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How to produce Chinglish news

`He and his friends were initially curious about the news programs, but gave up after less than a week because they were so bad. Most of them stopped watching after 10 minutes.'

At first overlooked because of all the fuss over Iraq (there is a war going on, you know), it seems that English TV news has now become an issue in Taiwan.

Curiously, the debate is not among we "foreign residents" that are supposed to be the core audience for these broadcasts. A survey of the popular Forumosa Web site shows that there is still a decided dearth of debate about the broadcast blunders.

That strikes me as strange, considering that the sins against the English language are being committed in the name of said foreigners -- and with their tax money.

Instead, the debate over bad broadcasting is taking place in the legislature and on Chinese-language radio stations.

As you may or may not know, there are two new TV news programs in English. One is on CTS, the other on Formosa TV. CTS is known for its strong connections to the KMT, while Formosa is decidedly DPP. Another station, TTV, has been doing English news for some time now, but curiously seems to be left out of the current debate.

Key to the debate is the fact that CTS is getting NT$10 million from the Government Information Office (GIO) to produce the programs. The other stations were among those who tried to get the GIO contract, but lost out. ("English newscasts to battle it out," March 16, page 17).

A few weeks ago, the National Educational Radio program Media Watch asked listeners to call in with their views about the two new programs. The programs are, apparently, relatively popular among the Taiwanese. But what about the foreigners?

The one foreign listener who did call in said that he and his friends were initially curious about the news programs, but gave up after less than a week because they were so bad. Most of them stopped watching after 10 minutes and switched over to Friends (or was that Fraser?)

Chief among the caller's complaints was that the English was largely unintelligible. On Formosa you could try to match the English subtitles to what the reporters were saying, but on CTS you were left shaking your head and saying to yourself, "What?"

In fact, the caller said, his five-year old kindergarten students could speak better English.

Apparently, the caustic caller was not the only one who had a problem with the precarious programs. Shortly after the call-in show, DPP Legislator Wang Tuoh (王拓) was in the legislature grilling GIO Director-General Arthur Iap (葉國興) about the funding given to CTS.

Wang had a litany of complaints. The CTS programs, Wang pointed out, were supposed to be for the foreign community -- but foreigners weren't watching.

The broadcasts were supposed to provide "an English environment" for Taiwanese people, but the English was so substandard that just "Chinglish" would be a godsend. These programs were supposed to improve Taiwan's international profile, instead they were an embarrassment.

Why then, asked Wang, was CTS -- a private station -- being given NT$10 million in government money to produce an inferior program?

One possible answer appeared in this newspaper in the form of a letter from Michelle Lee (李蕙, Letters, March 30, page 8), a respected TV producer who had lost out in the bid to produce the news program for the GIO.

That letter strongly suggested that CTS got the GIO contract not because of professional merit, but because of politics and nepotism: that the old guard at the GIO had handed the prize to a well-connected station that employed the daughter of one of the judges.

Obviously stung by such criticisms, the GIO responded with its own letter (Letters, April 5, page 8). Naturally, it denied allegations of nepotism.

"Professionalism was an important consideration in the making of our decision," wrote Su Ruey-ren (蘇瑞仁), director of the Domestic Information Office at the GIO. "Providing balanced, complete news reports was another."

But, apparently, producing a program in intelligible English -- one that foreigners would actually watch -- was not.

?

Stephen Nelson is a part time broadcaster and journalist.
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