèntí, juédàdu?shù xuéxiào bìngwú yìjian, G?oxióng shìzhèngf? jiù “zh?gu?n d?nwèi zài yèwù tu?dòng shàng, shì-f?u y?u x?yào xiézhù shìxiàng” wèntí shí, huífù “p?ny?n zhèngcè x? y? guójì ji?gu?, jiànyì c?iyòng guójì ji?n du?shù sh?yòng de p?ny?n xìt?ng Hàny? P?ny?n.” Shì Jiàoyùjú zh? mì de yìjian, t? méi zhùyìdào.

Cài Q?nghuá shu?, mùqián háishi zh?zh?ng yányòng T?ngyòng P?ny?n, f?uzé g?ngg?i G?oxióng Shì gu?ngshì lùbi?o, dìbi?o, bi?ozhì d?ng, b?osh?u g?jì jiù x? hu?fei y?di?n ji?yì yuán.

source: G?oxióng Shì Jiàoyùjú zh?ng zh?zh?ng: yányòng T?ngyòng P?ny?n (?????? ????????), Zìyóu Shíbào (Liberty Times), September 20, 2008

Gaoxiong street signs

Posted on by
5

Sinle StDuring an extremely brief trip a few weeks ago to G?oxióng, Taiwan’s second-largest city, I was able to grab a few photos of signage there. Most of these were taken from a moving taxi; thus the poor quality and lack of much diversity. But these are the best I could do under the circumstances.

First, a few basic points:

  • they’re in Tongyong Pinyin (bleah — but at least they’re consistent)
  • they don’t use InTerCaPiTaLiZaTion (This lack is, of course, a good thing. If only Taipei hadn’t screwed this up!)
  • in most cases the text in romanization is large enough to read even at a distance (Very good — unlike all too many relatively recent signs elsewhere, such as Taipei County.)

In short, other than the choice of romanization most of these signs aren’t all that bad. They’re certainly much better (and more consistent) than the ones that Taipei County put up in Tongyong Pinyin a few years ago. (Although Taipei County’s current magistrate said more than two years ago that he was in favor of switching to Hanyu Pinyin, as far as I can see he has done absolutely nothing about this. Of course, some might say that he’s done absolutely nothing about anything; but I’ll leave discussion of that to the political blogs.)

Here’s another G?oxióng sign with romanization that isn’t too small.
Dacheng St.

I’m not a fan of the practice of force-justifying the Chinese characters and romanization/English to the same width. This style can be seen in many of these signs. Sometimes this results in the romanized/English words being spaced too far apart; more often, though, the Chinese characters are left with lots of space between them — so much space that it would be easy to have spaces indicate word divisions for the texts in Hanzi (something Y.R. Chao recommended nearly a century ago), which might be an interesting thing to try on signs. I wonder if anyone has ever performed any experiments on this.

The full Mandarin name of the school indicated by the blue sign on the left is rather long:

G?oxióng shìlì G?oxióng n?z? g?ojí zh?ngxué
(????????????)

Whoever made the sign wisely desided to cut that down to ???? (G?oxióng n? zh?ng). If only someone had realized that it would have been better to use something shorter than the full English name, too. “Kaohsiung Municipal Girls’ Senior High School” is a lot to fit on one small sign. “Kaohsiung Girls’ High School”, “Girls’ Municipal High School”, or something even shorter would have been much better.

Here are some more signs.

And finally an address plate on a building. This style could certainly be better.
Dayi St.

Taiwan president backs restoration of aborigine place name

Posted on by
1

In 1957, Maya, a small town in Taiwan’s Gaoxiong (Kaohsiung) County, was assigned a new name: Sanmin Township (S?nmín Xi?ng, ???), after Sun Yat-sen’s S?nmínzh?yì (???? / Three Principles of the People). Although the residents of Maya — then, as now, predominantly members of the Bunun tribe — were likely not in favor of this change, Taiwan was then under an authoritarian regime with an assimilationist policy, so there’s little to nothing they could have done.

During KMT rule, when the change to Sanmin was made, a major point of government policy was stressing the Chineseness of Taiwan — even if, such as in this case, the links had to be manufactured. The Kuomintang (Guómínd?ng), after all, was and still officially is the Chinese Nationalist Party, as the Taipei Times likes to remind its readers.

Fortunately, Taiwan no longer has the same political situation as 50 years ago. Some activists are now trying to get the name of the town changed back to Maya. President Chen Shui-bian recently expressed his support for this, which is not surprising considering that the current administration prefers to stress Taiwan’s historical links with just about anyplace but China. In recent years Taiwan’s ties with Austronesia have been receiving increasing attention.

I’m still trying to find out if “Maya” represents the proper spelling or if it’s merely a romanization of a Mandarinized form of the Bunun name. In Chinese characters this place is written ??? (M?y? Xi?ng / Maya Township). The characters ?? are also used for the Maya people of southern Mexico and northern Central America.

sources:

further reading: Pinyin News on aborigine names

Gaoxiong receives funding to upgrade the city’s English

Posted on by
Reply

The government of Gaoxiong (Kaohsiung) has recently secured funding from the Executive Yuan to

  • waste on so-called translation agencies that wouldn’t know real English if it bit them on the ass,
  • print up some signs on which the English is so small as to be almost unusable,
  • put up even more signs in a romanization system few people know but many think is ridiculous at best,
  • um, create an “English-friendly environment” in advance of the World Games, which will be held in the city in 2009.

The stories didn’t mention how much money will be involved in this. The project will be headed by the recently promoted X? Lì-míng (??? / Xu Liming / Hsu Li-ming).

Let’s all hope the city does a much better job than is to be expected from past experience throughout Taiwan.

sources:

Gaoxiong (Kaohsiung) MRT

Posted on by
Reply

Looking through Hao’s photos (linked to in his comment on yesterday’s post) reminded me that the MRT system in Gaoxiong is at least partially open. Since Gaoxiong is in Tongyong land, and since the signage there mixes romanization and English, and since no tone marks are given, I thought I’d share with everyone these Hanyu Pinyin guides I just made.

Here are the stations of the Gaoxiong subway system as given in Hanyu Pinyin (with tone marks), Hanyu Pinyin and English, Chinese characters, and Tongyong Pinyin and English:

See also Hao’s photos of the KMRT.

I don’t know Gaoxiong well, having been there only once, so if I got the word parsing for any of the stations wrong, please let me know.

MOE approves Taiwanese romanization; Tongyongists protest

Posted on by
19

Years of valuable time has been lost in the squabbling over romanization systems for Taiwanese. And that squabbling will no doubt continue, as the links below make clear. But an important step was taken on Thursday. Finally, finally, Taiwan’s Ministry of Education has approved a romanization system for Taiwanese: Tái-luó-b?n P?ny?n (?????), to give its Mandarin name.

I’m already on the record as having called Tongyong Pinyin, in its various incarnations, a national embarrassment for Taiwan, so I won’t bother to disguise the fact that I got a real kick out of the fact that the Tongyong Pinyin scheme for the Taiwanese language was roundly rejected. I know that more than a few readers of Pinyin News will be cheering this news. For many, this has as much or more to do with the methods used to push through the much-despised Tongyong Pinyin system for Mandarin than any defects, real or imagined, in the Tongyong Pinyin system for Taiwanese.

Predictably, Yu Bo-quan (???, I’ve given up bothering to figure out which of the various spellings for his name he’s using now), the main person behind the Tongyong romanization systems, is unhappy. Reportedly, after it was clear things were not going his way he stormed out of the meeting. After he left the new system was approved unanimously.

Yu’s remarks make clear the political nature of his approach.

Tái-luó-b?n p?ny?n xìt?ng zuó chu?nggu?n chéngg?ng hòu, Yú Bó-quán qìfèn de shu?, Tái-luó xìt?ng de q?yuán shì Táiw?n M?nnány? y?nbi?o xìt?ng (TLPA), shì Guómínd?ng shídài de ch?nwù, ér 2002 T?ngyòng P?ny?n shì Mínjìnd?ng zhízhèng nèi t?ngguò de, zhìyí wèihé Jiàoyùbù wúf? hànwèi zhízhèngd?ng de M?nnány? p?ny?n xìt?ng zh?zh?ng, Jiàoyùbù duànrán t?ngguò Tái-luó-b?n, Táiw?ny? T?ngyòng Liánméng hòuxù ji?ng zh?nbèi kàngzh?ng. (???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????)

That doesn’t sound all that far from calling those on the committee dupes of the KMT, which isn’t likely to win him any friends with those in power. But it may well be that by this point he has so alienated others he thinks he has nothing to lose.

Apparently Tongyong for Taiwanese will retain something of a foothold in southern Taiwan. (See source no. 8 below.)

Later, I’ll try to put up more about just what system was approved and under what circumstances it will (and will not) be used — unless the ever-knowledgeable a-giâu beats me to it.

Because there’s a lot of confusion about Tongyong, a few notes are in order:

  • Tongyong is not one romanization system for all the languages of Taiwan but rather a group of related systems, some of which could be said to work better (or worse) than others.
  • When Tongyong (for Mandarin) was officially approved in Taiwan in 2002, the Tongyong system for Hakka also received approval but not the Tongyong Pinyin system for Taiwanese.
  • As the vote should make clear, plenty of strong supporters of romanization (and other scripts) for Taiwanese have never much cared for Tongyong.

sources:

  1. Tái-luó-b?n p?ny?n míngnián shànglù; Jiàoyùbù duànrán dìng’àn; T?ngyòng liánméng ji?ng kàngzh?ng (????????? ??????? ???????), Pínggu? Rìbào (Apple Daily), September 29, 2006
  2. Guóxi?o l?osh?: xi?ngt? y?yán zuìh?o zìrán xuéxí (???????????????), Liánhé X?nwén W?ng, September 29, 2006
  3. Zuóyè zuìx?n: M?nnány? xi?ngt? jiàoxué quèdìng c?i Táiw?n M?nnány? Luóm?zì p?ny?n (?????????????????????????), CNA, September 29, 2006
  4. Táiy? T?ngyòng liánméng kàngyì Jiàoyùbù c?i M?nnány? Luóm? p?ny?n (???????????????????), CNA, September 29, 2006
  5. M?nnány? xi?ngt? jiàoxué quèdìng c?i Táiw?n M?nnány? Luóm?zì p?ny?n (????????????????????), CNA, September 29, 2006
  6. M?nnány? p?ny?nf? quèlì: Luóm? p?ny?n shèng ch? (???????????????), Zh?nggu?ng X?nwén W?ng, September 29, 2006
  7. P?ib?n dìng’àn! Jiàoyùbù t?ngguò M?nnány? jiàoxué; c?iyòng Tái-luó p?ny?n (??????????????????????), D?ngs?n X?nwénbào, September 29, 2006
  8. Nánbù sì xiàn-shì d?zhì; Tái-luó p?ny?n j?n chu?nggu?n (??????? ???????), Zh?ngshí Diànz? Bào, September 29, 2006

official advocates Aborigines reclaim original names

Posted on by
1

The head of the Gaoxiong County Government’s Indigenous Peoples Bureau announced on Monday that henceforth he would like to be known by his original name, Alang Manglavan, rather than the Sinitic name Du Shi-luan (???), and that he had completed the forms for official recognition of this.

As of the end of last year, Gaoxiong County had some 15,700 members of indigenous tribes. Only about 5 percent of these, however, had applied for an official change of name, Manglavan reported. He encouraged others to apply for the change.

Here’s one story:

G?oxióng Xiànzhèngf? Yuánzhùmín Júzh?ng Dù Shí-luán, y?j?ng* sh?nq?ng zhèngmíng wéi “Alang Manglavan” (??????), j?nti?n g?lì xiàn nèi yuánzhùmín k? y?f? huífù chuánt?ng xìngmíng, y? xi?nxiàn yuánzhùmín chuánt?ng yuánmào.

Dù Shí-luán bi?oshì, wèi xi?ngyìng tu?dòng huífù yuánzhùmín chuánt?ng míngzi cuòsh?, t? j? wánchéng zhèngmíng, shì c?ixíng chuánt?ng míngzi Hànzì zhùjì hé bìngliè Luóm? p?ny?n.

“Alang” shì míngzi, “Manglavan” shì xìng, shì “duànyá” de yìsi, Dù Shí-luán ji?shì shu?, y?nwèi z?xi?n zhù zài duànyá pángbi?n, su?y? y?c? wéi xìng. X?wàng dàji? y?hòu yào jiào t? “?làng”, bùzài xìng “Dù” le.

Dù Shí-luán g?lì yuánzhùmín b?wò j?huì, du? g?lì ji?rén, péngyou qiánw?ng hùzhèng shìwùsu? bànl? huífù chuánt?ng xìngmíng zhù jì.

* The original version in characters has a mistake: ? instead of ?[?]. A Wubi-based typo?

sources:

Kaohsiung to revise English signage

Posted on by
Reply

According to a CNA story in the Taipei Times, the Gaoxiong/Kaohsiung City Government has decided to “correct and update all English translations of signage at 132 scenic spots” in preparation for the city’s hosting of the World Games in 2009.

A “group of specialists” from an ESL magazine are the chief advisers to the city government, which I suppose is better than just one randomly selected foreigner. Still, I wonder what these “specialists” know about signage — or romanization, for that matter. And will anyone check to ensure the signs are made correctly?

Here’s what is probably going to happen: Gaoxiong will replace some old signs with poor English and worse romanization with signs in tiny, unreadable English (probably still with mistakes) and sloppy romanization in a system that most foreigners actively dislike.

Deputy Mayor Cheng Wen-lung (???), who is convener of a city committee formed to develop Kaohsiung’s English living environment, said yesterday that in addition to the changes, the committee was considering standardizing the English translations of food names in the area as a way to help foreign athletes — as well as the large number of foreign visitors who are expected at the upcoming World Games — recognize Chinese and local cuisines.

The city plans to update English translations on all of the city’s key signage within one month.

source: Kaohsiung looks to improve its English signage for games, CNA, June 28, 2006