When it comes to signage and much else in Taiwan, the phrase chàbuduō jiù kěyǐ (差不多就可以) might qualify as the country’s unofficial motto. “Close enough for government work” is probably the best idiomatic translation.
The railway-station sign in this photo in many ways exemplifies this.
Rather than list all of the errors and oddities of this sign, I thought I’d let readers have a go at this one. How many errors and problematic points can you find?
Sino-Platonic Papers has just released online its second compilation of book reviews. Here are the books discussed. (Note: The links below do not lead to the reviews but to other material. Use the link above.)
Invited Reviews
- William A. Boltz, “The Typological Analysis of the Chinese Script.” A review article of John DeFrancis, Visible Speech, the Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems.
- Paul Varley and Kumakura Isao, eds., Tea in Japan: Essays on the History of Chanoyu. Reviewed by William R. LaFleur .
- Vladimir N. Basilov, ed., Nomads of Eurasia. Reviewed by David A. Utz.
Reviews by the Editor
- “Philosophy and Language.” A review article of Françcois Jullien, Procès ou Création: Une introduction a la pensée des lettrés chinois.
Language and Linguistics
- W. South Coblin, A Handbook of Eastern Han Sound Glosses.
- Weldon South Coblin. A Sinologist’s Handlist of Sino-Tibetan Lexical Comparisons.
- ZHOU Zhenhe and YOU Rujie. Fangyan yu Zhongguo Wenhua [Topolects and Chinese Culture].
- CHOU Fa-kao. Papers in Chinese Linguistics and Epigraphy.
- ZENG Zifan. Guangzhouhua Putonghua Duibi Qutan [Interesting Parallels between Cantonese and Mandarin].
- Luciana Bressan. La Determinazione delle Norme Ortografiche del Pinyin.
- JIANG Shaoyu and XU Changhua, tr. Zhongguoyu Lishi Wenfa [A Historical Grammar of Modern Chinese] by OTA Tatsuo.
- McMahon, et al. Expository Writing in Chinese.
- P. C. T’ung and D. E. Pollard. Colloquial Chinese.
- Li Sijing, Hanyu “er” Yin Shih Yanjiu [Studies on the History of the “er” Sound in Sinitic].
- Maurice Coyaud, Les langues dans le monde chinois.
- Patricia Herbert and Anthony Milner, eds., South-East Asia: Languages and Literatures; A Select Guide.
- Andrew Large, The Artificial Language Movement.
- Wilhelm von Humboldt, On Language: The Diversity of Hunan Language-Structure and Its Influence on the Mental Development of Mankind.
- Vitaly Shevoroshkin, ed., Reconstructing Languages and Cultures.
- Jan Wind, et al., eds., Studies in Language Origins.
Short Notices
- A. Kondratov, Sounds and Signs.
- Jeremy Campbell, Grammatical Man: Information, Entropy, Language, and Life.
- Pitfalls of the Tetragraphic Script.
Lexicography and Lexicology
- MIN Jiaji, et al., comp., Hanyu Xinci Cidian [A Dictionary of New Sinitic Terms]
- LYU Caizhen, et al., comp., Xiandai Hanyu Nanci Cidian [A Dictionary of Difficult Terms in Modern Sinitic].
- Tom McArthur, Worlds of Reference: Lexicography, learning and language from the clay tablet to the computer.
A Bouquet of Pekingese Lexicons
- JIN Shoushen, comp., Beijinghua Yuhui [Pekingese Vocabulary].
- SONG Xiaocai and MA Xinhua, comp., Beijinghua Ciyu Lishi [Pekingese Expressions with Examples and Explanations] .
- SONG Xiaocai and MA Xinhua, comp., Beijinghua Yuci Huishi [Pekingese Words and Phrases with Explanations] .
- FU Min and GAO Aijun, comp., Beijinghua Ciyu (Dialectical Words and Phrases in Beijing).
A Bibliographical Trilogy
- Paul Fu-mien Yang, comp., Chinese Linguistics: A Selected and Classified Bibliography.
- Paul Fu-mien Yang, comp., Chinese Dialectology: A Selected and Classified Bibliography.
- Paul Fu-mien Yang, comp., Chinese Lexicology and Lexicography: A Selected and Classified Bibliography.
Orality and Literacy
- Jack Goody. The interface between the written and the oral.
- Jack Goody. The logic of writing and the organization of society.
- Deborah Tannen, ed., Spoken and Written Language: Exploring Orality and Literacy.
Society and Culture
- Scott Simmie and Bob Nixon, Tiananmen Square.
- Thomas H. C. Lee, Government Education and Examinations in Sung China.
- ZHANG Zhishan, tr. and ed., Zhongguo zhi Xing [Record of a Journey to China].
- LIN Wushu, Monijiao ji Qi Dongjian [Manichaeism and Its Eastward Expansion].
- E. N. Anderson, The Food of China.
- K. C. Chang, ed., Food in Chinese Culture: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives.
- Jacques Gemet, China and the Christian Impact: A Conflict of Cultures.
- D. E. Mungello, Curious Land: Jesuit Accommodation and the Origins of Sinology.
Short Notice
- Roben Jastrow, The Enchanted Loom: Mind in the Universe.
In Memoriam
Chang-chen HSU
August 6, 1957 – June 27, 1989
- Hsu Chang-chen, ed., and tr., Yin-tu hsien-tai hsiao-shuo hsüan [A Selection of Contemporary Indian Fiction].
- Hsu Chang-chen, T’o-fu tzu-huiyen-chiu (Mastering TOEFL Vocabulary).
- Hsu Chang-chen, Tsui-chung-yao-te i pai ke Ying-wen tzu-shou tzu-ken (100 English Prefixes and Word Roots).
- Hsu Chang-chen, Fa-wen tzu-hui chieh-koufen-hsi — tzu-shou yü tzu-ken (Les préfixes et les racines de la langue française).
- Hsu Chang-chen, comp. and tr., Hsi-yü yü Fo-chiao wen-shih lun-chi (Collection of Articles on Studies of Central Asia, India, and Buddhism).
This is SPP no. 14, from December 1989. The entire text is now online as a 7.3 MB PDF.
See my earlier post for the contents of the first SPP volume of reviews and a link to the full volume.
David, who for just a little while longer lives in the same Banqiao neighborhood as I, sent me a photo of a street sign in our highly populated but little-discussed city.
The sign tells us this is “Guanciao” West Road. In Hanyu Pinyin this would be “Guanqiao.” Guanqiao? The only word in my biggest Mandarin-English dictionary under that spelling is guānqiào (關竅/关窍), which is defined as “orifices on the human body.” Hmm. Taiwan might have the questionable taste of having many a road still named after a dead dictator, but orifices?
This oddity is explained by the fact that Banqiao is simply continuing its tradition of typos — even on relatively new signs. (The style of the sign and the choice of Tongyong Pinyin both indicate this went up within the past few years.)
Guanciao (Guanqiao) should be Guancian. (In Hanyu Pinyin, 館前西路 is written Guǎnqián Xīlù.) It’s worth noting this is not a tiny lane but a road in a well-traveled part of town.
As long as I’m putting up yet another post with photos and doing further damage to my reputation of having one of the Taiwan blogosphere’s fastest-loading, least Turtonesque sites*, I might as well go ahead and add one more so I can mention something else about this sign.
Let’s look at the relative size of the Chinese characters and the alphabetic text. The majority of the letters are but one quarter of the height of the Chinese characters.
Although in this particular case the lettering might not be too small, this style often leads to nearly illegible romanization, especially on signs posted high above streets.
* Just in terms of the average number photos per post, that is. (But that’s in part because I’m a lousy photographer.) Congratulations, Michael, on reaching two thousand posts!
The Taipei City Government has begun to replace busstop signs throughout the city.
The color scheme of the new signs, however, is a poor choice because white letters against a gray background offer little contrast, especially at night.
Here, for example, is are daytime and nighttime shots of the same stop, taken from different angles.
The stop is not lit well, so the nighttime photo had to be taken with a flash. So this photo, though the focus came out a little fuzzy, represents an improvement over what people would normally see at night.
Two weeks ago I wrote the Taipei City Government’s Department of Transportation for clarification about the policies associated with this signage but have not received an answer. Everyone I have spoken with in that office has been friendly; but the system is unfortunately still stuck in its ways.
At least InTerCaPiTaLiZaTion doesn’t seem to be in effect. And the new style for displaying bus routes does provide more information to those who cannot read Chinese characters.
(click for larger image)
Sino-Platonic Papers has just released online its first compilation of book reviews. Here is a list of the books discussed. (Note: The links below do not lead to the reviews but to other material.)
Invited Reviews
- J. Marshall Unger, The Fifth Generation Fallacy. Reviewed by Wm. C. Hannas
- Rejoinder by J. Marshall Unger
- Hashimoto Mantaro, Suzuki Takao, and Yamada Hisao. A Decision for the Chinese Nations — Toward the Future of Kanji (Kanji minzoku no ketsudan — Kanji no mirai ni mukete). Reviewed by Wm. C. Hannas
- S. Robert Ramsey. The Languages of China. Reviewed by Wm. C. Hannas
- James H. Cole, Shaohsing. Reviewed by Mark A. Allee
- Henry Hung-Yeh Tiee, A Reference Grammar of Chinese Sentences. Reviewed by Jerome L. Packard
Reviews by the Editor
- David Pollack, The Fracture of Meaning
- Jerry Norman, Chinese
- N. H. Leon, Character Indexes of Modern Chinese
- Shiu-ying Hu, comp., An Enumeration of Chinese Materia Medico
- Donald M. Ayers, English Words from Latin and Greek Elements
- Chen Gang, comp., A Dictionary of Peking Colloquialisms (Beijing Fangyan Cidian)
- Dominic Cheung, ed. and tr., The Isle Full of Noises
- Jonathan Chaves, ed. and tr., The Columbia Book of Later Chinese Poetry
- Philip R. Bilancia, Dictionary of Chinese Law and Government
- Charles O. Hucker, A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China
- Robert K. Logan, The Alphabet Effect
- Liu Zhengtan, Gao Mingkai, et al., comp., A Dictionary of Loan Words and Hybrid Words in Chinese (Hanyu Wailai Cidian)
- The Mandarin Daily Dictionary of Loan Words (Guoyu Ribao Wailaiyu Cidian)
- Shao Xiantu, Zhou Dingguo, et al., comp., A Dictionary of the Origins of Foreign Place Names (Waiguo Diming Yuyuan Cidian)
- Tsung-tung Chang, Metaphysik, Erkenntnis und Praktische Philosophie um Chuang-Tzu
- Irene Bloom, trans, ed., and intro., Knowledge Painfully Acquired: The K’un-chih chi of Lo Ch’in-shun
- Research Institute for Language Pedagogy of the Peking College of Languages, comp., Frequency Dictionary of Words in Modern Chinese (Xiandai Hanyu Pinlyu Cidian)
- Liu Yuan, chief compiler, Word List of Modern Mandarin (Xianhi Hanyu Cibiao)
- The Editing Group of A New English-Chinese Dictionary, comp., A New English-Chinese Dictionary
- BBC External Business and Development Group, Everyday Mandarin
This is SPP no. 8, from February 1988. The entire text is now online as a 4.2 MB PDF.
Here’s an example of the mixing of romanization systems and addition of errors that used to be common in Taipei before the city switched to Hanyu Pinyin. These signs are on a corner in Banqiao, Taipei County, not far from Banqiao City Hall.
First, let’s set the scene. We have two types of signs, both with a mix of romanization and English. One set of signs gives street names; the other points toward places of possible interest.
The blue-panel signage on the right represents something introduced during the term of the previous mayor, a member of the Democratic Progressive Party. And since the DPP backs Tongyong Pinyin for Mandarin, that’s the romanization system used most of the time on such signs. A number of the photos on these signs feature the previous mayor, who had relatively little recognition among the public since he had succeeded someone else’s term rather than being elected to his own. He put his photo on all sorts of things. But he failed to be elected to the city’s top spot. His challenger, the current mayor of Banqiao, spreads her name recognition by having her recycling speech broadcast from the city’s trash trucks.
OK, now note the cap on the signpost. It reads “Ban ciao” in black letter. Although I spotted several of these today, I’d never seen any before, which would mean it’s very likely that a KMT-led city administration under a KMT-led county government is putting up new signs in Tongyong Pinyin, a romanization system the Kuomintang (Guomindang) opposes. (The KMT used to oppose Hanyu Pinyin as well, which is how Taiwan ended up with MPS2, the Tongyong Pinyin of the 1980s.) Similarly, Banqiao has relatively new signs in prominent places around the city that read (in a particularly clumsy script face) “Bravo Banciao.” (What exactly about Banqiao is worthy of such a cheer is not stated.) Even though the city administration is under the mistaken impression that it must use Tongyong (and it does suffer from this idea), that doesn’t mean it has to go around putting up new signage in this.
To get back to the cap, the likely story is that the transportation department had some leftover money in its budget which had to be spent lest the following year’s budget be cut; but rather than spend it on fixing errors, which would involve study and actual work, people decided to make something that the boss thinks would look cool.
I wonder, though, how many Taiwanese would even recognize this reads “Banciao” unless they had it specifically pointed out to them. A few months ago I spotted an innocent-looking teenager shopping with her mother. The girl was wearing a shirt with the following text:
Although it’s almost certain she would know both English words and understand their meaning together, I think it extremely unlikely she knew what words were on her shirt.
OK, let’s have a closer look at the signs themselves.
Here we have
And then there’s the matter of “The Lin’s Family Residence At Panchail,” which would be much better written simply “Lin Family Residence” or by the most commonly used English name “Lin Family Gardens.”
So that’s three romanization systems, a typo, and clumsy English on official signage at just one corner — to say nothing of how relatively small the alphabetic text is. And there’s no solution in sight.
Here’s the official word by PRC Premier Wēn Jiābǎo (温家宝/溫家寶) on what the PRC will do regarding education. I’m putting this here mainly for later reference.
We put education high on the development agenda. A total of 184 billion yuan was allocated by both central and local governments to fund rural compulsory education, enabling us to pay tuition and miscellaneous fees for the 52 million rural students receiving compulsory education throughout the western region and in some areas in the central region, provide free textbooks to 37.3 million students from poor families and grant living allowances to 7.8 million students staying in dormitories. Of the 410 targeted counties, 317 reached the goals of making nine-year compulsory education generally available and basically eliminating illiteracy among young and middle-aged adults. The proportion of the target population attaining these two goals in the western region increased to 96% from the 77% of 2003. The central government spent 9 billion yuan over the past three years building facilities for 7,651 rural boarding schools. Eight billion yuan was spent to develop modern primary and middle school distance education for rural areas. The project covers over 80% of the rural primary and middle schools in the central and western regions and enables over 100 million students to have access to high-quality education resources. New enrollment at secondary vocational schools totaled 7.41 million and total attendance reached 18.09 million. Total attendance at institutions of higher education reached 25 million and the gross enrollment ratio rose to 22%….
Education is the bedrock of China’s development, and fairness in education is an important form of social fairness. We need to make education a strategic priority and accelerate the development of all types of education at all levels. The overall goal is to expand the availability of compulsory education and consolidate progress already made, accelerate the development of vocational education and strive to improve the quality of higher education. This year, we will completely stop collecting tuition and miscellaneous fees from all rural students receiving compulsory education. This will ease the financial burden of 150 million rural households with children attending primary and middle schools. We will continue to provide free textbooks for poor rural students receiving compulsory education and living allowances for those staying in dormitories. We will improve the mechanism for ensuring continuing funding for rural compulsory education. This year’s government allocations for rural compulsory education total 223.5 billion yuan, up 39.5 billion yuan from last year. During implementation of the Eleventh Five-Year Plan, 10 billion yuan will be allocated from the central government budget to upgrade rural junior middle school facilities. Local governments should also make corresponding increases in funding in this area. In addition, we will continue working to solve the problems that students from poor urban families and children of rural migrant workers in cities have in receiving compulsory education. This year, we will ensure that the plan to make nine-year compulsory education generally available and basically eliminate illiteracy among young and middle-aged adults in the western region and the modern rural primary and middle school distance education project achieve their final objectives. We will work to ensure that all children are able to afford and attend school. We are definitely capable of reaching this goal. We need to attach more importance to developing vocational education, which is a major reform and historic task to truly make education available to all members of society. The focus of this effort will be on developing secondary vocational education and strengthening the vocational education and training network for urban and rural areas. We will deepen reform of the management of vocational education by setting up a mechanism that combines the participation of industry, enterprises and schools and promoting models of school operation that integrate work and study and enhance cooperation between schools and enterprises. We will accelerate reform of education and teaching in higher education with the focus on improving quality, keep the scale of enrollment relatively stable, increase efforts to develop leading disciplines and universities, make innovations in the model for producing capable personnel and improve the mix of capable personnel being produced in order to produce large numbers of outstanding personnel. We will support and standardize the development of non-publicly funded schools and improve conditions for non-government entities to run schools.
Source: Report on the Work of the Government delivered by Premier Wen Jiabao at the Fifth Session of the Tenth National People’s Congress on March 5, 2007, via Xinhua, March 16, 2007
What is reportedly Taiwan’s first dictionary of language of the Truku (Tàilǔgé 太魯閣) tribe was released yesterday. The Truku are also known as the Sediq. They live mainly in Xiulin, Hualian County, site of the Taroko Gorge, one of Taiwan’s most scenic areas, which takes its name from the tribe (or perhaps vice versa).
The work is based in part on a lexicon compiled in the 1950s, when a pastor at a local church began to translate the Bible into Truku. Six pastors at a local church have been working on the dictionary since 1999.
Words in Truku are created by adding prefix, postfix and midfix to root words. A root word can develop into as many as 40 words, Jiru [Haruq, one of the authors of the dictionary,] explained.
Midfix is added into the middle of a root word by separating the root word.
Taking an example from the dictionary, hakawis a root word meaning “bridge” in Truku, hmhakaw becomes “bridge-building”, mhakaw is a bridge builder, shakaw is the reason to build a bridge and hkagan is the location where the bridge is built.
“Verb tenses and different parts of speech are also constructed by adding prefixes, postfixes or midfixes to a rood word,” Iyuq [Ciyang, another of the authors of the dictionary,] said.
Until recently, the Truku were seen as being part of the Atayal tribe.
sources: