China bans thickness

[John Fairbairn]

At the end of 2010 the Chinese government apparently banned the use of foreign words in publications, including web sites - to prevent sullying the purity of the language. The ban includes abbreviations. Announcers covering basketball games supposedly can no longer say NBA.

Chinese is replete with instructive parables from the past - they traditionally began "There was a man from Song..." - but they don't seem to have an equivalent of King Canute to teach the bureaucrats the folly of the enterprise. Apart from vainly trying to stem the tide, they risk embarrassment from turfing up how many words have entered Chinese from Japanese - still a sore point with many Chinese.

Chinese go has many words borrowed from Japanese, such as thickness and tesuji. I looked at the early issues of Weiqi Tiandi this year, but so far have seen no impact. The borrowed Japanese words use Chinese characters, of course, so it is easy to take an ostrich approach to them, but I see that things like DVD and western numerals still appear.

We have several people on this forum living in China. Does anyone there know how this edict is working out in practice? At one level I'd expect it to be laughed out of court. But then I think of all those poor sparrows that Mao took a dislike to.

[jts]

Having just left China, I can assure you that there is more English than ever before... Street signs, ads, CCTV. If CCTV hasn't gotten the memo yet, they can't be taking it too seriously.

[tchan001]

I highly doubt they will ban arabic numerals.
And it would be really bad if they switched from the Gregorian Calendar year to something like the XX year of the PRC.

[illluck]

I've been out of China for about 11 years now, so I'm probably pretty badly out-of-date. I do, however, still visit Chinese forums, so I can probably provide a bit more information.

I have not heard of this ban. If there's any substance in it, I suspect it's something that discourages these things from official sources (and I doubt even that, but since I don't read Chinese newspapers and watch news I don't really know for sure). I do know that on Tom Weiqi there's absolutely no difference - e.g. tesuji used regularly.

In any case, I suspect it's probably some overblown/taken out of context edict, if it actually is true.

Also, I thought "thickness" was in Chinese terminology anyway (unlike, say, tesuji and komoku).

Edit: I was curious, so decided to go to the site for Renminribao (I'm not sure how to say it, but I think it's considered more or less "official"). If you go to the sports section, you can see "NBA" in highlighted red XD http://sports.people.com.cn/GB/index.html

[John Fairbairn]

I thought I'd dig out the original link. I haven't had time to re-read it to check my original understanding, but a quick glance at the first par seems to justify it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12050067

[illluck]

Oh wow, just hunted down what the original source seems to be ( in Chinese at http://www.gapp.gov.cn/cms/html/21/508/ ... 08310.html for those interested).

The interesting thing is that it's actually a call to enforce a law that was passed 10 years ago (October 31st was the anniversary).

The entire document is in government speak, full of ambiguity. For example "... the unreasonable use of foreign language words" (unreasonable is not an entirely accurate translation, but the idea is more or less the same). Given the wording, I'm skeptical of the workability of the standards set (or not set :p). In fact, the part about foreign words doesn't even seem to be the main focus of the document.

Judging from the page view count (about 4000) I would guess that it's not really considered important. Apparently the document is supposed to be given to all publishers and media, so maybe it is actually important, but my gut feeling is that it's another one of documents no one really cares about.

My guess is that this is not going to be enforceable at all, I have seen nothing that would suggest to be that it is being enforced (the Renminribao page should adequately serve as proof).

[EdLee]

(unreasonable is not an entirely accurate translation, but the idea is more or less the same).

Perhaps "non-standard"? (不规范)

[illluck]

"随意" was the word, I guess "without restraint" may be better, but not as fitting for the context?

Edit: actually, sorry, didn't read the intro paragraph carefully - the focus actually is on foreign words, I got confused by the "non-standard Chinese" point being placed before the foreign words part.

[jts]

Huh, is the BBC going downhill? This seems like the sort of tone-deaf rumor that a circulation-starved American newspaper might start, but I thought the BBC had higher standards.

[kivi]

Huh, is the BBC going downhill? This seems like the sort of tone-deaf rumor that a circulation-starved American newspaper might start, but I thought the BBC had higher standards.

I thought John had higher standards

[hyperpape]

I don't think it's that implausible. I believe it's still official policy of the French government that email should be called 'couriel'. In a sense, they have banned 'email'. Of course no one on the street uses it (the one time I heard it, the speaker was not French), and the cops won't stop you for saying email.

I know less about Chinese attitudes towards their language, but I do know that the press is less independent than what most of us are used to. So it doesn't seem crazy that the government could 'nudge' journalists to avoid foreign words. I would probably not be too convinced about a story that says the cops will stop you on the street if you say NBA, or even post it on your blog. But since the initial story was a bit short on details, I figured the most likely story was that someone took a shortcut and called it a ban.

[jswm]

My understanding this policy try to stop creating phonetic loanwords in later time, for example: sofa, mini, tank.
China already accept Latin letters, you can see NBA, CPI, GDP, PH, TV, CPU those common abbreviations in anywhere.

[hiyayang]

I agree with post #7. The key word is "non-standard", and it applies to both Chinese and foreign words. In fact, the last two comments on the BBC link were about right -- the edict was meant to prevent the encroachment of so-called "Martian Language" that are quite popular among youths (visit any Chinese forum and you will get the point). So much for the journalism at BBC.

[gaius]

Eastasian Newspeak? Double-plus ungood!