The Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) yesterday said it would soon carry out an across-the-board overhaul of its signs at its stations nationwide after an investigation during the Lunar New Year holiday found that changes may be necessary in as many as 50,000 instances.
TRA director-general Frank Fan (范植谷) said the situation should be remedied as quickly as possible and that the first step was to strive for correctness and consistency.
The translation of TRA station names and signs is inconsistent and every time a mistake is found, only that specific instance is corrected. Since the problem keeps reccurring, however, the TRA leadership has lost patience and Fan issued instructions prior to the Lunar New Year holiday that each section and each station be inspected, so that “we don’t wait to make changes after we read about them in the papers.”
The TRA initially estimated that the matter could be quickly addressed, but after the investigation results came in on Friday, it found that as many as 50,000 problems at 216 stations had to be corrected.
Yen Wen-chung (顏文忠), a TRA operations section head, said many strange mistakes were found, adding that 90 percent of the time the problem was that Tongyong or Hanyu Romanization systems were not consistently implemented.
The reason for these inconsistencies was that after the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) came to power in 2008, an order was issued that the Hanyu spelling system be used. Stations with more personnel corrected most of the signs themselves, while delaying more complex ones until a budget was allocated to implement the remaining changes.
As a result, the name of a station can be Romanized differently — even at the station itself. One example is Cidu station, where the station name is given both as Cidu (七堵) following Tongyong Romanization, and Qidu, as per Hanyu Romanization.
The TRA said this kind of problem was found at more than 10,000 locations in the Kaohsiung area.
Another issue is inconsistent English language usage. For example, stations use lavatory, restroom and toilet for the public restrooms.
Fan said that although these were all correct translations, usage should be consistent.
In some stations, pedestrian overpasses were called over-bridges, elevated pedestrian crosswalks and overpasses, a problem that Yen said could be the result of translation software.
Fan said that since the problem was much bigger than expected, it would have to be dealt with in stages, with the first stage focusing on correctness and consistency.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday voiced dissatisfaction with the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans- Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), whose latest meeting, concluded earlier the same day, appeared not to address the country’s application. In a statement, MOFA said the CPTPP commission had "once again failed to fairly process Taiwan’s application," attributing the inaction to the bloc’s "succumbing to political pressure," without elaborating. Taiwan submitted its CPTPP application under the name "Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu" on Sept. 22, 2021 -- less than a week after China
THE GOOD WORD: More than 100 colleges on both sides of the Pacific will work together to bring students to Taiwan so they can learn Mandarin where it is spoken A total of 102 universities from Taiwan and the US are collaborating in a push to promote Taiwan as the first-choice place to learn Mandarin, with seven Mandarin learning centers stood up in the US to train and support teachers, the Foundation for International Cooperation in Higher Education of Taiwan (FICHET) said. At the annual convention of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages held over the weekend in New Orleans, Louisiana, a Taiwan Pavilion was jointly run by 17 representative teams from the FICHET, the Overseas Community Affairs Council, the Steering Committee for the Test of Proficiency-Huayu, the
A home-style restaurant opened by a Taiwanese woman in Quezon City in Metro Manila has been featured in the first-ever Michelin Guide honoring exceptional restaurants in the Philippines. The restaurant, Fong Wei Wu (豐味屋), was one of 74 eateries to receive a “Michelin Selected” honor in the guide, while one restaurant received two Michelin stars, eight received one star and 25 were awarded a “Bib Gourmand.” The guide, which was limited to restaurants in Metro Manila and Cebu, was published on Oct. 30. In an interview, Feng Wei Wu’s owner and chef, Linda, said that as a restaurateur in her 60s, receiving an
MORE RETALIATION: China would adopt a long-term pressure strategy to prevent other countries or future prime ministers following in Sanae Takaichi’s steps, an academic said Taiwan should maintain communications with Japan, as Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is to lead a revision of security documents, Taiwanese academics said yesterday. Tensions have risen between Japan and China over remarks by Takaichi earlier this month that the use of force against Taiwan would constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan. Prospect Foundation president Lai I-chung (賴怡忠) yesterday said Takaichi’s stance regarding Taiwan is the same as past Japanese prime ministers, but her position is clearer than that of her predecessors Fumio Kishida and Shigeru Ishiba. Although Japan views a “Taiwan contingency” as a “survival-threatening situation,” which would allow its military to
RSS