Substitution of pinyin with English in road sign

[Ian_Lee]

Beijing finally decided that by the end of this year, all road signs which currently are strictly in pinyin, will be replaced by a combination of pinyin and English.

There will be no more "Jie" but "street, avenue, road" on the road signs. There will be no more "Dong" and "Xi" but "East" and "West" on the road signs.

And probably there will be no more police with the uniform saying "Jingcha".

All these pinyin eyesores which led Chinese get dizzy and foreigners get confused are finally off the street. This is what globalization should be.

[jbiesnecker]

Argh, stupid.

Which of these is going to be more useful in interactions with Chinese people:

• Chang'an Jie or Chang'an Avenue
  
• Nanjing Xi Lu or West Nanjing Road (sorry, not very familiar with Beijing's roads, but there's an example from Shanghai)
  

So, you get rid of, what, eight words (dong, bei, nan, xi, da, lu, jie, and the occasional dadao) and increase further the gap between non-Chinese speaking foreigners and the local population. Yay!

[adrianlondon]

Welcome to North Jing!

[skylee]

Beijing finally decided that by the end of this year, all road signs which currently are strictly in pinyin, will be replaced by a combination of pinyin and English.

Could you give us the source of this info?

[roddy]

Meh. Don't see this being a major problem, but nor do I see any need for it. Good point above though, that asking for 'xisanhuan', no matter how bad your pronunciation is, is going to be more effective than asking for 'west third ring road' in the vast majority of Beijing cabs (incidentally, anyone want to give odds on Beijing giving up the 'all our drivers will learn English' idea and just mass producing laminated, bilingual maps of major hotels and tourist attractions?).

I wonder where they'll draw the line though. Jianguomen Wai Dajie? Jianguomen Wai Street. Jianguomen Outer Street? Jianguo Gate Outer Street? They might as just well go the whole hog and call the thing Build Country Gate Outer Street so that at least the tourists can coo and ah over how cute Chinese street names are.

[Ian_Lee]

Skylee:

http://news.sina.com.tw/society/xinhuanet/cn/2007-06-06/083412540807.shtml

I consider the change as a positive turn. For those who are learning Chinese via pinyin, such change may seem absurd. But for someone who does not know Chinese and does not intend to learn Chinese language like a farmer from Arkansas that comes to watch Olympics in Beijing in 2008, Changan Avenue or Changan Blvd makes more sense than the sign "Changan Dajie" to him.

[imron]

I agree with jbiesnecker. I don't see this as being a necessary or even a good thing.

When you travel in a foreign country it doesn't really take long to realise what the words are for street and road. For example, when I first visited Spain, then despite never having learned Spanish before, it took all of a few seconds to realise that Calle is street, Camino is road etc.

By saying it's necessary to have English (instead of pinyin) in order to make things easier for travellers, you're really underestimating the intelligence of travellers, and also forgetting that not all travellers come from English speaking countries. How does it help foreigners from Russia/Korea/Spain/France/etc for example? If your farmer from Arkansas can't be expected to learn/figure out the pinyin for road, why should a farmer from Andalusia be expected to learn/figure out the English?

And like other posters mentioned where do you draw the line? North Jing, that's great

[Ian_Lee]

Imron:

The change is in preparation for the coming Olympics in Beijing.

I agree that as you said, not every tourist understands English, but that is the language most tourists understand. And as Roddy wrote, "West Third Ring Road" makes more sense than "Xisanhuan". So I see once such change starts, there may be no end.

But why must the road signs be in pinyin? I can understand that in remote cities with sizable illiterate population in Qinghai, pinyin may be necessary to help the pedestrians know on what street they are located.

But for cities like Beijing and Shanghai, almost nobody needs the assistance of pinyin to pronounce the characters on the road signs (which render those pinyin futile). Moreover, both cities aim to be international or even global cities where hundreds of thousands foreigners will always be present.

So should they facilitate foreigners by eliminating those jaw-clenching terms like "Xisanhuan" and replace it with self-explanatory "West Third Ring Road"?

Maybe one day the road sign for Changan Dajie will be changed to "Eternal Peace Blvd"!

[jbiesnecker]

Ian_Lee,

And as Roddy wrote, "West Third Ring Road" makes more sense than "Xisanhuan". So I see once such change starts, there may be no end.

Actually, the point Roddy was making was that 'xisanhuan' makes more sense because, even if your Chinese is bad, it will be understood more readily than "West Third Ring Road."

The point I was making, and that others have made, is that unless you're walking or driving everywhere yourself, you're going to need to interact with Chinese (cab drivers, bus drivers, etc.), and for that you need the Chinese. For that (assuming that actually learning the characters is out of the question), you need the pinyin.

It's great that the farmer from Arkansas can now know that he's on "Jianguo Gate Outer Street," but if he has to get there, that knowledge will do him no good whatsoever, whereas "Jianguomen Wai Dajie" would.

But for cities like Beijing and Shanghai, almost nobody needs the assistance of pinyin to pronounce the characters on the road signs (which render those pinyin futile)

1. My wife, a very well educated 东北人, once encountered a street in Shanghai with a character she didn't know. It's probably a character that's only used in that street name (and probably the name of the area in which that street runs). Granted, this isn't a common occurrence, but it happens.

2. I've also heard it argued by a number of people that the pinyin is often included to help children. Some of the more complex characters used in street names won't be learned until later in elementary school, well after most urban kids need to be able to navigate on their own.

I don't see why Chinese should cater to foreigners at all in this situation. Are we so dumb that we can't figure out what a few foreign words on street signs mean? I certainly hope not. In fact, I don't know a single person who actually says things like "West Nanjing Road" or "Middle Yan'an Road" -- it's all "Nanjing Xi Lu" and "Yan'an Zhong Lu."

[imron]

I was going to mention most of the points jbiesnecker just did, so rather than repeat all that I'll just add that I understand that the changes are for the upcoming Olympics, but the Olympics last for how long again? Also, what happens when the farmer from Arkansas decides that before/after the Olympics he's going to visit to a couple of other Chinese cities, but those cities use pinyin instead of English? We're back at the original problem, except that the lack of consistency is probably going to be far more confusing than if he'd just learnt the meaning of Lu/Jie in the first place (which is not really all that great an effort).

In larger more international cities, pinyin also provides romanisation for foreigners who would have difficulty distinguishing/differentiating characters, but does so without having a bias towards any one given foreign language.

[magores]

Count me as someone that prefers the Pinyin signs.

Although, I can see the point that other people are making about why it should change.

[gato]

Maybe Ian Lee just doesn't like pinyin and doesn't think it's real Chinese. As imron pointed out, most European countries have street signs in their own languages instead of English.

[cdn_in_bj]

As a short-term visitor to Beijing, I can see how having street signs in English would be helpful.

However, as a longer-term resident, I prefer having the pinyin names.

[roddy]

. . . in remote cities with sizable illiterate population in Qinghai, pinyin may be necessary . . . But for cities like Beijing and Shanghai, almost nobody needs the assistance of pinyin . . .

I'm going to wager, safe in the assumption that nobody will produce figures to prove me wrong, that there are more illiterate and semi-illiterate Chinese people from around the country in Beijing than there are foreigners.

I guess it doesn't make a great deal of difference what they do, as long as they do it well and consistently and there's a bit of joined up thinking - ie making sure the names on English language tourist maps match the ones on the signs, etc.

[cdn_in_bj]

I'm going to wager, safe in the assumption that nobody will produce figures to prove me wrong, that there are more illiterate and semi-illiterate Chinese people from around the country in Beijing than there are foreigners.

I'd believe that. I even know a native Beijinger who is illiterate, or at least semi-illiterate.

[HashiriKata]

Let's assume that there will be more "farmers from Arkansas" than the more informed foreigners visiting Beijing, and that there are more "illiterate and semi-illiterate" than literate Chinese people in Beijing. In this, to me, fairly realistic situation, I think the change to semi-English road signs is going to create more problems and frustration than help, due to the wrong expectation by foreigners of Chinese people, encouraged by the the road signs they see around them. Anyway, just one more reason for "farmers from Arkansas" to think how stupid Chinese people are, not a great deal!

[adrianlondon]

If you're really worried about tourists getting lost (like many of them actually wander around a lot on foot anyway) they should keep the pinyin and provide a handy translation sheet at the airport.

jie street

xi west

dong east

etc. but with better formatting

[Ian_Lee]

Actually the analogy with European cities is quite inappropriate.

Most European cities just provide road signs in its own national language (while Beijing provides pinyin=>pinyin/English and character). And if you don't have some basic knowledge about Spanish or German, most likely you cannot pronounce Estadio Santiago Bernabéu or Bahnhofstrasse correctly. If you cannot pronounce the names correctly, then how can you interact with the cab drivers or grocery clerks?

The more appropriate analogy is Tokyo which provides road signs with Romanji. But do any foreigners understand what "Chome" means when they look at the road sign?

Of course, the ideal situation is that the road sign should have characters, pinyin, English/pinyin, Japanese, Korean, French, Russian,....etc. But since the road sign is confined to such a small piece, then there must be a choice made.

[flameproof]

All these pinyin eyesores which led Chinese get dizzy and foreigners get confused are finally off the street.

I hope not! If they phase out Pinyin from road signs then you no way to connect to Chinese people if you can't read Chinese, but speak some (which counts for many people!)

To give an example from Hong Kong, Admiralty is GamJung (Gold Bell), there is no connection between the English and Chinese.

So in future, if you tell the taxi driver, "please to: The Gate of Heavenly Peace" - I doubt you will just get a puzzled look.

[gato]

To give an example from Hong Kong, Admiralty is GamJung (Gold Bell), there is no connection between the English and Chinese.

Not too long ago, I met taxi driver in HK didn't know the English name of the street where I wanted to go, and couldn't speak either English or Mandarin. I had to get into the next taxi. Maybe having street names in romanized Cantonese, at least on maps, would have helped.