National Cheng Kung University linguists on Wednesday released a bilingual version of Grimms’ Fairy Tales in German and Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese), complete with voice recordings accessible via QR code.
Grimms’ Fairy Tales, a German collection of about 300 stories published in the 19th century, has been translated into more than 100 languages worldwide.
Hoklo is now joining the list thanks to a project spearheaded by Tan Le-kun (陳麗君), an associate professor in the university’s Department of Taiwanese Literature.
The project, funded by the Rotary Club and with Avant Garde Publishing as printing partner, aims to translate children’s books into Hoklo to promote language education.
The fairy tale collection is the first in the series, to be followed by bilingual versions of French, Japanese, Russian, Vietnamese and US classics, among others, the university said.
“If language is a vehicle for culture, then writing is a repository for its dissemination,” Tan said.
Hopefully, the availability of literature can help Hoklo take root as a language and to no longer be treated as mere source material for slang, she added.
The book features favorite stories, including “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Rapunzel,” “Cinderella,” “The Frog Prince” and “Hansel and Gretel,” in Chinese characters and Roman script.
Each story has a QR code link to a recording of a professional reading the story in Hoklo.
Chiu Wei-hsin (邱偉欣), a doctoral candidate in the department who studied at a German university for another doctorate, in biology, translated the volume.
In the world of Chinese writing, saturated with rewrites and adaptations, most of the works people encounter diverge from the original, he said.
Chiu said he wanted to create something as close as possible to the German version so that readers could feel the spirit of the original, while also giving play to the creative translation ability of Hoklo.
The illustrator of the book, Aya Kondo, lives in Japan and is the granddaughter of renowned Hoklo expert Ong Iok-tek (王育德).
It was a pleasure to be involved in meaningful work related to Hoklo, Kondo said, adding that she cannot wait for the next collaboration.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods