Academics yesterday threw their weight behind the Executive Yuan's proposal to adopt, in line with global trends, a western writing format for government documents .
Chinese scripts in official papers usually run from right to left and from top to bottom while western writing flows from left to right.
"It sounds likes a reasonable idea taking into account the writing pattern of English goes from left to right," said Chiu Hei-yuan (瞿海源), a sociology professor at the National Taiwan University. "It seems a more natural way of writing since we're in a technological age where communication and writing in English are common."
During the closed-door Cabinet affairs meeting on Wednesday, Premier Yu Shyi-kun asked the Cabinet's Research, Development and Evaluation Commission (研考會) to study the possibility of changing the writing style of official documents to be in line with western usage.
Yu yesterday told reporters that it is necessary to have a consistent Chinese writing system for official documents.
"As it's our goal to make English the quasi-official language within the next six to 10 years, the use of English is bound to increase in official papers and private publications," Yu said.
Yu made the remark after attending an afforestation campaign in Panchiao, Taipei County yesterday morning.
Although some have argued that the change will jeopardize the centuries-old Chinese tradition, Chiu expressed a different view.
"I don't think adopting the western writing format will do any harm to Chinese tradition because tradition should lie in something deeper," he said.
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"Like some people, I find it quite annoying to insert English characters or Arabic numerals in vertical Chinese scripts," Wang said.
Wang, however, cast doubts on the Cabinet's rationale that the change will put Taiwan in line with the international trend.
"How do you connect with the world if foreigners don't understand Chinese in the first place?" Wang said. "Basically it's a domestic issue and doesn't have anything to do with the rest of the world."
Commenting on the criticism that the change is against the Chinese tradition, Wang said that it is unprofessional thinking.
"From the linguistics point of view, there are no rules whatsoever stipulating that Chinese scripts should run vertically and from right to left, so there's no such a problem as being against the Chinese tradition," Wang said.
Endorsing Wang's and Chiu's opinions, Ku Chung-hwa (顧忠華), professor of sociology at National Chengchi University and chairman of the Taipei Society (澄社), said that he totally agrees with the Cabinet's proposal.
"It's time to liberate the obsession for writing formats of Chinese scripts," Ku said. "You have no idea how inconvenient and inefficient it is to write English in vertical Chinese scripts."
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