Despite mayor-elect Eric Chu’s (朱立倫) decision earlier this week that the English name of the upgraded Taipei County would be “New Taipei City” (新北市), the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) yesterday said the translation of the new special municipality’s name was still subject to its final approval.
“According to the Standardized Place Name Translation Act (標準地名譯寫準則), place names should be phonetically translated,” Deputy Minister of the Interior Chien Tai-lang (簡太郎) told a news conference at the ministry yesterday. “Hence, phonetic translations of place names could automatically take effect, but literal translations, such as ‘New Taipei City,’ should be submitted to the ministry for review and approval.”
FINAL SAY
It’s the ministry that has the final say on whether the city’s name can be officially translated as “New Taipei City,” Chien said.
Before Chu’s announcement on Monday, there was a debate on whether the new special municipality’s English name should be translated phonetically as “Sinbei City,” or literally as “New Taipei City.”
According to Chien, while Article 2 of the law stipulates that place names should be translated phonetically, “Article 4 of the same law says that exceptions can be made upon approval of the MOI, based on the reason of history, language, customs or religion.”
APPLICATION
“We have to wait until we see the application to decide whether the city’s name can be translated as ‘New Taipei City,’” he said.
Four new special municipalities will come into being tomorrow with the upgrading of Taipei County and the mergers of Kaohsiung City with Kaohsiung County, Taichung City with Taichung County and Tainan City with Tainan County.
Following the upgrade and mergers, cities and townships in these new special municipalities will become districts. For example, places such as Sinjhuang City (新莊), Banciao City (板橋) or Tamsui Township (淡水) will then be called Sinjhuang, Banciao, and Tamsui districts.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching