A RECENT call to banish foreign words in Chinese publications and broadcast has soon met with scathing sarcasm and mockery online.

    The People’s Daily has published two editorials in the past week, claiming that “mingling foreign words in Chinese has damaged the Chinese language’s purity and undermined communication.”

    The concerns come at a time when popular English terms and expressions have become more commonly used in the daily life of the Chinese than ever.

    The articles question why the Chinese language had to include English abbreviations while similar terms borrowed from other languages, for example “kung fu,” are always translated into English letters in English-speaking nations.

    Guangming Daily, another major newspaper, Sunday urged the authorities to step up their efforts in providing official Chinese translations for imported foreign words before they become widely used by the public.

    However, members of the online community say they find the idea ridiculous and implausible, as substituted Chinese translations are almost always longer, more convoluted, and harder to get used to.

    Many Internet users have published pretending online conversations substituting unwieldy translations for commonly used English terms and abbreviations, mocking what they perceived as unnecessary official concerns.

    By Sunday afternoon, the Weibo topic “Grand competition to keep the purity of the Chinese language,” a jocular term coined by online users as they poke fun, had received almost 130,000 hits.

    “Excuse me, do you know where the Very Important Person lounge is?” one online user wrote, envisioning how a conversation would sound without using the English term VIP.

    Another wrote: “Today’s level of ‘atmospheric particulate matter with diameter of 2.5 micrometers or less’ has broken the record again,” in a mock media report that avoids the use of PM2.5, which has become a household term amid soaring air pollution.

    In 2012, the Chinese Government formed a linguistics committee tasked with standardizing the use of foreign words. Last year it approved and published the first 10 standardized Chinese translations for popular English terms like the WTO, AIDS, and GDP, and ordered media outlets to adopt the new terms. It is expected to roll out the second and third batches of official translations this year. (SD-Agencies)