4 Jun 2014

CHINA'S CAMPAIGN AGAINST FOREIGN WORDS

Twice in late April, People’s Daily railed
against the incorporation of acronyms and
English words in written Chinese. “How much
have foreign languages damaged the purity
and vitality of the Chinese language?” the
Communist Party’s flagship publication asked
as it complained of the “zero-translation
phenomenon.”
So if you write in the world’s most exquisite
language—in my opinion, anyway— don’t even
think of jotting down “WiFi,” “MBA,” or “VIP.”
If you’re a fan of Apple products, please do
not use “iPhone” or “iPad.” And never ever
scribble “PM2.5,” a scientific term that has
become popular in China due to the air
pollution crisis, or “e-mail.”
China’s communist culture caretakers are
cheesed, perhaps by the unfairness of the
situation. They note that when English
absorbs Chinese words, such as “kung fu,” the
terms are romanized. When China copies
English terms, however, they are often
adopted without change, dropped into Chinese
text as is.
This is not the first time Beijing has moaned
about foreign terms. In 2010 for instance,
China Central Television banned “NBA” and
required the on-air use of “US professional
basketball association.” The irony is that the
state broadcaster consistently uses “CCTV” to
identify itself, something that has not escaped
the attention of China’s noisy online
community.
In response to the new language campaign,
China’s netizens naturally took to mockery
and sarcasm last month. They posted fictitious
conversations using ungainly translations for
the now shunned foreign terms. On Weibo,
China’s microblogging service, they held a
“grand competition to keep the purity of the
Chinese language.” The consensus was that
People’s Daily was once again promoting the
ridiculous and impractical, as the substituted
Chinese translations were almost always
longer and convoluted.
The derision has not stopped China’s
policymakers from taking extraordinary steps
to defend their language. In 2012, the Chinese
government established a linguistics
committee to standardize foreign words. In
2013, it published the first ten approved
Chinese translations for terms such as WTO,
AIDS, and GDP, ordering all media to use
them. A second and third series of approved
terms are expected this year. How French.
There is a bit of obtuseness in all these
elaborate efforts. As People’s Daily , China’s
most authoritative publication, talks about
foreign terms damaging “purity and vitality,”
it forgets that innovation, in the form of
borrowing, is the essence of vitality. And as
for “purity,” the Chinese people are not
buying the Communist Party’s hypocritical
argument. “Do you think simplified Chinese
characters pure?” asked one blogger.
The party, starting in the early Maoist era,
replaced what are now called “traditional”
Chinese characters for a set of “simplified”
ones, thereby making a wholesale change of
the script. The new set of characters may be
easier to write, but the forced adoption meant
that young Chinese in the Mainland can no
longer read classic works in their own
language unless they have been transcribed
into the new characters.
The party, it seems, is just anti-foreign. “Since
the reform and opening up, many people have
blindly worshipped the West, casually using
foreign words as a way of showing off their
knowledge and intellect,” said Xia Jixuan
from the Ministry of Education, quoted in
People’s Daily . “This also exacerbated the
proliferation of foreign words.”
Are foreign words inherently bad? In China,
unfortunately, we are seeing further evidence
of the closing of Communist Party minds.

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