There’s only one legitimate reason for Taiwan having such a mixed-up romanization system and that’s to confuse the mainland troops should they ever invade. It’ll take them a year to figure out how to get to Sun Moon Lake.
But even if the central government, and their counterparts in every city and county, decide to adopt Hanyu pinyin, they still need to ensure two things:
That those people translating characters into Hanyu Pinyin are given a set of standards to follow;
That those painting the Hanyu Pinyin onto road signs, etc. have a clue about what they are reading.
Because even if you get everything translated right, if the guys applying the paint are adding typos because they are clueless about English, then the system will still be a mess.
Hanyu pinyin with typos is bad, but not as bad as tongyong pinyin with typos.
You are right about the Chunghwa Post Company, Feiren. The company decides how its name is spelled and the rest of us just have to go along with it. Maybe they will change the spelling one day. Since it is a state-owned company, hopefully if (when) the government eventually standardises to Hanyu pinyin, the company will change its name accordingly. Mind you, if the Taiwan Name Rectification Movement or whatever it’s called has its way, it will change its name to the Taiwan Post Company instead.
AFAIK, the government still controls the postal system and could normalize the name if it so desired. And even if it no longer controls a majority stake, it certainly retains enough influence that it could bring about the name change.
The government doesn’t care about standards, only about putting a veneer of Tongyong on things.
cranky, you sound like a lobbyist or something. maybe you should start your own group and picket the executive yuan. but what kind of romanization would you use on your signs. if you use Hanyu Pinyin, you’ll be happy, but the government might refuse to read it. If you use Tongyong Pinyin, you’re following their policies, but you will be selling yourself out.
another thing: a long of anti-tongyong pinyin types have the system because it makes it hard to find info using internet searches. but in the case of a lot of people’s names (Li/Lee Deng/Teng Hui/Hway), if it were changed to Hanyu Pinyin, it would cause the same problem. So, what will be the exceptions to the rule?
He is lobbying, and good for him. Thank goodness someone is doing it.
What is that supposed to mean?[/quote]
it means that if cranky becomes a lobbyist and he pickets the executive yuan, they might not read his signs if they are printed in hanyu pinyin, since the central government has adopted tongyong pinyin. it’s all about strategy. you don’t want to give them an excuse to ignore you. IMHO, the signs should be in the shape of street signs…
[quote]Apart from changing the spelling system from “di er shi” to tonyong pinyin, the Post Office address look-up thing has changed “chen” (Wade-Giles, = zhen in Hanyu pinyin, jen in this or that other system), which is usually translated as “town” into “township.” What’s more, the “township” is subdivided into “boroughs.” A borough should surely be equivalent to a qu (or should that be cyu? ,) but a qu is a district, so what in hell is a borough??? Maybe it’s a li, who knows? What a fuck-up.
[/quote]
I think a Li’s a borough.
That pisses me off the way the post office is using tongyong, which is completely different from the pinyin on the street signs. My street is written (in hanyu) Zhao An St (although everyone pronounces it xiao an), and the post office has jyau an or something equally annoying. Pinyin seems to get here though.
I’ve been looking at some of the so-called standards the government is coming up with.
Re. words, the guidelines say that they can be written with intercaps (e.g. “DongMing”), with a space (“Dong Ming”), or solid (“Dongming”). That’s three different “standards” – which is to say no standard at all.
These are guidelines?! These are supposed to be standards?! What the hell is wrong with these people?
“Dongming” would be the only correct form under the real standard – the one devised by informed, careful linguists and validated by time and usage. Taiwan, on the other hand, seems to be making everything up as it goes along – and doing a really bad job of it.
Did anyone else see that Chinglish article in the Taiwan News yesterday? (Somewhat cleaned up version here. I shouldn’t complain too much, however, because the other two papers didn’t bother with the story at all.) It says (who knows how reliably) that the interior ministry has allocated NT$56 million (US$1.6 million) per year for dealing with romanization and maps, etc. Who is getting all of this money, and for what? The “standards” to date?
I’m really, really angry about this nonsense. Juba and Maoman, I really hope you two won’t have to miss next Friday’s meeting as well. There need to be some more voices there. Everyone else who might be interested, let’s try to do something about this. The opportunity for making things better (even though it may be for now within the confines of that unwanted mess of tongyong) isn’t likely to come along again anytime soon.
Actually, I’m not completely sure what exactly next Friday’s meeting is going to be about. But we need to locate the people on these standards committees and help set them straight before it’s too late. Maybe set up our own meetings with them. And maybe get them to give us a hefty consulting fee from that NT$56 million they’re sitting on.
You should post some signs at the language schools…get a bunch of kids who don’t know the hell what you’re fighting for to show up, just as a demonstration of numbers
I think that a lot of us on this list would be interested to help, if we had some guidance on how to organize our efforts. Showing up in numbers is definitely good, I’d be happy to attend next Friday and I’m sure others would as well, but we also need some unity, and single voice to represent our position. So perhaps you Cranky or one of the aforementioned people could come up w/ a petition, listing the common objectives and suggestions, which could be circulated on forumosa and then a list of signatures gathered. (instead of physical signatures, this might be accomplished by opening a new thread, with each consenting person submtting a post with name & contact information listed).
When we do show up at the conference, one person could read the petition, speaking for the entire expat community (or the co-signers to be specific). The rest of us could show support pehaps by wearing the same T-shirt with a printed Chinese slogan. Earlier there were some suggestions for this, such as “tong yong zui tong4 yong”. The problem w- this is that the fight against Tongyong may already be lost, so we’d have to focus our efforts within its confines as Cranky wrote.
They will not read Tongyong either. (Why should they?) I guess in the end (at least for common people) it will be the same “we just write it this way” philosophy, just under a different name.
