The Executive Yuan yesterday approved a draft bill to establish a national language research and development center that would be tasked with preserving Taiwan’s national languages.
The bill would be submitted to the Legislative Yuan for review.
The center would be responsible for research, investigation, preservation, promotion and development of national languages, the Ministry of Culture said in a statement yesterday.
The promulgation of the Development of National Languages Act (國家語言發展法) in 2019 raised awareness of preserving national languages, it said.
The Cabinet last year approved an integrated program of national languages development proposed by the ministry, the Council of Indigenous Peoples, the Hakka Affairs Council and the Ministry of Education, it said.
Under the program, the government is planning to allocate NT$32.1 billion (US$1.05 million) over five years to revitalize endangered national languages, which a survey conducted in 2020 identified as all languages in Taiwan except Mandarin, it added.
The Council of Indigenous Peoples is in charge of promoting the uses and preservation of indigenous languages, the Hakka Affairs Council is in charge of Hakka, the Ministry of Culture is in charge of Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese), dialects spoken in Lienchiang County and Taiwanese Sign Language, and the Ministry of Education is in charge of language education.
The act stipulates that the government should conduct language censuses and establish a national languages database based on regular surveys of the development of national languages.
As the tasks involve multiple agencies, and materials that need to be surveyed are kept at several government agencies and academic institutions, a designated unit is needed to integrate resources from all sectors, the Ministry of Culture said.
The culture ministry drafted the bill, which includes the center’s scope of operation, funding sources, and operation and monitoring mechanisms, it said.
The center would be a non-departmental public body, which would give it the flexibility to hire professionals and publish reports with public credibility, culture ministry Department of Humanities and Publications Director Chen Ying-fang (陳瑩芳) told a news conference after the Cabinet meeting.
The center would be in charge of developing writing systems, establishing digital corpora, organizing language certification exams, and training translators and interpreters, she said.
The center would be a think tank on national languages, publishing research reports for government agencies to refer to while formulating national language-related policies, Chen said.
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