An article in this newspaper raised some interesting questions about the perils of what seems to be a push to get Taiwan to be a fully bilingual nation (“Teacher drive seeks to meet English plan,” April 7, page 2).
I start this essay with part of my major punchline that stems from this article on the subject: Is Taiwan really ready to welcome thousands of teachers from China who are well trained in English to teach history and civics to schoolchildren of all ages in Taiwan?
Quite apart from the cultural and political aspects, there are several perils associated with being “fully bilingual.”
Some countries, Switzerland being the shining example, have managed with more than two official languages, but it is not for the faint-hearted.
The issue of official bilingualism is fraught with dangers that might be best avoided.
Yes, Switzerland has managed with four official languages and is none the worst for it; but it is the exception.
People need to understand that English is not one language. The Oxford Companion to the English Language devotes about 11 pages to the subject of dialects of English. Of these, about four are to “dialects in America” and three to dialects in the UK.
So which of the many dialect is to be the one taught in Taiwan’s schools?
How is Taiwan going to control that if they hire teachers from any nation in which English is taught?
For example, English-language media reports in Taiwan usually use the word “poll” in the British sense of the process of voting as opposed to that of a of a survey of opinions as is the American usage; in American English, “poll” is used to describe the process of voting only in the phrase “go to the polls.”
Many other terms in both government and commerce differ between the two types of English, and might also have different meanings in South African, India, Australia and other places where the language varies.
It gets worse, even one or two generations ago, when dictionaries still viewed themselves as the custodians of proper use, words like “sanction” and “cleave” had at least two contrary meanings: “permit” and “punish for” in the case of sanction, and “join together” or “cut apart” in the case of cleave.
Today, when dictionaries view themselves as raconteurs of the variations in usage, things are much worse. Words can have a variety of meanings, phrases — whether in a dictionary or not — might have a multitude of meanings and that when translating from one language to another the correspondence of words is never perfect even in the most common meaning.
In this context, having laws written in Mandarin and English would permit the interpreter to seek meanings in one language that are different or antithetical to the intent of the law. The more the ambiguity there is, the more leeway judges will have when implementing regulations and laws.
The problem becomes more severe when pronouns are misused.
Years ago, when I was studying Mandarin, I was asked to translate the sentence “因為艾米的母親是法國人，所以她會講流利的法語” into English.
My reaction was that I could not translate it, because I did not know what it meant. A long discussion followed. My teacher was adamant that the meaning was clear: “Because Amy’s mother is French, she speaks French fluently.”
When I asked whether the “she” referred to Amy or Amy’s mother she said that, of course it was to Amy. When I pointed out that I knew several people who did not speak Mandarin in spite of the fact that their parents were Chinese, she did not believe me.
Finally, I asked her to translate from the English: “Amy’s mother speaks French fluently because she is French.”
She came out with the same sentence that she had asked me to translate and admitted there was a problem.
It is not often that the same ambiguity occurs in two languages, but it does happen. Overuse of pronouns is most often the cause.
The worst of cases would probably be reached when the rules involve a sequence of events such as: “If the person does something while registering to vote and conditions have changed between registration and the election, the individual has to notify the registrar within three days of the change and at least two days before the vote ... to be eligible to vote.”
Google Translate mangles sentences that are no more complex than: “First you do this, then you do that, and when you have done both you are allowed to...”
I envision legions of linguists being needed to ensure that the Mandarin and the English both conform to the intent of the laws and regulations, and will continue to do so as the two languages evolve over the next 10 years or so, while also needing to be a guide to people whose English might be non-existent and whose Mandarin might have connotations from 40 years ago.
Maybe it would be better to limit the aspiration to having students emerge from junior high school with a functional knowledge of English, so that they understand that “drink” can be a noun or a verb, so different Mandarin characters are involved in the Chinese translation, and that at times “hog dog” is a phrase.
Now for the closing of the major punchline: “Given that today’s high-school graduates are quite fluent in English — probably better than the median university graduate in the US — how long do you think it would take the Chinese government to train them to be teachers who could brainwash students?”
Emilio Venezian is a former visiting professor at Feng Chia University.
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