On Thursday last week, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) called on the Cabinet to make English the nation’s second official language, while Minister of Education Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠) agreed to work toward that goal.
Despite the need to improve the public’s English-language proficiency and to build a friendly environment for foreigners, it remains questionable whether English should be listed as an official language.
According to the definition in the government’s policy white paper, an official language refers to a compulsory language used within government agencies and educational institutions as a major medium of communication. If that is the case, should all government documents and meeting protocols be kept in both Chinese and English?
That would be a massive undertaking.
If every document has to be kept in two official languages, who should be responsible for the translation into English? Would officials be able to afford such an enormous expense and would it really be necessary?
Besides, even professional translators make mistakes.
Jamie Lin (林之晨), chairman of the Taiwan Internet and E-Commerce Association, gave an example when he complained about Taiwan’s English-language education, saying that a speech he delivered in Chinese at the Yushan Forum was mistranslated. However, the translator should not be too strongly criticized. Who can be proficient in all subjects when there is so much knowledge in the world?
Even using Chinese words precisely is a difficult task, let alone mastering every subject in both Chinese and English.
In 2002, the government launched a program to develop an English-speaking environment, which required public places, roads and agencies to have bilingual signs and Web sites. Taiwan is relatively friendly to foreigners compared with many other non-English-speaking nations, but the government has failed to conclusively address the issue of Chinese romanization, and the English-language names of many places and roads are often spelled in two or more different ways.
Some poorly translated signs are so absurd they become jokes. For instance, a media outlet last month reported that National Chiao Tung University’s cafeteria had translated “braised pork rice” (焢肉飯) as “control meat rice,” because the Chinese character for braised looks like the character for “control” (控).
The government’s primary task should be to consolidate the romanization system to promote accuracy to build an environment friendly to foreigners. Taiwan should not set unrealistic goals, such as making English an official language.
In terms of the government’s New Southbound Policy, it is true that English-language abilities need improvement, but it is more important and advantageous to learn the local languages of the target nations. There is no need to worry too much about the language problem, because where there is a business opportunity, businesspeople naturally improve their language skills.
I was once stationed in Indonesia and I worked hard to learn Indonesian. Two years later, I was able to give a speech in Indonesian.
Thanks to the development of artificial intelligence, online translation services are now available. The accuracy and promptness of such translation services is likely to improve and some have even said that there is no longer any need to learn a foreign language.
While that claim might be exaggerated, the question is whether we really should invest huge resources into making English the nation’s second official language.
Chang Yen-ming is a former director of the Water Resources Agency’s Taichung branch.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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