The case for Tongyong Pinyin

The embattled Yu Bor-chuan (余伯泉), his ears no doubt ringing with the cacophony of attacks that his Tongyong (通用拼音) system has sustained in recent days, was eager to present his side of the issue and to attempt to persuade the public of the virtues of the system he and his colleagues have formulated.

During the conversation, the researcher shared with the Taipei Times the motivation behind the Tongyong Pinyin system and detailed the reasons why he believes it is a better system than China's Hanyu Pinyin (漢語拼音) for adoption in Taiwan. Most importantly, he seized the opportunity to clarify some of the issues at the heart of what he said were public misconceptions about the Tongyong system.

The 43-year-old Yu is a socio-linguist who has devoted himself for years to research interpretation and translation between English and Mandarin.

Taipei Times: What led your team to invent the Tongyong Pinyin system?

Yu Bor-chuan: Inconsistencies in Mandarin Romanization have long been a contentious issue in Taiwan. Aware of the gravity of the matter and the urgency of forging an official policy, Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), Taipei's mayor at the time, commissioned the Association of Interpretation and Translation (中華民國翻譯協會) in 1997 to standardize Mandarin Romanization for the streets of Taipei.

As a director of the association I became involved. After embarking on a series of studies, we [my teammates and myself] came to the conclusion that China's Hanyu Pinyin system was imperfect in many respects and, more significantly, that there were many aspects of the pronunciation of the assorted tongues spoken by natives of Taiwan with which it did not accord. Both of these reasons prompted my invention of the Tongyong Pinyin system.

From my point of view, Tongyong Pinyin was developed to achieve an optimal balance between internationalization and national autonomy. It will be a system accepted most easily and quickly by Taiwanese.

TT: The decision made by the Ministry of Education last Saturday to adopt the Tongyong system has sparked heated public debate. Some argue that "globalization" should be a major concern, saying that employing the Tongyong system will confuse foreigners and weaken the competitiveness of Taiwan in the international community. How do you respond to such criticism?

Yu: To achieve the goal of globalization, socio-linguists also aim to respect the heritage of minority groups.

Consider the English language, for example. Being an international language, English can be spelled and used differently from country to country. English spoken in the United Kingdom is not totally identical to that in the US, whereas Australian English has much distinctive usage that cannot be found in either the UK or the US. The differences in the use of English among these countries may be rather subtle, yet they all retain their own unique qualities.

In addition, the Cantonese Romanization system used in Hong Kong is also different from the "Cantonese spelling system" designated by the Chinese government, because Hong Kong residents have their own stance on how to normalize the spelling system of their language. Why can we not do the same to Mandarin in Taiwan?

Anyone who retains a fundamental understanding of international languages will respect Taiwan adopting its own Romanization system. To say that Taiwan will be isolated from the international community if it chooses to use the Tongyong system is to lack a full understanding of what the Tongyong system is.