As you may have experienced, there are a number of government websites in Taiwan that either lack an English version, or have an English version that is missing so much content it’s not usable.
I am working to prove that this is a general issue government-wide and provide a list of examples to the powers that be. There is a push to address this as part of the Bilingual 2030 initiative.
This page (it seems like a government page) has a lot of English content about Covid-19 vaccines, including a QR code to make an online appointment. However, once you scan the code, the rest of the information (actually making the appointment) is all in Chinese.
The vaccine registration website was made to support English from the beginning. It was there in the beta test.
I guess once it went live, there were many quick improvements and iterations necessary, so that the translation was disabled.
Once they were able to catch up translating all new the new stuff, they enabled it again.
Many many TECO websites, Manila in particular but others as well. The visa requirements are confusing, incomplete, not reflecting current laws, and include conflicting information from one page to the next. Inquiries for clarification in person or by phone are met with the dismissive “Check the website.”
Some TECO offices cover more than one country, but only provide complete information in the language of the country the office is located in. I assume, at least, more complete than what little English information is given.
This is probably less true in the countries they care about.
Yes! I have experienced this as well, but it’s hard to find the examples unless you’re looking up a particular thing. Do you happen to remember any specifics?
How about apps? The Taipei City Hospital and National Health Insurance apps are entirely in Chinese with no English option. The Hospital one, in particular, is a mess of menus with no pictures, so it’s a nightmare to navigate.
Who knows? That long ago all I remember is what I said earlier and being continuously pissed off. Maybe it has changed. That was 6 years ago, so maybe now the information reflects the requirements of 2015, which are probably different in 2021.
I do remember that the main page required a set of documents for a visa, the details of one of those documents was on another page in worse English which appeared to contradict the information on the previous page. And a lot of information was given during the long course of the visa application that wasn’t on the website. There were other problems outside the scope of the English website, because the Chinese side wasn’t much help either.
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