Important Announcement regarding the proper translation of Chinese railway station names In line with research done earlier this year, station names in China which include compass direction or other supplementary information must be translated fully into English. Exceptions are only permitted if city names themselves contain compass directions (e.g. Beijing, Nanjing, etc). This has been accepted and reposted as standard content throughout the entire Chinese network. An attempt to change these to Pinyin in the form of an internal communiqué in the railway network in mid-2012 remains unpopular, and there are moves to repeal the notice, certainly on a case-to-case basis. However, I have been made aware of online gang-influenced attempts to exert pressure on the railways (to use pinyin directions instead of English). Standardised English was used in the bilingual map of the Shanghai-Hangzhou HSR, but as of late this post is missing. It could either be a case of human error, editorial censorship, or (and we cannot rule this out) hacking by net gangs. The second case is UNLIKELY given previous railway support of the use of standardised English I have authored. Throughout the new standardised English norms, “pinyin-as-English” has been completely rejected as it is academically illogical and presents an inconvenience to international passengers. This includes station names. Standardised English, which includes proper compass directions for station names, will continue to be used in all new standards. (Edited x1 to add missing words and to improve clarity.)
Posted on: Thu, 24 Oct 2013 14:15:04 +0000
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