བར
210
College and Secondary Technical Schools under the heading of technical education is misleading to parents, to industrialists, and, to the Department itself.
The best formula for supplying technical training at the level at which it is most urgently needed by manufacturers and by the 55-60% of Hongkong children who will have to find employment in some form of industry is the formula embodied by the first Technical Institute, now under prepara- tion at Morrison Hill. The Institute is intended primarily to provide industrial instruction at craftsman level and below to children of secondary school age, and is expected to siphon off the Technical College's intake at these levels. Leavers will be trained or pre-trained for work on the shop floor, and their slender theoretical training will probably not inspire them to be promoted off it into management and supervisory work. Although the Government will be in charge of the running of the Institute, it has been established and equipped from a Royal Hongkong Jockey Club grant. It is to be hoped that similar institutes will be built in industrial resettlement areas like Chai Wan, where the supply of trainees without white- collar, School Certificate preferences is matched by the proxi- mity of factories offering in-plant experience which could release trainee workers for part-time instruction at the institutes.
Admittedly manufacturers have often been too cost- conscious and short-sighted to release employees for a day or two of institutional training, and standing Government offers of cut-price land for the construction of industrial training facilities have evoked a poor response. But the CMA's recent offer of $1 million to help Government establish another
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Learned-Company
SIR: There are no more modest men or women anywhere than the six translators of the Government Information Services. Although they write daily about affairs of state they are always conscious that their own part is a very humble one. Although they do their best to convey as clearly as possible to the people the mean-
ing of what they translate they some- times feel that the bulletins of the Gov- ernment Information Services ought to conclude with the phrase which even scholars of acknowledged merit were not ashamed to put at the end of their scrolls: "Teach me and correct me". The six GIS translators have other good rea- sons for not often entering into argument about translation. For one thing, being only six, and having 'much work to do, they have little time left for argument, while knowing as Mencius warned us that: "Unemployed scholars indulge in unreasonable discussions"; or as a more recent sage, Lung Yen, so rightly ob- served, in the same "Hongkong Look- Sce" column which pointed out their own mistakes: "Many people in Hongkong are much given to pontificating on sub- jects they know nothing about."
·
FAR EASTERN ECONOMICI
REVIEW January 30, 1969
technical institute has evoked no positive response at all. In- dustry is waking up to the necessity of long-term investment, in industrial education, and the Government must recognise that the responsibility of producing employable citizens carries with it an obligation to 'sell' the idea of industrial training.
With craft and pre-craft training undertaken by technical institutes, and (in accordance with the Seaman recommenda- tions) technologist training assumed by a "Joint Institute of Industrial Engineering and Management", the Technical College would be concerned mainly with producing technicians up to the highest supervisory levels. The consultative services now provided by the Productivity Council and (unofficially) by the Technical College and the Engineering Department could be co-ordinated with the Industrial Research activities of the "Joint Institute".
Although the Industrial Training Advisory Committee has to date been too hushed-up to start bringing about the neces sary changes in attitude, it is a step in the direction of closer co-operation between industrial education and industry itself. The ITAC has not yet announced policy or plans for the new institute at Morrison Hill, and the Education Department is not only without initiative in the establishment of more Institutes of this kind it is evidently without a policy. With this constipation of official thinking on technical education, no significant representation of the manufacturing industry on the Education Board and with none of the Deputy Direc- tors of Education being "industrial", the prospect
of a properly-geared supply of trained personnel to industry is visionary to say the least.
However, the six translators cannot for- get that other wise observation of Confu- cius, that "Men of principle are sure to be bold". Therefore, with deference they venture to point out to Lung Yen that they did not obtain the transliteration Choi Sit Li for, Seychelles from “an old wall map" which in any case they do not possess but from the World Atlas for Hongkong Hongkong published by Collins and Longman and confirmed it most care fully from Tzu Hai, which is widely recognised to be an authoritative encyclo- paedia-dictionary. It is true indeed, as the scholarly Lung Yen reminds us, that the first character of this name can be pronounced in a different way. But then this is so of many characters. Chinese people however do not often find difficulty with this because they recognise the cor- rect pronunciation from the context. this case, they would immediately re- cognise the first character to be the sound Choi which is commonly used in the transliteration of such place names as Cyprus, Port Said and Senegal, as well as being the first part of the name of a place near Canton and so quite familiar to Cantonese ears.
In
Finally, the six translators take heart from the fact that when, a few evenings after Lung Yen had launched his critical darts, one of them had the honour to dine with a group of learned editors of
Chinese newspapers none of whom unfortunately had yet had the pleasure of reading Lung Yen's strictures. These editors when asked to write the characters for Seychelles all produced, without hesi- tation, the characters Choi Sit Li and as- serted that they knew of no better version. The six translators of the Government In- formation Services, with all due respect to the learned Lung Yen, are content to remain in that excellent company.
Chi Yiu
Hongkong
False Creed
SIR: Last night I received my copy of last week's REVIEW, with its article on gambling and anti-prostitution facade. the hypocrisy of Hongkong's anti-
Today I read this:
A Text For Today Abstain from all appearance of
evil.
1 Thessalonians B, verse 23.
in the colony's. best-known English- language newspaper. One is tempted to conclude, sir, that your article, far from being seen as a hard-hitting attack or embarrassing revelation, is taken by the Establishment as a routine statement of the official creed.
Hongkong
GILES DICKENS
1