Category Archives: romanization

Taipei MRT stations — a list giving Hanyu Pinyin with tone marks

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outline map of the Taipei MRT systemWhen Taipei’s MRT system — which is mainly a subway system but which also has elevated portions and even sections at ground level — opened, most of its signage was in bastardized Wade-Giles, with the “English” pronunciation of the station names broadcast in the cars resembling a hideous parody of the speech of an especially clueless foreign visitor. Fortunately, the romanization was switched to Hanyu Pinyin and the English announcements were re-recorded to give pronunciations that much more accurately reflected the Mandarin station names.

Unfortunately, English announcements have been added in recent months that feature a high-pitched voice that is probably intended to be ke’ai (“cute”) but which is actually cloying. These must die, die, die! But I’m straying from the main topic.

Anyway, the MRT’s current signage, nicely designed as most of it is, does not give any tone marks. Nor does it provide Pinyin for the station names that are translated into English. And there are also a few mistakes that really need to be corrected in the official forms of the names.

So, I have updated and added some minor corrections to the lists I put up long ago on my first Web site, Romanization.com. The new versions, here on Pinyin Info, are here: Taipei MRT stations in Chinese characters, Hanyu Pinyin, and some English.

spelling out whole numbers in Hanyu Pinyin

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By request, here’s the pattern.

Pay particular attention to the cases of wàn (萬 / 万) and yì (億 / 亿). When the numbers quantifying those are greater than ten, wàn and yì are written separately.

8 bā
58 wǔshíbā
658 liùbǎi wǔshíbā
5,658 wǔqiān liùbǎi wǔshíbā
35,658 sānwàn wǔqiān liùbǎi wǔshíbā
435,658 sìshísān wàn wǔqiān liùbǎi wǔshíbā
9,435,658 jiǔbǎi sìshísān wàn wǔqiān liùbǎi wǔshíbā
79,435,658 qīqiān jiǔbǎi sìshísān wàn wǔqiān liùbǎi wǔshíbā
379,435,658 sānyì qīqiān jiǔbǎi sìshísān wàn wǔqiān liùbǎi wǔshíbā
6,379,435,658 liùshísān yì qīqiān jiǔbǎi sìshísān wàn wǔqiān liùbǎi wǔshíbā

Still higher units follow the pattern of wàn and yì.

Note: When líng (zero) is a medial, it is always written separately.

507 wǔbǎi líng qī 五百零七
40,507 sìwàn líng wǔbǎi líng qī 四萬零五百零七

Do Chinese characters save paper?

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A common claim about Chinese characters (Hanzi) is that they take less space than alphabetic systems and so using them “saves paper.” After all, there aren’t spaces between words when writing in Chinese characters, and Chinese characters handle entire syllables rather than having to spell them out letter by letter. So this claim would seem to be self-evident. But things don’t always work out as expected.

cover of 'Did Adam and Eve Have Navels?' by Martin Gardnercover of the Mandarin translation of 'Did Adam and Eve Have Navels' 愛迪生，你被騙了！：你必須打破的27個科學迷思

A few weeks ago I was browsing the shelves of the enormous, wonderful Eslite bookstore near Taipei City Hall. (Nobody seems quite sure how the so-called English name of this chain is supposed to be pronounced, so many foreigners here prefer the Mandarin name: Chéngpǐn (誠品).) In many of the store’s sections, English-language originals and their translations into Mandarin are shelved right next to each other. So, after looking at a science book in English I pulled out the Mandarin Chinese translation of the same work and browsed through it. While I was doing so, I noticed something unexpected: the Mandarin version was longer than the English-language original.

This sparked my interest, so I pulled out some more paired titles, more or less at random, off the shelves for the purpose of comparison.

I did my best to keep the comparisons fair. In almost all of the cases I compared pairs of trade paperbacks: standard trade paperbacks in English with standard trade paperbacks in Mandarin.

Also, I didn’t count the pages taken up by indexes, since none of the translations into Mandarin had indexes. (Alphabets win hands down over Chinese characters when it comes to creating and using indexes, and I saw no reason to penalize the English books for this by counting pages that the ones in Chinese characters didn’t have the equivalent of.)

In addition, I avoided old books, since I wanted to be fairly sure the Mandarin Chinese translations were from the same English text as I was looking at. (I do, however, have one book written in German and translated into English. I didn’t check to see if the Mandarin version was done from the German original or the English translation.)

Of course, comparing across scripts and languages is certainly not the same as comparing simply across scripts (Hanzi vs. Hanyu Pinyin); but one does what one can.

Later, when I was supplementing my survey at the Eslite bookstore on Dunhua South Road when I noticed an error in my original method: I had forgotten to check where in the book page 1 fell. Many (but not all) English-language books mark the first page of the first chapter as page 1; many (but not all) books printed in Taiwan, however, include the front matter in their pagination, which leads to the first page of the first chapter being page 10 or so. So to help compensate for my oversight, it might be fair to subtract 10 pages from the Mandarin versions of those titles below followed by an asterisk. (The ones without an asterisk are those I examined most recently — and more carefully.)

Here are the results of my admittedly brief and unscientific survey:

Chronicles, Vol. 1, by Bob Dylan
English: 291 pp.
Mandarin in Hanzi: 295 pp.

Collapse, by Jared Diamond
English: 560 pp.
Mandarin in Hanzi: 609 pp.

The Death of Vishnu, by Manil Suri
English: 283 pp.
Mandarin in Hanzi: 287 pp.

Deep Simplicity: Bringing Order to Chaos and Complexity*, by John Gribbin
English: 235 pp.
Mandarin in Hanzi: 255 pp.

Did Adam and Eve Have Navels?: Debunking Pseudoscience*, by Martin Gardner
English: 310 pp.
Mandarin in Hanzi: 367 pp.

The Elegant Universe*, by Brian Greene
English: 428 pp.
Mandarin in Hanzi: 463 pp.

The Enigma of Arrival, by V.S. Naipaul
English: 350 pp.
Mandarin in Hanzi: 422 pp.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, by J.K. Rowling
English: 607 pp. (hardback)
Mandarin in Hanzi: 716 pp.

Laboratory Earth*, by Stephen H. Schneider
English: 169 pp.
Mandarin in Hanzi: 227 pp.

The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson
English: 226 pp. (hardback, slightly larger than the Mandarin trade paperback)
Mandarin in Hanzi: 313 pp. (written left to right)

Perfume*, by Patrick Su?skind
English: 255 pp. (translation from German)
Mandarin in Hanzi: 278 pp.

Tough Choices, by Carly Fiorina
English: 309 pp.
Mandarin in Hanzi: 341 pp.

Vernon God Little, by D.B.C. Pierre
English: 275 pp. (mass market paperback)
Mandarin in Hanzi: 325 pp.

In every instance, the books in Chinese characters are longer than those in English. Moreover, the pages in the Mandarin-language trade paperbacks are somewhat larger than those in the English-language trade paperbacks. So that’s even more paper consumed by the books written in Chinese characters.

Although I certainly do not believe that all pairs of books in English and Mandarin translation follow this pattern, a pattern this very much appears to be.

My guess would be that books printed in China would have fewer pages than those printed in Taiwan. (Anyone want to check some of the above titles? Or does anyone have pairs of other titles in unexpurgated editions?) In general, books in China simply aren’t designed and printed with the same degrees of competency, attention, and concern for the reader as books in Taiwan — not to mention books in the United States and Britain. (Or have things changed very much in this regard since I lived in China?) So, among other factors, the characters tend to be smaller, along with the leading and the margins.

And then there’s the fact that translations in China sometimes omit sentences or entire sections, especially if they are deemed “sensitive.” (I doubt, however, that the books I examined suffered from Beijing’s censors.)

Also, China’s left-to-right format might have an advantage over Taiwan’s predominant top-to-bottom style in terms of space.

Taiwan premier calls for support for romanization of Taiwanese

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Taiwan’s premier, Su Tseng-chang (Sū Zhēn-chāng / 蘇貞昌), has instructed the Ministry of Education to back the Tái-Luó romanization system for Taiwanese.

Unless I’ve been misled by the local media, which has been known to confuse various romanization systems, this romanization system is simply what the Ministry of Education approved back in October 2006. (Tai-Luo means “Taiwan Romanization,” which is not a particularly specific name.) So the statement is likely simply as speculated in the media: that Su is seeking to bolster his “green” and “localization” credentials ahead of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s choice of a candidate for the 2008 presidential election. It’s hard to know if this is simply lip service or something that will lead to increased support for the romanization of Hoklo (Taiwanese), probably the former.

Su made the statement during a meeting last week with the head of the Taiwan Society, Chet Yang (Yáng Wén-jiā / 楊文嘉 / Yang Wen-chia). The Taiwan Society, an umbrella organization for pro-Taiwan groups, backs the same romanization system.

sources and further reading:

language reformer Qian Xuantong remembered

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photo of Qian Xuantong (Ch'ien Hsuan-t'ung)Two days ago was the 68th anniversary of the death of Qian Xuantong (Qián Xuántóng / 錢玄同 / 钱玄同 / Ch’ien Hsüan-t’ung) (1887–1939), a phonetician, philologist, and professor of literature at Peking University. Although he isn’t well known today, Qian was an important contributor to the reforms associated with the May 4 movement. He also helped renew debate about script reform in China.

Just about the time that the National Phonetic Alphabet succeeded in gaining ascendancy over the Mandarin Alphabet and other schemes, the evolution of literary and political movements into a new stage gave rise to renewed consideration of the roman alphabet as the basis for reform of the Chinese written language.

What seems to have initiated the new stage of discussion was a letter written in March 1918 by Ch`ien Hsüan-t`ung, a well-known philologist and professor of literature at National Peking University, to Ch`en Tu-hsiu, who at the time was editor of La Jeunesse, the leading organ of young Chinese intellectuals, and who soon afterward became one of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party. In his letter Ch`ien Hsüan-t`ung expressed approval of Ch`en Tu-hsiu’s demand for a break with the Confucian ideology which had dominated Chinese life for more than two thousand years, and also offered his idea as to how this was to be carried out. “If you want to abolish Confucianism,” he said, “you must first abolish the Chinese script.” To his mind there was little of value in Chinese literature, 99.9 per cent of which he dismissed as merely transmitting Confucian ideology and Taoist mythology.

It seemed to Ch`ien that the ideographic [sic] script could not be adapted to the needs of modern China. He also saw no solution in the attempts which had thus far been made to apply a phonetic system of writing to Chinese. Indeed, it appeared to him that it would be impossible to apply a phonetic system of writing to Chinese at all. These views also led him to the conclusion, reached earlier by Wu Chih-hui and others, that Chinese writing itself would have to be abandoned and replaced by Esperanto.

I seem to remember that someone in Japan was driven to distraction about that country’s orthography and making a similar proposal about switching from Japanese to Esperanto. Or am I imagining that?

At any rate, others soon convinced Qian of the error of his ways, and before long he was a strong supporter of romanization, as were many others of his generation, including Lu Xun. By the way, Qian was the one who convinced Lu Xun to start writing stories. That alone should be enough to make the world forever grateful to him.

I strongly recommend the first of the readings below, from which the above quote was taken. It’s interesting reading.

sources:

Gaoxiong receives funding to upgrade the city’s English

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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 Xǔ Lì-míng (許立明 / 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:

Y.R. Chao works being reissued

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cover of the book 'Linguistic Essays, by Yuenren Chao'The Commercial Press has begun issuing a set of the complete works of Y.R. Chao (Zhao Yuanren / 趙元任 / 赵元任). This project, which will comprise some twenty volumes, will contain works in both English and Mandarin Chinese. All of the many fields Chao wrote about will be covered. Letters and journals will also be included, as will sound recordings. Wonderful!

For those who don’t want to wait for the whole series or don’t feel the need to buy all of them, the Commercial Press has also two volumes of Chao’s selected essays on linguistics: one in English and one in Mandarin. These are, respectively, Linguistic Essays by Yuenren Chao (ISBN: 7-100-03385-3/H·860) and Zhào Yuánrèn yǔyánxué lùnwénjí (赵元任语言学论文集) (ISBN: 7-100-03127-3/H·789).

cover of the book '赵元任语言学论文集 Zhao Yuanren Yuyanxue Lunwenji'Note how the cover of Linguistic Essays, a book printed just last year in China, uses “Yuenren Chao,” the traditional spelling and Western order of his name, rather than “Zhao Yuanren,” the spelling used in Hanyu Pinyin. Also note how the Mandarin title is given in traditional, not simplified, characters: 趙元任語言學論文集, not 赵元任语言学论文集. A nice surprise, on both counts. On the other hand, the botched romanization on the cover of the Mandarin-language collection, which gives “ZHAOYUANREN YUYANXUELUNWENJI” instead of “Zhào Yuánrèn yǔyánxué lùnwénjí,” is particularly inappropriate and painful to look at on a collection of the works of this brilliant linguist. But don’t judge this book by its cover.

Here are links to all the volumes in the complete works that I’ve been able to locate information on:

cover of the first volume of Y.R. Chao's collected works

IPA for Mandarin Chinese

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Another back issue of Sino-Platonic Papers has been released as a free PDF: Chinese Romanization Systems: IPA Transliteration (1.34 MB), by Warren A. Shibles. This was first published in November 1994 as SPP No. 52.

This work, whose rather dim view of romanization I do not share, is primarily a useful compilation of various published forms of IPA transcriptions for all the syllables of Mandarin. To these the author adds his own stab at applying the International Phonetic Alphabet to Mandarin. Moreover, a variety of romanization systems are shown, including that from Werner Rüdenberg’s Chinesisch-deutsches worterbuch.

Elsewhere, Pat Moran recently posted an HTML version of his own IPA chart for Mandarin.

I hope that the variety of approaches will provide a useful reminder that standard Mandarin is represented by a range, not a fixed point. And also that standard Mandarin is not the same thing as a caricature of a Beijing accent. Too often, in their quest for “correctness,” students of Mandarin end up with so many ers that they sound like they’re part circus seal. Emulating the sounds of the Beijing dialect of Mandarin is fine (though generally unnecessary); just don’t go overboard.