New | Beijing’s call to ban foreign words in Chinese media meets with mocking satire

The Chinese authorities' recent call to banish foreign words in Chinese publications and broadcast has soon met with scathing sarcasm and mockery online.

The Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily has been waging a war on the direct use of non-Chinese words such as “iPhone” and “Wi-fi” in the Chinese language. The paper has published two editorials in the past week, claiming that “mingling foreign words in Chinese has damaged the Chinese language’s purity and undermined communication”.

The concerns come at a time when popular English terms and expressions have become more commonly used in the daily life of the Chinese than ever, as they embrace western cultural products such as Hollywood blockbusters and British TV dramas like Downton Abbey and Sherlock. 

The articles question why the Chinese language had to include English abbreviations while similar terms borrowed from other languages, for example “kung fu”, are always translated into English letters in English-speaking nations.

Guangming Daily, another major newspaper run by the Communist Party, on Sunday urged the authorities to step up their efforts in providing official Chinese translations for imported foreign words before they become widely used by the public.

However, members of the online community say they find the idea ridiculous and implausible, as substituted Chinese translations are almost always longer, more convoluted, and harder to get used to.

Many defiant internet users have published pretend online conversations substituting unwieldy translations for commonly-used English terms and abbreviations, mocking what they perceived as unnecessary official concerns.