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We can’t really speak for the UK students but we do know that De Montfort University in Leicester has been capturing the views and voices of their current international students in order to help attract their future overseas intake.

We provided interpreters in Mandarin, Thai, Lithuanian and Polish to help in the production of their new international video which intersperses essential information about the university with real students sharing their experiences of life there.  De Montfort has international students from over 50 countries so it’s very much in their interests to make the most of the opportunity to provide the information that prospective students clamour for in a way that is readily accessible.

Since SanTranslate first set up in 2001 with the help of Nottingham Trent University we have worked closely with the international offices of a number of higher education institutions, including Nottingham Trent itself, the University of Nottingham, Goldsmiths College London, Imperial College London and the University of Wolverhampton, translating for them a wide variety of print and web based materials.

Since a political advisory body in Guangzhou in southern China proposed that TV stations should broadcast their prime-time shows in Mandarin instead of Cantonese in the run-up to the Asian Games there in November, protest voices have been increasingly raised, with rallies in Guangzhou and Hong Kong.

Although Mandarin, also known as Putonghua, was declared China’s official language in 1982, there are around 70 million Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong, Macau and China’s southern Guangdong province, and is widely spoken in overseas Chinese communities around the world so it’s easy to see how this recommendation could be taken as an attack on a long-established, widely-spoken language.

Mandarin language lessons became compulsory in schools in Hong Kong after its return to Chinese rule in 1997 and an increasing number of professionals began to learn the dialect after the handover as Hong Kong’s business links with the mainland have grown.

Whilst it’s understandable that the Guangzhou authorities might be keen to ensure that their region benefits as fully as possible from the opportunities presented by the Asian Games by ensuring that media coverage is widely accessible, it would be a great shame if this were a step on the way to the disappearance of Cantonese.  With that, it would only be a matter of time before other dialects such as Hakka and Shanghainese which also add greatly to the richness of Chinese culture also vanished. 

In the UK we are familiar with campaigns to keep traditional languages and dialects from around the country alive and, at SanTranslate, we would like to know that Cantonese will also continue to be spoken by future generations.  It is a lovely dialect that easily allows for the expression of emotions similar to the way that body language can communicate an underlying emotional component to a conversation.  For example, simply by adding the word “ga” – which corresponds to the English “isn’t it?” or “it is!” you can convey some subtle nuances.

Whilst Cantonese can present its own challenges in interpretation – especially in formal situations such as in court – we would hate to see this powerful dialect disappear.