Keelung asks for English help

Taiwan Quick Take: Keelung asks for English help

this from the Taipei Time site:

taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/ … 2003308101


Sunday, May 14, 2006,

The Keelung City government is inviting members of the public, including foreigners, to help proofread and correct English on public signs around the city, in city government publications and on its Web site. The city government plans to hold an “English proofreading and correcting” activity between tomorrow and June 15 as part of efforts to foster the development of an English-Chinese bilingual environment for citizens and foreign visitors. Anyone is welcome to sign up for the activity on the city government’s Web site, and approved submitted corrections will be rewarded, city officials said on Friday.

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I’ve been seeing these “correct the English and win a prize” activities all over Taiwan…why can’t the cities just keep a person or two on their staff who are native English speakers and their job would be solely to proofread English websites, signs, etc.?

:sunglasses: I was wondering the same thing…but since I am not yet working in Taiwan I wasn’t sure if they did have truly English-literate staffers in those municipal departments…

maybe things will change (in keelung/in taiwan?), in the aftermath of this story:

[quote]City to recall certificates due to English errors

Newspaper gets egg all over its face in effort to fix mistakes

2006-04-07 / taiwan news, STAFF REPORTER / Su Chueh-yu

Receiving an award for best performance in school is probably the dream of most Taiwanese students, but when the English on the bilingual award certificate is riddled with spelling and grammatical errors, the honor becomes more of an embarrassment to all concerned.

According to local sources yesterday, this was the case on Tuesday, Children’s Day, when the Keelung City Government presented “Best Performance Award” certificates to a number of the city’s elementary school students.

The English on the certificates read: “Congratulate you being a model student. Studying is the way to success. effort is the base of harvest. You can get this honor because of diligence, enthusiasm and politeness. We are pround of you and hope you will keep working hard to devote to the society in the future.” [/quote]

etaiwannews.com/showPage.php … code=00000

Screw Keelung and its government. :smiling_imp: Until the government enacts a “foreign talent” scheme that is similar to the one in Singapore (where all private businesses and goverment ministries need to hire a certain quota of well-educated, professional, and competent foreigners in a variety of professions) the English capabilities and internationalism of the mid-level drones is going to be piss weak.

Why should we do it for free or for some shit-assed trinkets? :loco: Let them eat cake or, more appropriately, fish :smiling_imp:

I’ve got to wonder if they are being inundated with responses not from native English speakers (who, after all, have better things to do with their lives), but from junior high students whose parents told them they would give them a gift if they found an error. Imagine being the poor city employee schlub having to sift through hundreds of “corrections,” most of which are probably even worse than the original.

Precisely, pay someone to do the job right. Except that won’t happen because you would need to pay that person more than Taiwanese and that is not going to happen in the civil service world.

[quote=“xtrain”]maybe things will change (in Keelung (Jilong)/in taiwan?), in the aftermath of this story:

[quote]City to recall certificates due to English errors

Newspaper gets egg all over its face in effort to fix mistakes

2006-04-07 / taiwan news, STAFF REPORTER / Su Chueh-yu

Receiving an award for best performance in school is probably the dream of most Taiwanese students, but when the English on the bilingual award certificate is riddled with spelling and grammatical errors, the honor becomes more of an embarrassment to all concerned.

According to local sources yesterday, this was the case on Tuesday, Children’s Day, when the Keelung (Jilong) City Government presented “Best Performance Award” certificates to a number of the city’s elementary school students.

The English on the certificates read: “Congratulate you being a model student. Studying is the way to success. effort is the base of harvest. You can get this honor because of diligence, enthusiasm and politeness. We are pround of you and hope you will keep working hard to devote to the society in the future.” [/quote]

etaiwannews.com/long-assed_u … s_the_page.[/quote]

I know it’s fun making fun of foreigners who can’t speak English, but right now they’re probably having a good laugh at the smug whiteys who can’t even post on a BBS without making the thread bloody unreadable.

Figuring out what that certificate meant is a lot easier than scrolling from side to side to read each line. And YOU KNOW BETTER. :fume:

piss off. i don’t give a rat’s ass if you have trouble moving across a page all of a 1/2 inch. grow up.

AND STOP YELLING.