China 中國 or Mainland 大陸

[hansioux]

"Mainland"? Which Mainland?

Since 1949m the KMT officials deliberately and misleadingly translated mainland as 大陸, which actually means the continent in Chinese. That’s why many people would rhetorically ask “which 大陸?” since there are at least 5 or 7 continents, none of which is a country. Mainland should have been translated to 本土 instead. The reason why I say the KMT did it on purpose is that when “mainland” is used in the American context, like Hawai’i and the US mainland, the translation would always be 美國本土, you wo…

We of course had a discussion on this subject. The usage of 大陸 and mainland was imposed on the Taiwanese sometime in the 50s. Prior to that people would use 中國, 支那, or at most 內地 by Chinese refugees.

A term that would make more linguistic sense would be 本土, which is the term used to describe similar island-mainland situation for other countires. Like you would never see mainland in a Hawaiian context translated to 美國大陸. 大陸 means continent, and when used in the context of continental, 美洲大陸 would instead be used. So it’s either 亞洲大陸, or 中國本土, or just 中國.