English Words or Not

English Words or Not？

作者：刘金凤

来源：《新高考·高一英语》2012年第11期

今年，商务印书馆出版的第6版《现代汉语词典》中收录了“NBA”等239个英文字母开头的词语。这一做法引起了社会大众的广泛热议，也遭到了百余名学者的联合抵制，他们联合签名举报这一现象，称其违反了《中华人民共和国国家通用语言文字法》和国务院《出版管理条例》等法规。

The Beijing⁃based Commercial Press added 239 English words， like NBA and WTO， to its sixth edition of Modern Chinese Dictionary. In fact， the sixth edition was not the first to include English acronyms. There were 39 English acronyms in its third edition in the 1990s and more than 120 in the fifth edition. However，this year‟s edition raised controversy among people.

Many scholars were against the action that the Commercial Press added English words to Modern Chinese Dictionary. More than 100 Chinese scholars wrote a complaint letter to authorities，claiming it is illegal to include English words in the latest edition of a Chinese dictionary. It went against the laws on standardization of Chinese language and publishing.

Li Minsheng， a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences， said the practice of replacing Chinese characters with English words would have a negative influence on the Chinese language in the long term. Li said that if English words replace Chinese characters in the dictionary，it would damage the Chinese language.

Fu Zhenguo， who organized the activity， said it is okay to absorb some foreign words， but we need to translate them into Chinese rather than use them directly. He thought these English words should be cleared off from the dictionary， or the language we use will end up as a strange mixture of Chinese and English.

“Since words like …Nuojiya‟ and …Motuoluola‟ are well accepted and commonly used in our language instead of …Nokia‟ and …Motorola‟，why don‟t we translate …iPhone‟ or …iPad‟ into Chinese when we use them？” he said.

Mei Deming， a professor of the English language at Shanghai International Studies University， disagreed with Fu.

“Maybe they are a little old⁃fashioned，” he said. “Language is always developing while absorbing new elements.”

Mei said he believes introducing English words to the Chinese dictionary is fine as long as it could make communication easier.

“For another thing， it should not be decided by these experts，”he said.“It should be decided by the users of the language themselves.”

The controversy could be seen as an extension of a debate on whether Chinese language programs should use simple English abbreviations for some terms for the sake of convenience， as their Chinese translation are often quite lengthy.

The debate was first sparked after some Chinese media， including CCTV， were asked to avoid using certain English abbreviations in their programming. The most well⁃known outcome of the linguistic ban was the replacement of “NBA” with the Chinese translation of “the National Basketball Association of the United States.”

In these debates， the opponents emphasized the purity of the Chinese language while the supporters emphasized the openness of the language and convenience for language speakers.

However， the Chinese language has never been completely pure， English or not. The words “dang”（党），“jieji”（阶级）and“douzheng”（斗争） are borrowed from Japanese， while “dejia”（德甲）and “yingchao”（英超） are from Western languages.

Jiang Lansheng， who revised the sixth edition of the dictionary， said，“Including English words that are commonly used by Chinese is not misusing the English language； it is convenient for readers，instead.”