A popular Web poll to find the seven natural wonders of the world lists Yushan (玉山) — ranked at No. 1 — as being in “Chinese Taipei.”
The New7Wonders Foundation, a Swiss-based organization, earlier this year selected 261 sites around the world and published the list on its Web site for Web users to cast their ballots. However, in the drop-list of nominees, Yushan is listed as located in “Chinese Taipei.”
“They may have followed the naming convention for the Olympics without checking with us,” said Wei Feng-che (魏豐哲) chief of the Yushan National Park Administrations’ park guide department.
When asked if the administration would file a request to the foundation for a correction, Wei said: “We have to sign an agreement form with the foundation [allowing the foundation to use intellectual properties such as photos of the mountain on its page].”
“We have reported the content of this agreement to the Ministry of the Interior [MOI], and the MOI may then send the form to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, so that the nature of the voting event can be fully understood,” Wei said.
However, when asked if a name correction request would be sent along with the signed agreement, Wei said no.
“We are in the process of signing an agreement with the foundation. If we haven’t signed this, how can we talk to the foundation about changing the name? We have not reached the stage where we will file the [name correction request] as we have not signed the contract,” he said.
Wei added that after the MOI approves of signing the agreement form, the park headquarters will issue a letter to the foundation “to say that our national title is Taiwan.”
Meanwhile, Google translation, which provides free translation services for Web information from one language to another, translates "China" on the New7Wonders nominees webpage as "Home Country (我國)."
When plugging in the nominee’s page into Google’s translate.google.com.tw, while Yushan is listed as being in “Chinese Taipei (中華台北),” Mount Everest, and K2 are listed as located in “Home Country/Nepal,” and “Home Country/Pakistan,” respectively.
In response, Google’s public relations officer Caroline Hsu said the translation was done by the company’s engineering department.
“We try to make the translation service as good as possible, but we cannot check the translation of every word in every region, Taiwan, Hong Kong and China,” she said.
“As I have not enough information, I cannot comment,” she said.
Yushan is the only natural attraction from Taiwan to make the list of contenders in any category. The top 11 sites chosen in each of the seven categories will be reviewed by a panel of experts.
The nominations will be put to a worldwide online vote next year and in 2011 to select the top seven wonders in landscape, island, mountain, cave, forest, lake and seascape categories.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CNA
Also See: EDITORIAL: Now even Yushan isn’t ours
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