This year’s World Masters Games opened on Saturday in Taipei and New Taipei City to complaints over the state of the facilities and the translations of people’s names.
The multisport event, open to individuals rather than national teams, is to run until May 30.
“There have been many problems since Taipei and New Taipei began preparations for the Games three years ago,” Taipei Citizens Sports Promotion Association chairman Kang Chia-wei (康家瑋) said yesterday. “Now we see a mess of glitches and blunders in its publicity, promotion materials and gift packs, as well as on-site mismanagement issues.”
Photo: Tien Yu-hua, Taipei Times
Kang said the two cities’ officials should put in extra effort to ensure things go smoothly for the duration of the Games, but if the disputes and bungling keep on happening, it would make it very difficult for Taiwan to gain hosting rights for another major international competition.
Taiwanese documentary film-maker Ho Chao-ti (賀照緹) yesterday wrote online that she signed up for swimming events, and headed to the venue at University of Taipei’s water sports facility in the city’s Tianmu District (天母) yesterday morning.
“We wanted to do practice laps in the pool before the competition got under way, and headed to the dressing room, but most storage lockers were broken and the locks unusable,” Ho said. “Only a few lockers were usable, but we found that inside they were full of trash, food and drink containers, chopsticks, used tissues, and even plastic bags for prescription medicine.”
“The dressing room also had quite a few foreigners using many different languages, but the feelings of disgust on their faces made me feel quite ashamed... I don’t understand how the organizers failed to check and clean the trash from inside the lockers,” she wrote.
Meanwhile, attention has been drawn to the numerous bad translations of names of participants, volunteers and Games officials. A man surnamed Wang (王) received his name tag reading “King Next Day,” while others complained of strange and misconstrued words in English, instead of using phonetic transliterations.
Some people online have said that the contractor responsible had appeared to use Chinese artificial intelligence tools, as DeepSeek and Baidu Translate give similar results when converting the same names from Mandarin to English, raising security concerns that personal data could be sent to servers in China.
Concerns were raised online that the name tag contractor could be a Chinese business in disguise, as well as the possibility that other companies contracted by the Taipei City Government for the Games could have the support of Chinese capital.
SPACE VETERAN: Kjell N. Lindgren, who helps lead NASA’s human spaceflight missions, has been on two expeditions on the ISS and has spent 311 days in space Taiwan-born US astronaut Kjell N. Lindgren is to visit Taiwan to promote technological partnerships through one of the programs organized by the US for its 250th national anniversary. Lindgren would be in Taiwan from Tuesday to Saturday next week as part of the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ US Speaker Program, organized to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said in a statement yesterday. Lindgren plans to engage with key leaders across the nation “to advance cutting-edge technological partnerships and inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers,”
UNREASONABLE SURVEILLANCE: A camera targeted on an road by a neighbor captured a man’s habitual unsignaled turn into home, netting him dozens of tickets The Taichung High Administrative Court has canceled all 45 tickets given to a man for failing to use a turn signal while driving, as it considered long-term surveillance of his privacy more problematic than the traffic violations. The man, surnamed Tseng (曾), lives in Changhua County and was reported 45 times within a month for failing to signal while driving when he turned into the alley where his residence is. The reports were filed by his neighbor, who set up security cameras that constantly monitored not only the alley but also the door and yard of Tseng’s house. The surveillance occurred from July
A Japan Self-Defense Forces vessel entered the Taiwan Strait yesterday, Japanese media reported. After passing through the Taiwan Strait, the Ikazuchi was to proceed to the South China Sea to take part in a joint military exercise with the US and the Philippines, the reports said. Japan Self-Defense Force vessels were first reported to have passed through the strait in September, 2024, with two further transits taking place in February and June last year, the Asahi Shimbun reported. Yesterday’s transit also marked the first time since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi took office that a Japanese warship has been sent through the Taiwan
‘SAME OLD TRICK’: Even if Beijing resumes individual travel to Taiwan, it would only benefit Chinese tourism companies, the Economic Democracy Union convener said China’s 10 new “incentives” are “sugar-coated poison,” an official said yesterday, adding that Taiwanese businesses see them clearly for what they are, but that Beijing would inevitably find some local collaborators to try to drums up support. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, made the remark ahead of a news conference the General Chamber of Commerce is to hold today. The event, titled “Industry Perspectives on China’s Recent Pro-Taiwan Policies,” is expected to include representatives from industry associations — such as those in travel, hotels, food and agriculture — to request the government cooperate with China’s new measures, people familiar with
RSS