Tuesday, April 6, 2010

No More TLAs*...

...on CCTV!

ShanghaiDaily.com
CCTV bans English acronyms

ANCHORS at China Central Television have been banned from saying the English acronyms NBA, CBA, GDP, and the like in their programs.

Presenters must abandon English initials and replace them with their full Chinese name, according to a regulation released by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television.

CCTV sports anchor Sun Zhengping confirmed that he and many colleagues received instructions via short message on April 2. Sun said he was required to not use NBA when referring to the men's professional basketball association in the United States.

"A full Chinese explanation of the English initials must be followed if my tongue slips," Sun said, "It is a little trouble but a necessary one because not every audience member can understand the initials."

Although the authority gave no explanation of the ban, a CCTV staffer whose name was undisclosed said the ban could protect the purity of the Chinese language.

The Chinese name for the NBA consists of 10 characters.

I read this on another blog and one of the comments asked if "CCTV" is also banned... :)

This sounds really idiotic. Certain terms like NBA and IBM are acronyms but have become brand names. I'll bet if you ask people in the US, a lot won't know that National Basketball Association = NBA. It's another ill-conceived anti-American reaction by some stupid bureaucrat in the CCP. Also, does it only apply to English? What about French, German, or other languages? Will they also ban TGV and say 很快的火车?

*TLA = Three Letter Acronyms :)

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Good thing PMI has a Chinese name, otherwise CCTV won't be able to say our name on the air.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

when is CCTV going to ban those weird "english" accents on the english speaking channels. i'm still trying to figure where those people learned how to speak english. maybe they had to go through a boot camp in china to speak that way.

totochi said...

By their accents, probably Singapore or some other ex-British colony (except Canada since they/we sound like Americans).