NEWS PAPERS
(Contd.)
September 24 the Hong Kong Government Gazette was established as "The only official organ of Proclamations, Notifications and all public papers of the Government." There were a few advertisements by private persons in this Gazette, giving both English and Chinese characters, but it was not until the middle of the next year, 1854, that actual Chinese translations of official documents appeared: in May, 1854, a Notification calling for tenders for Gaol provisions was printed in both English and Chinese, Several other translations of official notices followed, in subsequent issues.
In 1855 some of the translations are interesting, if not always happily phrased. The Police are referred to as "Green Coats," this being due to the uniform they wore in the early years (see 8-7-33). This appellation, Luk yee is still in use.
Vaccine for small-pox is termed "cow juice," apparently for want of a better translation. It is strange, also to find various proclamations by officials given "under the reign of the Emperor Hien-fung," up to 1856. This inclusion of the Chinese ruler in a British Colony's notifications may have pandered to Chinese notions of dates, but must have eventually struck officialdom as being out of place, for the practice was soon discontinued.
In 1858 appear, for the first time, Chinese translations of local ordinances, side by side with the English Texts.
By 1861 we find fewer translations than usual, the practice of dual proclamations evidently losing value, and these cease entirely as from 1862, when the Government Gazette appeared in a separate Chinese edition owing to the desire of the Governor Sir Hercules Robinson, to govern the population more directly and to meet Chinese susceptibilities half way wherever possible. We might note, however, that the last bi-lingual issue of the Gazette has such translations as "Green Coats" for Police, "land surveyor" for the Surveyor General, and "barbarians" for Britons.
It appears that the Chief Justice, Sir John Smale, was the first to suggest a separate Chinese issue of the Gazette: in order to counter the utterances in a Chinese edition of the Daily Press which had been started, and which (like its English-language parent) contained severe criticisms of the Government and various officials.
The first Chinese issue of the Gazette appeared on March 1, 1862, being divided into two portions, one giving "Government Notifications" and the other "Local News." This latter section in due course contained such features as the Sessions list of cases, and a list of Police Court trials, as well as Post Office notifications.
Some of the translations deserve notice. The Governor is rendered into "the great soldier-headman," and the Government Offices are designated "writing rooms" (the general vernacular terms used locally for mercantile offices).
The "local news" towards the close of 1862 included the report of a piracy, and an extract from the Peking Gazette evidently a definite effort to rival the local newspaper enterprise already referred to.
By 1863, however, these news items had ceased: and we find mainly the various Government notifications, issued