English Newspapers in Taiwan (Part 2)

[quote=“Maoman”] :astonished: Marie Feliciano, in today’s dope Taiwan News, writes about the tradition of jewelry-giving in Taiwanese weddings:

Damn, girlfriend is whack! Marie must be a huge fan of hip-hop, because MTV.com says:[quote]The term, which is used to describe diamonds, jewelry and all forms of showy style, was coined by New Orleans rap family Cash Money Millionaires back in the late '90s and started gaining national awareness with a song titled “Bling Bling” by Cash Money artist BG.[/quote]
However, from what I have read, bling-bling is an uncountable noun and has no specific plural form. Nice try anyway, Marie. :wink:[/quote]
She’s done it again! Taiwanese women still want their bling-blings!!!

etaiwannews.com/Business/200 … 645870.htm

Plus: “Happiness is when you take out your Chanel makeup compact, and it shows the double C logo.”

Even for a label whore such as I, this crap is just too much.

Bonus gem: ‘I’ve got two Louis Vuitton travel bags. I’ve had them for years and been all over the world with them and they stood up to the battering so well, much better than any other luggage would have done. I love it when I hear other people commenting on them - wondering who is going to pick them up off the baggage carousel,’"

All the headlines were the same…
I’d have liked
More ‘blues’ for the Pan-greens

Or just on any actual music instead of bloody dance crap every single week.[/quote]

100% Agree. I love dance music, and clubbing, and partying, but you’re going to see what’s going on in the half-page Ministry of Sound or Luxy ad–does it need repeating in three stories on the same page or the page before? I know lots of guys in local bands that work hard and, like for instance today, got one tiny mention in the Danial Pearl event story.[/quote]
Perhaps if these guys in the local bands, that you know, would contract the newspapers someone would write a decent article about them. The ‘reporters’ at most of these newspaper only write about political events so those three stories you saw on the same page were most likely press releases or PR fluff from the same guys who placed the half page ads.

“Bling bling” makes it to the Oxford English Dictionary.

cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/ … 7716.shtml

[quote=“Flicka”][quote=“Maoman”] :astonished: Marie Feliciano, in today’s dope Taiwan News, writes about the tradition of jewelry-giving in Taiwanese weddings:

Damn, girlfriend is whack! Marie must be a huge fan of hip-hop, because MTV.com says:[quote]The term, which is used to describe diamonds, jewelry and all forms of showy style, was coined by New Orleans rap family Cash Money Millionaires back in the late '90s and started gaining national awareness with a song titled “Bling Bling” by Cash Money artist BG.[/quote]
However, from what I have read, bling-bling is an uncountable noun and has no specific plural form. Nice try anyway, Marie. :wink:[/quote]
She’s done it again! Taiwanese women still want their bling-blings!!!

etaiwannews.com/Business/200 … 645870.htm

Plus: “Happiness is when you take out your Chanel makeup compact, and it shows the double C logo.”

Even for a label whore such as I, this crap is just too much.

Bonus gem: ‘I’ve got two Louis Vuitton travel bags. I’ve had them for years and been all over the world with them and they stood up to the battering so well, much better than any other luggage would have done. I love it when I hear other people commenting on them - wondering who is going to pick them up off the baggage carousel,’"[/quote]

I hereby nominate for the Forumosa Typo of the Week Award:

Right in your face, from the top headline in this morning’s China Post:

Children BEARING their butts for peace. :bravo:

Aaarrrgh!
I guess I should’ve read the article first, and looked at the picture in the Taipei Times, p3.

The kiddies were “bearing” drawings of butts where theirs should have been. So the China Post typo was intentional. 't Was not a typo after all. My humblest apologies.

Well, maybe this from the Taipei Times, p4: MorOtorium.

If a spelling mistake were somewhere deep in the text, maybe nobody would notice, but in the headline, at the top of the page …

nobody notices the grand majority of them, due to the sheer number that appear every day

a little sad, no?

Typos are a fact of life. Writers produce them (usually) and fail to see them, because that’s just the way it works. We fall in love with our words as we write them. Love is blind, so we tend to miss typos in our own writing. This is true for nearly everyone. Anyone who thinks they can properly edit their own writing probably also scores their own IQ 15 points too high.

So it’s up to the copy editors to find the typos. But they must usually also clean up the form of the writing, which in Taiwan, probably means working on stories that written by people who learned English as a second language. And the copy desk is often overworked or understaffed besides.

Overall, I’d say the Taipei Times does a good job. But there do seem to be days, or weeks perhaps, when the number of typos goes up. It’s probably a staffing issue. None of these papers make money. They’re all floated by profitable Chinese-language papers.

i knew LDH was old, but not this old …

taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/ … 2003252669

how about pg 23 of todays taipei times then…someone (i’m guessing a certain bar owner who shows much footy) has put in an add celebrating chelski’s demise in the champions league using, wait for it, a pastiche of the mastercard logo which reads…“mastercunt”!!

now, fair play to the person who got away with it but the TT is going to be in a world of shit when mastercard finds out; its not only unauthorised use of their logo but its damaging to their image… what the fuck was the advertising editor thinking when he accepted this ad?

Having wasted many a breakfasts while flipping thru what many Forumosans refer to as ‘ass-wipes’ (Taipei Times, China Post), I can relate to the theme of this thread. However, this article appeared in one of the wipers: chinapost.com.tw/travel/deta … 1404&GRP=g and I don’t know what to make of some basic facts. 1. Are/were there really “short dark pygmies” living in Taiwan? 2. Did the Saisiat Tribe really annihilate them and do they perform this ritual? Most of my students know nothing about the topic. Any input would be appreciated.

Why would you assume that the ad department even has any English speakers in it? The editors never get to see the ads when they are putting the pages together. They just leave a blank space and then the designers put the ads in. The management never thought to get the ads proofread or vetted by someone who can actually understand them, and to be honest, the ad people don’t really care about the “Taipei Times,” because they’re too busy selling ads for the “Liberty Times,” which actually makes money.

Maybe the local papers here should post these rules in their newsrooms?

  1. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
  2. Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects.
  3. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
  4. And don’t start a sentence with a conjunction.
  5. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
  6. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They’re old hat)
  7. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
  8. Be more or less specific.
  9. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.
  10. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
  11. No sentence fragments.
  12. Contractions aren’t necessary and shouldn’t be used.
  13. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
  14. Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.
  15. One should NEVER generalize.
  16. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
  17. Don’t use no double negatives.
  18. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
  19. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
  20. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
  21. The passive voice is to be ignored.
  22. Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.
  23. Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice.
  24. Kill all exclamation points!!!
  25. Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
  26. Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth shaking ideas.
  27. Use the apostrophe in it’s proper place and omit it when its not needed.
  28. Puns are for children, not groan readers.
  29. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
  30. Even IF a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
  31. Who needs rhetorical questions?Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
  32. Again: Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.

In the Taipei Times today, Zippy was in my home town. He is talking to the giant driller in front of the IPE building. Mr. Griffith did a good job getting the background drawn correctly.

Why would you assume that the ad department even has any English speakers in it? The editors never get to see the ads when they are putting the pages together. They just leave a blank space and then the designers put the ads in. The management never thought to get the ads proofread or vetted by someone who can actually understand them, and to be honest, the ad people don’t really care about the “Taipei Times,” because they’re too busy selling ads for the “Liberty Times,” which actually makes money.[/quote]

so if i put in an ad saying “a-bian must die and annette lu is a whore”

they would happily print it up?..brilliant!