Taipei Times 英文臺北時報今刊出讀者投書致賴揆：
官方一直示範菜英文，還想列英文為第二官語？
舉例之一：交通部觀光局行之五年的「借問站」計劃英文宣傳名稱「Taiwan Ask Me」是「菜英文」。無誤！
繼之前的菜英文「Taiwan Touch Your Heart」之後，不意外。
最後這一段切中要害：
// Finally, Premier Lai, how can Taiwan effectively pursue the valuable and challenging goal of making English an official language of this country if the ROC government’s own ministries are not even able to correctly compose a simple advertisement in English? //
猜測作者 Xue Meng-ren 很可能是薛孟仁（Dr. Bruce G. Shapiro），逢甲大學外國語文學系副教授。
謝謝薛教授用專業的聲音告誡政府勿失策。
以下全文轉錄投書內容，連結見留言。
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An open letter to Premier William Lai
By Xue Meng-ren
Wed, Oct 24, 2018
Dear Premier William Lai (賴清德):
You have admirably and lately led Taiwan in an ongoing discussion about whether to make English a second “official” language. Many articles have appeared defending both sides of this argument.
As it stands, Taiwan uses the traditional style of Mandarin Chinese for all official government, legal and business documents. However, the Taiwanese government frequently uses English in a non-official capacity to facilitate outreach initiatives and better communication with non-Chinese-speaking residents and tourists.
“Taiwan Ask Me” is one such governmental initiative, which the Ministry of Transportation and Communications initiated five years ago.
As a Cabinet-level governmental body charged with communications, the ministry’s standard of English should be a model of English usage for the rest of the nation, particularly the tourism industry, which the ministry also officially administers.
Unfortunately, the ministry has demonstrated that its use of English is both inept and even — albeit inadvertently — insulting.
On the Republic of China’s National Day, on page 5 of the Taipei Times, the ministry’s Tourism Bureau published an announcement about the fifth anniversary of the “Taiwan Ask Me” initiative. This announcement features not only elementary grammatical errors, but also incorrect English usage that renders it meaningless and embarrassing.
To begin, in English, the phrase “Taiwan Ask Me” is nonsense, that is, it has no meaning. It must at least have some defining punctuation, such as, “Taiwan? Ask Me” or “Taiwan, Ask Me.”
The service is supposed to be for tourists in need of answers to questions about traveling around Taiwan, but the phrase “Taiwan Ask Me” absurdly means that Taiwan should ask someone, “me,” something about itself.
And, who does this “me” refer to? Certainly, the initiative does not limit itself to employing a single individual, but rather a team of individuals. Therefore, the phrase should be “Taiwan, Ask Us” not “me.”
This type of error, along with the rest of the advertisement, not only demonstrates poor English usage, but more importantly, it suggests a lack of awareness about what service to others actually means.
It suggests that the initiative “Taiwan Ask Me” is merely paying lip service to a valuable concept of a democratic government that it does not truly value or even understand. This poorly written advertisement reveals that it is more interested in celebrating its own anniversary than it is in providing the service for which it is lauding itself.
The announcement states that the ministry “launched the ‘Taiwan Ask Me’ friendly travel information service” five years ago, and now has 450 Information Stations “that prove warm and friendly services.”
Obviously, the Information Services must provide not “prove” their services. “Prove” is the incorrect English word, unless the intention is for the ministry to pat itself on the back by saying that over the past five years the service has “proved its services are warm and friendly,” but then the grammar is still incorrect.
Furthermore, the use of both “warm” and “friendly” is repetitive, since the words are synonymous in this context. Using repetitive words in this way is a feature of the elementary English usage quite common in Taiwan, but governmental English has no excuse for being elementary.
In addition to offering “domestic and foreign tourists the warmest greetings,” through the Taiwan Ask Me Information Stations, “the service further incorporates rich travel elements.” The phrase “rich travel elements” is verbal nonsense. It correctly connects words that have no discernible meaning. The article does not define or elaborate upon them.
In the following run-on sentence, the article connects these “rich travel elements” with “five unique features,” the first of which is “local gourmets.” Why would a tourist want to meet a gourmet? And what kind of a gourmet?
The ministry probably means “local food” or perhaps “local delicacies,” whereas a “gourmet” is a food connoisseur, that is, a lover of good food. “Gourmets” is an example of another English error common in Taiwan, which is to use the incorrect English word to say something related to that word.
Using Google Translate often helps Taiwanese students make these ridiculous English errors. Unfortunately, government ministers are no longer students. Thus, one expects them to have a better grasp of English, certainly as it pertains to their own special purpose or field of employment.
Together, the “five unique features” mentioned in the article are supposed to “form [a] synergistic local economy of tourism,” whatever that is. Thus, the advertisement uses yet another nonsensical phrase, the meaning of which even the necessary grammatical insertion of “a” does not clarify.
The tourist economy in Taiwan is definitely important, and it is possibly important to connect different aspects of the tourist economy into a unified plan for development. However, linking the so-called five unique features does not create an economic synergy.
Taiwan Ask Me is a free information service. It does not make money or use money to link things together to form economic relationships. Even a government minister should recognize that specious phrases reveal fake values.
For the fifth anniversary event, “Eunice LIN,” (which should be “Eunice Lin,”) “is invited to be the tour guide, and experience the friendliness of ‘Taiwan Ask Me.” This sentence means that Ms Lin is going act as a tourist guide and experience for herself the friendly services of the Information Stations. More absurd nonsense, for why would she be both the tourist guide and the tourist?
Furthermore, the ministry should take responsibility for inviting Ms Lin. Instead of writing “Eunice LIN, a popular TV personality, is invited,” the correct sentence would be: “The MOTC has invited Eunice Lin, a popular TV personality, to be a tour guide.”
Finally, Ms Lin may be a local celebrity, but she is a Taiwanese film and television actor, not a TV personality. The latter is someone who appears on TV as herself, perhaps as the host of a variety show, but not someone who appears as characters in films or a TV series. (“Actor” refers to either male or female, the distinction “actress” being no longer necessary.)
The next sentence in the article is so riddled with grammatical errors, it would take several more paragraphs to explain them all. Suffice it to say that much of what the sentence tries to say means the opposite of what it must intend, which is the major problem with the article in question, especially its conclusion.
The advertisement closes with an egregious insult to all foreign residents and tourists.
Setting aside the grammatical errors and confusing phrasing, the advertisement announces the “Hi Taiwan! Give Me 5 Point Collection Campaign,” which started on Oct. 1.
However, this campaign is only for “all citizens of Taiwan [who] are invited to visit Information Stations and get a taste of the warm and friendly services of ‘Taiwan Ask Me.’”
Apparently, foreign tourists are not allowed to “experience in-depth local travels” and only “citizens will also get an opportunity to win lovely prizes!”
Who in the world is this advertisement for? It would seem to be for foreign tourists and residents since it is in English and appears in the only English print newspaper published in Taiwan. And what citizen of Taiwan needs to read an English advertisement? Surely, any citizen of Taiwan can read all about “Taiwan Ask Me” in Chinese. And yet, this advertisement about a tourism service concludes by disinviting the foreign residents and tourists who are not only most likely to read the advertisement, but also most likely to benefit from the Taiwan Ask Me initiative.
With this appalling advertisement, the ministry makes a mockery of not only the government’s attempts to use English effectively but also its own ministerial responsibility over communication and tourism in Taiwan.
If the Taiwanese government does have the personnel to compose articles in correct English that do not insult English readers and tourists and perhaps visiting foreign dignitaries, then it should hire copy editors with the skills to do it for them. It is certainly worth the expense when compared to the embarrassing cost of losing face, which means so much to Taiwanese society.
Finally, Premier Lai, how can Taiwan effectively pursue the valuable and challenging goal of making English an official language of this country if the ROC government’s own ministries are not even able to correctly compose a simple advertisement in English?
What a conundrum, and where does one begin to solve it?
Respectfully yours,
Xue Meng-ren
Taichung
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