Taipei and Beijing are set to take bilateral exchanges one step further from economic cooperation to the cultural sphere after President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday that the two sides plan to launch an online Chinese dictionary next year to facilitate cultural exchanges.
Ma said the National Cultural Association was planning to take advantage of cloud computing technology to introduce an electronic “cross-strait dictionary.” The dictionary should be online next year, he said, and the publishing industry would be welcome to publish a hard-copy version.
The two sides of the Taiwan Strait use different Chinese characters and use different words to describe the same thing, he said.
“It would be hard to make the two sides use the same words and it is not necessary to do so,” Ma said at a Presidential Office meeting with individuals and groups who have excelled at promoting classical learning. “However, it will change gradually as we use words mainlanders use and they use words we use. They will influence each other.”
If there was a dictionary that could juxtapose the two systems, people on both sides would become familiar with the usage of words on the other side, making cultural exchanges more meaningful, he said.
Ma said he was not against Chinese using simplified characters, but he would like to see them also understand traditional characters. Ma said Taiwanese should continue to use the traditional script.
“There are only 23 million people in Taiwan, but it is an important place for the preservation of traditional Chinese writing and the promotion of Chinese culture,” he said.
There are about 40 million people using traditional Chinese characters, Ma said, with 7.6 million in Hong Kong and 33 million in Taiwan and elsewhere. China was also mulling the reintroduction of the traditional script, he said.
In 2007, Taiwan produced more than 45,000 publications, while China produced 135,000, despite having a population 57 times that of Taiwan, Ma said.
Ma said he would like to see more Taiwanese academies established abroad to promote traditional characters and Taiwan’s “specific culture,” which he described as “Chinese culture, with Taiwanese features.”
He also wants to see Confucius’ (孔子) teachings become more prevalent and the names of famous educators enshrined in Confucius temples.
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