Sunday, January 17, 2010

The sadness of a poorly edited English newspaper in Taiwan causes expats islandwide to blush at the paper's incredibly poor editing and rewriting: if this newspaper is trying to make a good impression in the international community, it might as well face facts: it needs to hire a completely new copyediting staff or shut the paper down: it's embarassing for TAIWAN to have such an English-language newpaper published on these shores! Communist China would never stoop to such a poorly-edited newspaper on its shores, so why does democratic Taiwan allow this to go on this way? It's embarrassing!

Examples of what appeared in the newspaper today, verbatim: (and this happens every day, 24/7/365)

"one was found drown offshore yesterday"

"holding on to a portable fridge and floating in sea"

"Wang ...was seen drown offshore almost 45 minutes after..."

"the temperatures in sea was only 10 degree Celsius"

"people who fall into sea will lose body temperature in a short while"

The maritime patrol said that the temperatures in sea was only 10 degree Celsius"

"While Some members of the team..."

"Another rescue squad with 33 people comprised rescuers and medical staffers from Taipei arrived in the quake-ravaged country ..."

"but the 4 year old daughter of a Taiwanese businessman in Haiti ....was proved dead  as of yesterday.."

"Her mother....continued to look for miracle in the stricken city"

"Looking to visit the famous shave ice mounted with big chunks of mangoes on Yong Kang Street?"

"..when it began selling the huge portion of mango shaved ice that now rings up at NT$160 a plate."

"Nine firefighters were injured after attending a blaze in a factory...."



SEE IF YOU CAN SPOT THE ERRORS above. That was just 4 stories in a newspaper with over 100 stories. And this newspaper calls itself "an English newspaper". It is not an English newspaper. It is an embarrassment to Taiwan and the international image of Taiwan. Either hire a competent editing staff or get out of the newspaper business! This puts a serious black eye on Taiwan's international reputation. And this newspaper is presented this way, in the same poorly-edited way, every day, 365 days a year. It's a disgrace to newspapers everywhere, but especially to the international image of Taiwan.

Imagine what a Western businessman reading this newspaper in the morning at his hotel in Taipei must think! Said one traveller to me one day: "Omigod, this English-lanuage  newspaper in Taiwan is basically illiterate! It makes Taiwan look like a Third World banana republic of uneducated hacks posing as newspaper publishers!"

4 comments:

Unknown said...

I don't know what's more unseemly - the continuing tradition of cluelessness with respect to how bad English 'reads' to people who actually have a command of it - or mango ice at NT$160 a dollup!

Anonymous said...

It's the China Post, for Pete's sake. It's rubbish in so many ways. Just look at this completely anti-democratic editorial:

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/editorial/taiwan-issues/2009/01/15/192061/p2/The-Republic.htm

Read the Taipei Times instead. Better English, better layout, and they do not distort the truth as much.

Anonymous said...

Dear Anon

Of course it must be the China Post (sic) ,,,,sic becasue Taiwan is not CHINA yet they call it the CHINA POST...dummies..... I guess the blogger didn't want to drag that poor excuse of a paper through the mud proper.....let it hand in the wind..

what gets me about that rag is that I like to read it, i read it every day, the layout of its wire stories and prepackaged stories is good for my eyes, and the intl features are good, but the copyediting is so sloppy and unprofessional, i am sure they do not use expats to edit the paper like the Taipei Times or Taiwan News does, they use local Taiwanese and Macao Chinese to edit the paper and English is their second language, and it shows in almost all translated stories they run from the local rags into English, like those examples tis blog cites, they are all translations and then rewrites, but the rewriter was not a native English speaker, they do not hire expat staff for this...it's crazy....some of their expats are from non-English Western nations like France or Spain or even Russia, and English is their second language too.....the wire stories and CNA stories are all done well, layout is great, they simply do not have a paid staff to rewrite and copyedit,,,,,so as this blog above says they say things like it cited in the blog....AND worst of all, anon, the Taiwanese / Macao editors of that rag do not care they print such rubbishy Engrish.....are they proud to do it that way? Hard to believe! -- and yet they have the balls to criticize the Taipei Times and other papers like Taiwan News ........the CHINA POST is bar none the worst-edited English paper in all of Asia....how sad and a black eye for the Taiwan the Taiwanese owners and editors say they love....

Japan has better English dailies
Thailand too
Cambodia and Vietnam even...

and of course commie CHINA..

why is the CHINA POST allowed to besmirch the good reputation of Taiwan...?

beyond me

SIGH

One day the New York Times or Wash Post will report on the sad rep of the China Post, and then the black eye will go global. are they such moneygrubbers that they don't want to pay normal salaries for good expat native English rewriters? That's why the Taipei Times is head and shoulders above the China Post. It could be a good paper. if they wanted. they do not care, as this blog above shows.....i see the same piss poor writing every day, and always in the translation from the local media where the credit line reads "China Post staff" or "translated from the UDN" or some such.

They should just leave translations from the Chinese alone. They cannot it properly so they should not do it all. Just print Ap and Reuters and CNA wire stories, then we know the copy is legit. The China Post is the laughingstock of all English expat papers in Asia.... I give up. I left Taiwan a year ago for greener pastures in Japan!

Anonymous said...

they China Post wrote "reparations" the other day for repairs being done on the road to Alisan......are they illiterate or just don't care?