Dec. 9, 2004
VANCOUVER – Richmond city council is being asked to consider a bylaw requiring shops and other businesses to display signs in English as well as Chinese.The recommendation comes from a committee established by council to examine what it calls “intercultural issues.” According to the 2001 census, 59 per cent of Richmond residents say they are members of a visible minority and 40 per cent claim Chinese heritage. Committee chair Shashi Assanand says the intent of the law is to help everyone in the community feel more included by offering signs that everyone can read.
“So as a result, if there are people who can’t read Chinese, we definitely would need to have English,” she says. “We don’t want to have parallel cultures building. We want to have intercultural communication, intercultural relationships, so that we can work as equals, with a lot of harmony here in Richmond.”
Danny Leung agrees. He’s the senior manager at the new Chinese-themed Aberdeen mall, where the signs are in both Chinese and English.
Leung says he’d support an English language sign bylaw. And he suggests restricting the size of Chinese characters to address a problem he sees along No. 3 Road. “I think the signage is a little bit of overkill, in terms of the Chinese characters. I think it should be neutralized a little bit, and make it more tourist friendly.”
There’s no word on whether Richmond council is prepared to pass a language bylaw. A spokesperson for the city’s planning department says it would likely be a last resort, and passed only after much discussion.
Category Archives: English
condoms: the name game
SOUTH Korea has shelved a plan to replace the English word for condom with a Korean word after a string of complaints from people with identical or similar sounding names.
The Korean Anti-AIDS Federation said it would drop the use of a suggested new word for condom, “ae-pil”, which was derived from the Chinese characters for love and necessity.
The name, picked from 19,000 suggestions sent in by the public, had prompted complaints from many South Koreans with similar-sounding characters in their names, federation official Kim Hoon-soo said.
“An old lady called to complain, saying she was worried about her grandson being teased due to her name being ‘condom’,” Kim said, adding the federation had dropped its push for a new name.
The federation promotes condom use in South Korea, where only 10 per cent of people use condoms when having sex.
wide-ranging discussion on writing Mandarin and the ‘threat’ of English
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Here’s a machine English translation
English in Guangzhou
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English names may be introduced in every public place in the growing southern city of Guangzhou.
The Guangzhou Language Committee said the city government has asked relevant departments and organizations to introduce English names for city streets, scenic spots, parks, residential areas, bus stops, metro stations, piers, museums and even public toilets.
The municipal government is striving to turn the city into an international metropolis.
Currently, most of the city’s public places have only pinyin or local Cantonese style names that confuse most foreigners.
At the same time, the language committee will soon launch a city-wide campaign to check English usage in the city.
The committee plans to set up a task force to help inspect all public places to further promote and standardize the use of English names.
The public venues that have no English names will be asked to provide one while those with inappropriate names or bad translations will be required to come up with a better alternative, an official from the committee said.
Cantonese style expressions widely used in the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions will no longer be considered English names.
New police cars are already being converted, with the pinyin of the Chinese word for police, “Jing Cha,” substituted by the word “police” on both sides of the car.
The first group of new patrol wagons were put into service in Guangzhou late last week.
By September 2006, all the patrol wagons in service will be replaced by the new 2004 versions, or re-painted in the new style that includes white, blue and yellow colours, said the official yesterday.
Meanwhile all the grass-roots police offices and sub-stations will also be required to put up signs that include their English names in front of the their gates before the end of the year to provide better service, the official added.
An English police hotline has also opened to serve the English-speaking people in Guangzhou.
From the China Daily.
bilingual education in Shanghai
China’s first 10-year bilingual teaching plan has been unveiled recently by the Shanghai Education Administration, China Radio International reported Thursday.
In 2010, all required courses such as Mathematics, Geography will be expected to be taught in both English and Chinese in Primary and Middle schools in Shanghai.
The Plan will be carried out in two phases. By next year between 200 to 300 Primary and High schools woudl have developed bilingual teaching plans in diverse disciplines. In the second phase, by 2010, more than 400 schools will be capable of offering bilingual teaching.
English as the language of the home in S’pore
The crucial social statistic to note is that a lot more Chinese households are using English for everyday communication. Education Ministry data show that in 1988, the families of 20 per cent of Chinese Primary 1 pupils spoke mainly English at home. The percentage has risen to 50 per cent. For such a short period, the increase has been startling. The presumption that the percentage will keep rising will be hard to disprove in a country which has English as the working language.