Op-Ed Contributors

Should NBA, WTO and KFC be banned?

By Colin Speakman (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-04-21 07:54

The announcement by the State Administration of Radio Film and Television that certain English acronyms should be banned by Chinese media (along with the proposal that mixed use English and Chinese words together be prohibited) and a Chinese language equivalent be used instead is quite puzzling.

I discussed this with English friends in Shanghai over a drink at Bar Rouge on the Bund. None of us felt the need to rename the venue "Bar Red" because we are not French. We recognized that it had become a recognized brand name. Extending the French analogy, I recall, from watching TV news in Paris, that the announcer had no problem inserting NBA and WTO into a French language broadcast.

If many other countries can use these useful acronyms in their own language broadcasts, why can't China?

The key aspect is that they convey efficiently precise information which can be "lost in translation". Will it be good enough to replace NBA with, in Chinese, "the American national association that organizes basketball"? My American friends would say "No", as there is more than one such association and the exact legal concept is lost. In a similar way the AFL and NFL in American football are precise terms.

My Chinese friends point out that there is concern about the use of English language terms on Chinese TV where an established word in Chinese already exists. These friends don't like Chinese sentences broken up by an English word used unnecessarily in order to appear trendy or funny, such as replacing "hen shimao" (very fashionable) by "hen fashion". This is a legitimate aim to preserve the Chinese language and it has my support.

Indeed, I am sure most Westerners recognize that a country's language is an important part of its culture and that there is no need to anglicize Chinese expressions. There have even been some valid concerns that some ethnic dialects in China are not being preserved as a result of the focus on Mandarin.

Nevertheless, surely, in the Chinese language, many expressions have been shortened into more efficient abbreviated forms? A language is a living concept. Every country has to regularly update its dictionaries to reflect changes in society with the words and terms that reflect these changes.

We are not talking about Chinese words being converted into English; we are talking about new words and concepts that come to China from the rest of the world. As far as I recall, there was no Wal-Mart in China during the "cultural revolution" (1966-1976), and that Western concept has been happily imported. Sure, it is important to pronounce it as "Wo er ma" otherwise a taxi driver might have trouble knowing what one means, but there has been no need to define it as "the large box store from America that sells goods at low prices". There is no problem using "dishi" (taxi) or "qiaokeli (chocolate) either.

The efficiency of using abbreviations, initials, or acronyms is not lost on the Chinese. I no longer walk past local banks displaying signs Agricultural Bank of China and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank - these fine institutions are now labeled ABC Bank and SPD Bank respectively. I see these as a global trend.