Thursday, April 23, 2009

April 23rd

It's Saint George's Day.




In case we forgot why Durban II was boycotted or how Islamic states are failures due to their brutality and dreadful inequalities, watch how a shiekh in the United Arab Emirates tortures a former friend (WARNING: the video is quite shocking).




It is not enough to boycott conferences like Durban II. The very organisations which inspire or support them should be held accountable. Are the Jews or Israel responsible for the acts of torture seen in the video? No. Entire cultures bent on denigrating the worth of human beings are. That's why places like Libya, the Swat Valley in Pakistan and Indonesia are hot zones for violence and poverty. The people within are authors of their own destruction.




A rather curious dilemma has popped up (though, I'm sure, it isn't the first time) in the set standards of names but this time the source of demands comes from a fairly unlikely source- the Chinese government. In this article, a young woman named Ma Cheng must renew her identity card every three months in order to keep her unique name. I agree that in terms of transliteration there should be set standards for names not in a particular alphabet. However, should the government be dictating what names are given?




There are different romanization standards for non-Roman alphabet languages: the McCune-Reischauer system for Korean, the Hepburn romanization for Romaji, or the English transliteration of Japanese (which includes kanji and hirigana), "National" for Georgian, and whole series of transliteration and romanization systems for Chinese and Russian. Efforts are made to conform to the existing letters and sounds in the language being translated. For example, the Korean alphabet does not have a V or F sound. The closest approximate sounds would exist in the letters bieupp or pieupp (ㅂ b and ㅍ p respectively). Therefore, a name like Victor would sound and be written as "Biktoh" (the R sound having no place at the end). Phonetics sometimes hit walls.


Given names can also slightly problematic. In Asian countries, the last name (or family name or surname) is listed first. A married woman will keep her family name instead of her husband's name (many in western countries express shock when an Asian woman's last name doesn't match her husband's name yet the western custom of adopting the husband's name has fallen to the wayside, assuming people get married these days). It is also the case that many Korean and Japanese names have Chinese roots, though usually the names reflect the culture in question in some way. The name, Yong, for example, means "brave" in Korean and "perpetual" in Chinese. For a time, only certain hanja symbols were legally allowed in South Korea for the use in family names. The Koreans weren't alone in this practice. In the former Soviet Union, names were chosen to reflect "socialist realities" and ethnic names were Russified.


That being said, should the government dictate one's name? It's tempting given names like "Sierra", "Dakota", "Montana", "Desirae" and it's various spellings. It also makes sense to formalise rules on spelling and first and last names, regardless which country one comes from. However, the government's intrusion on one's own name robs the individual of identity. Soon, spelling doesn't become a matter of records in so much as the government can dictate what it wants to call you.


It's frightening when we surrender our will so easily.

1 comment:

Leopard said...

The UAE is a feudal system that keeps its citizens uneducated and in the dark. Human Rights groups and feminists should target this area because this is where human rights violations are not only practiced but enshrined in law. Shame on them.