The Sakizaya language, which is listed by the Council of Indigenous Peoples as an endangered language, was on Nov. 22 added to Wikipedia as a language option thanks to efforts to preserve and promote the Aboriginal language.
The Sakizaya people, officially recognized in 2007 as the 13th Aboriginal community in Taiwan, has a population of only 974 nationwide, making it difficult for speakers of the Sakizaya language to pass it down to younger generations, the council said.
Tuku Sayion, a Sakizaya and principal investigator for the language preservation project, on Monday last week told a conference about the development of Aboriginal languages that his team has since 2015 made efforts to make the Sakizaya language available on Wikipedia.
Computer terms, such as “visualization” and “program code,” took the most time to translate, as corresponding vocabulary does not exist in the Sakizaya language, he told the conference held at National Chengchi University.
There are about 3,600 Wikipedia entries in the Sakizaya language, with an edit count of more than 60,000 and a word count reaching 2 million, he added.
Atayal and Amis communities also expressed an interest in incorporating their native languages into Wikipedia, but that project has ground to a halt due to the difficulty in translating modern computer terms, said Lim Siu-theh (林修澈), the project’s co-principal investigator and professor emeritus at National Chengchi University’s ethnology department.
The Atayal and Amis are among Taiwan’s 16 officially recognized Aboriginal groups.
Vice President Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁), who attended the conference, said that Taiwan’s diverse culture and languages demonstrate the prosperity of a liberal and democratic nation, adding that the availability of the Sakizaya language on Wikipedia would help the world to learn about the language.
President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration has promoted transitional justice for Aborigines since she assumed office in May 2016, especially the conservation of Aboriginal languages and cultures, such as the enactment of the National Languages Development Act (國家語言發展法) in January and amendments to the Education Act for Indigenous Peoples (原住民族教育法) in June, Chen said.
The council has launched a mentoring program to preserve indigenous languages, Council of Indigenous Peoples Minister Icyang Parod said.
In the program, one or two students are assigned to a mentor, who teaches them an Aboriginal language, including the Kanakanavu, Saaroa and Thao languages, Icyang said.
The council is also planning to establish a foundation early next year for the development of indigenous languages, which would be the nation’s first such research institute, he said.
Aboriginal students who pass indigenous language exams would receive certification, which could be used to apply for government subsidies to study abroad, he added.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS