It should, however, be noted that while music and written material in "dialects" is never censored, there has been a high-profile case where Tom and Jerry were dubbed in, I believe it was Wu, and it was banned from airing, although I believe the DVD will still be distributed.
What's ironic about the whole fiasco is that in the original English, Tom and Jerry were both silent.
Mark
On Tue, 1 Mar 2005 11:59:08 -0800 (PST), Felix Wan felixwiki@earthsphere.org wrote:
On Tue, March 1, 2005 10:00 am, Delirium said:
Mark Williamson wrote:
Some people may not think it is notable, but to give a local example drives home that Wikipedia is very diverse. If you are presenting in China, please don't forget to mention that we have places for people to build Wikipedias in Yi, Zhuang, Tibetan, Uyghur, and many other languages.
I don't disagree with this, but it's probably worth noting that languages are intimately connected to culture, nationalism, and politics, so when to mention what can sometimes be a sensitive issue. In China, in particular, promoting of regional languages is often connected to promoting regional political independence (i.e. secession from China, or at least increased autonomy), so needs to be done somewhat carefully so we don't become seen as a meddling US-based political organization that's trying to break apart China or something like that.
-Mark
The PRC government recognizes that the minorities (non-Han) have their own languages. Some of them are even printed on the Renminbi bank notes. The word "Putonghua" (common speech) was coined by PRC to replace the previous name "Guoyu" (national speech), officially as a repect to the minorities. I believe it should be rather safe to promote an encyclopedia in any recognized minority language.
Even for Han Chinese regional speeches, although the government recognize them as dialects rather than different but related languages, there is no official statement against promoting them and there is no record of considering the action secessionist yet.
They make a great effor in promoting Putonghua though.
I am not saying that we should not be careful about the language issue, but I just want to set the record straight.
Felix Wan
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