See all those languages up there? We translate Global Voices stories to make the world's citizen media available to everyone.
Learn more about Lingua Translation »
Michael Turton from The View from Taiwan comments on the recent debate about Taiwan's status in Beijing Olympics. The blogger points out that the term Taiwan has disappeared in the recent naming debate, now it is a choice between Chinese Taipei or China Taipei.
This site is licensed as Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. Please read our attribution policy to learn about freely redistributing our work Some Rights Reserved
5 comments
It is no different between Chinese Taipei and China Taipei
a question : how to translate French Guyana ,British Virgin Island ???
In short .”The games that open Friday in Beijing may be the most politicized since the Nazi German dictator Adolf Hitler sought to enlist the Berlin Olympics of 1936 as evidence of Aryan racial superiority. ”
by washington times
btw, http://globalvoicesonline.org/2008/06/02/taiwan-bridging-digital-divide-with-puncar/
Countries : Taiwan (ROC) !!
I already covered this topic in my previous comment on Global Voices Online under the article “No “Go China!” banners at the Olympics”
http://globalvoicesonline.org/2008/07/22/china-no-go-china-banners-at-the-olympics/
The official English name for Taiwan’s team is “Chinese Taipei” as recognized by the IOC. There is no dispute over this name and “Taiwan” was never an option . The debate over the correct Chinese translation of Chinese Taipei was concluded on July 25 in Taiwan’s favor with
中华台北 being chosen over the mainland’s preferred
中国台北。
CCTV’s error was simply a mistake out of habit, as mainland media had been using the term 中国台北 up until the official announcement two weeks ago. I’m sure the TV announcers in China will be more careful now that somebody with a blog in Taiwan has made such a fuss over this error.
No “Go China”? Go Taiwan!
I have serious doubhts about the below statement.
CCTV’s error was simply a mistake out of habit, as mainland media had been using the term 中国台北 up until the official announcement two weeks ago.
As CCTV is unashamedly the political lackey of the Chinese Communist Party and voicing no opinion or perspective that is not in keeping with the ambitions of the C.C.P. meaning that everything on C.C.T.V is carefully screened and chereographed to achieve this objective. The presenters and newsreaders must be well aware of making a genuine slip up which makes it hard to believe that refering to Taiwan as “China, Tapei” instead of “Chinese, Taipei” could be allowed to slip throught the system.
The fact that CCTV has a role to degrade Taiwan’s political status at every possible opportunity is undeniable. For example why can’t CCTV 9 be straight up and objective and refer to the Taiwanese Government as the “Taiwanese Government” instead of the bizarre euphimism the “Taiwan Authority”. Let’s face it love it or hate it you cannot deny Taiwan is currently self governing so why can’t you call the entity that governs Taiwan a government. I mean it is completely logical and rational. The obvious answer is that the irrational use of euphimisms is in keeping with CCTV’s mandate of an unrelenting degrading of Taiwan’s political status. Another CCTV euphimism that I find completely illogical is “Taiwan leader” when referring to President Ma and President Chen before him. Again love it or hate both Ma and Chen before him were directly elected by the voting population to lead the executive branch of the Taiwanese government. So if they both don’t qualify for the title “President” then I don’t know who does. Again the use of these euphimisms displays CCTV’s over riding agenda of degrading Taiwan and not following a rational and objective use of the English language.
In my experience with the Chinese the “slip up” of refering using “China, Taipei” instead of “Chinese, Taipei” is consistant with the Chinese system of negotiating. Whereby no sooner have you signed an agreement with the Chinese that they immediately start testing the waters by seeing how you or your organisation react to a “bending” of the agreement in order to see how far they go before facing any real consequences. In addition to this using the term “Taipei, China” from time to time enables the C.C.P. to demonstrate their dominate position as it indicates they can periodically violate any agreement with the K.M.T or Taiwan and not face any real consequences. Anyway the timid response of the K.M.T. to the C.C.P. violating the I.O.C. agreement must be gratifying and empowering to the C.C.P’s ego and status of the dominant player in any negotiations.
I remember that for a long time that things labeled “Made in China” were from Taiwan.
I also remember not long ago that a bunch of my friends from Taiwan got rather upset when the topic of whether being Taiwanese is different from being Chinese was raised. Almost all of them immediately proclaimed they were Chinese. And some of them even proclaimed that they were more Chinese that Chinese from the mainland.
I guess some of them probably considered the mainland to be a rogue province rather the other way around. It probably justified given the ROC’s territorial claim.
http://tinyurl.com/2525uy
It seems like it doesn’t matter what side of the strait you live in, you’ll be considered Chinese by the PRC and ROC.
It kinda lame to squabble over the issue of governance.
Instead let celebrate our commonality — GO CHINESE!
That is, unless you don’t want to be Chinese, then GO AWAY!