English IS the global lingua franca TODAY, used by most travelers to navigate through an unknown environment. if the signs in China are not translated into English TODAY, then there's no reason to go there TODAY.
Honestly tho, as long as the street signs have English characters on them and I can find them and I can match them to Google Maps, I’m good. Compare with the UK where all the street signs are in English but I can never find them! (They’re often attached to buildings rather than anywhere useful…)
> if the signs in China are not translated into English TODAY
Could you give me an example? I just Googled "beijing airport sign" and everything seems translated as expected, e.g., Gates, Beijing Capital Airport, International Departure, Drinking Water, etc.
I assume you don't mean you want Beijing written as "North Capital"?
This seems like a better choice for the sake of "compatibility".
Given that English is not a major local language outside of Hong Kong, I'd expect there's a very high chance that an English-only speaker might need to interact with a Chinese-only speaker. It could be something like trying to relay their goal to a taxi driver or delivery person, or something as critical as trying to gain the attention of emergency services (I'd assume if you called the equivalent of 999/911 and shouted a location in the phone, even if you couldn't explain further, that would be enough to trigger a response)
Providing the English speaking audience the Pinyin gives them a chance to be understood in that situation. The translated only name is more likely to be unrecognized by the lisstener.
It doesn't seem so bizarre when you go into the Montreal metro and the signs say "Gare Bonaventure" instead of "Bonaventure Station", and that's in a country where English is nominally a supported language.
I do not think that anyone is arguing that it does not make sense that we say write 東京駅 (Toukyoueki) for "Tokyo Station" in Japan and that -eki as a suffix is to be expected here. However, if you see a purging of already existing terms in a country, akin to turning Sauerkraut into Liberty Cabbage, it probably indicates that something other than an increased consideration for monolingual speakers is going on.
If what the grandparent's linked Economist article says is true: "The province of Hainan has launched a campaign to 'clean up and rectify' kindergarten names by purging a variety of words, including 'world', 'global', 'bilingual' and 'international'", it does make me feel somewhat sad, as I would hope that many of the terms they list as falling out of favour should remain positive and aspirations for us as a species regardless of the political winds in Beijing.
I don’t have a dog in this thread’s particular fight and am basically just doomscrolling on a Friday night.
But I don’t think English is a nominally supported language in Quebec. IIRC all of Canada outside of Quebec requires dual signage in english + French, but Quebec only requires French. I’d guess Gare bonaventure is an artifact of that law rather than a translation strategy.
That may be the case, but you'd expect that a service like public transit is likely to have a higher than average number of users (travelers from elsewhere) that don't speak French and they still chose to minimize concessions to English.