{"id":97,"date":"2005-04-13T13:58:10","date_gmt":"2005-04-13T05:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=97"},"modified":"2017-09-14T11:53:04","modified_gmt":"2017-09-14T03:53:04","slug":"sign-of-ignorance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2005\/sign-of-ignorance\/","title":{"rendered":"sign of ignorance"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I came across an article today about some sign designers working in China. The title alone, “Graphics That Bridge a Linguistic Divide”<\/a>, was enough to raise a red flag (pun not intended), because for many it will evoke the widespread myth<\/b> that Chinese characters transcend languages. <\/p>\n

The designers were describing the making of a large sign for the “Suzhou International Exposition Centre” (苏州国际博览中心 Sūzhōu guójì bólǎn zhōngxīn).<\/p>\n

Here’s a good example of the problems with their remarks: <\/p>\n

\u201cThe last two characters for Centre<\/i>–it\u2019s interesting they went with the British spelling–are actually redundant,\u201d Calori says. \u201cOften you see the seventh character–it means \u2018middle\u2019–for center. But the client also added the eighth character, which is the symbol of \u2018heart.\u2019 The heart is the middle, so they reinforce each other. This was a total embellishment.\u201d Adds Vanden-Eynden: \u201cThey wanted the warm, fuzzy heart center, as opposed to the cold, hard center of hell.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is so wrongheaded and absurd it’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry. The client didn’t add<\/i> the eighth character (心). It’s used in writing the word for “center,” which is zhōngxīn (中心). The only thing “fuzzy” here is the thinking behind this nonsense. It’s possible, though, that the designers aren’t responsible for this way of thinking; few Chinese people are aware of how their own writing system works and thus tend to believe such crap. <\/p>\n

Colors: … \u201cThere are certain colors, you don\u2019t use. White, for instance, is the color of death. It\u2019s like directing people to a funeral.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, yes, white can have that connotation. But white is the background color of the sign! Are the designers saying they wanted<\/i> to direct people to a funeral? Of course not. The reality is that white has that connotation only in certain contexts<\/i>. So what’s all this talk about leading people to a funeral? Sheesh. <\/p>\n

Letters vs. Characters: … \u201cEach character is really an idea,\u201d Calori says.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wrong. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re called ideograms.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Although some people, through ignorance or force of habit, might use this unfortunate term, the fact remains that Chinese characters aren’t ideograms<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The pullbox giving “character dissection” is also an embarrassment. Almost everything there is wrong or at least misleading. They couldn’t even get many of the tones right. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But the article isn’t a total washout. A few points are of interest. <\/p>\n

Sizing: English characters tend to be heavy compositionally, while Chinese is complex and delicate. \u201cSo we always size Chinese twenty percent taller to give it balance,\u201d Vanden-Eynden says.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Type Position: The Chinese characters appear here in the \u201csuperior\u201d position, on the left side. \u201cIn Hong Kong, before the handover, English always appeared first,\u201d Vanden-Eynden says. \u201cOn the mainland today, Chinese is always in the superior position, but the Chinese still want English on all their signs, even if there are no tourists around, because to them it makes it look like [they are part of] the 21st century.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fonts: Due to the seemingly infinite nature of Chinese, there are a limited amount of usable fonts. \u201cUnlike here, you don\u2019t have 10,000 readable options,\u201d Vanden-Eynden says. \u201cYou have what they call the big five type faces.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I came across an article today about some sign designers working in China. The title alone, “Graphics That Bridge a Linguistic Divide”, was enough to raise a red flag (pun not intended), because for many it will evoke the widespread … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,12,15,32,20,19,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-chinese","category-chinese-characters","category-mandarin","category-pinyin","category-romanization","category-signage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7450,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97\/revisions\/7450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}