Wednesday, February 13, 1974
LANGUAGE BILL PASSED
Call For Further Improvements In Standard Of Chinese
The government was today urged to draw up a long-term programme to improve the standard of the Chinese language among residents and to
use simple Chinese in its communications with the public.
The suggestions were made by the Hon. Hilton Cheong-Leen when
speaking in support of the Official Languages Bill which passed its third
and final reading in the Legislative Council this afternoon.
Steps should be taken, he said, to improve and standardize the
quality of Chinese communications with the public, such as by avoiding
the use of esoteric and outmoded terms or by giving too literal a Chinese
translation of the English original.
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In this regard, the forthcoming publication of the bilingual
glossary, containing nearly 30,000 terms commonly used by government
departments, would be a step in the right direction, he said.
Nr. Cheong-Leen appreciated that improvements in the standard of Chinese could not be achieved overnight as it might require "strategic decisions" by the government. But he emphasised that there should be no
undue delay arising from any government department in answering members of the public in the Chinese language. "As soon as it is practicable, all communications in the Chinese languaga fram government departments to the
public should be typewritten instead of handwritten."
/Mr. Cheong-Leen
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