Franky Lau: Hello, everyone. Welcome to this session of the
Oxford World English Symposium 2022. I'm Frankie Lau, Head of
Oxford University Press China. We have team members in Hong
Kong and mainland China. We have edited, produced and managed
English Chinese bilingual dictionaries and grammars, print
and digital, targeted for global Chinese communities. Most of our
readers however, face in the Greater China region. In this
session, I want to talk about our New Words Collection Programme, which
is connected to World English in many ways.
The New Words Collection Programme in the Greater China region is
run by the dictionaries team of OUP China. Though the programme was
only started in 2021, it had been planned for a few years
before that, for operating model, tools and essential trainings.
It is an ongoing assignment for the team which aims to support
content updates of our English to Chinese bilingual
dictionaries. Our team is responsible for collecting and
selecting new words. And we work with experienced ELT
lexicographers based in Oxford to compile, edit, and finalize the
entries. Our audience are non-native speakers of English, so from
selection criteria to writing guidelines, the needs of
learners of Contemporary English are prioritized. These new words
will be published on print, online or in digital media. Due
to limited extent of space, we may not be able to include all new words in
next print editions. But it's always possible to publish them
in our websites and dictionary apps. We find now is one of the best
moments to set up this New Words Programme. First, English is
surely one of the top second languages to learn in our region,
because English is a lingua franca. To acquire good command
of English is the key to effective learning and communication.
Secondly, since the 2000s, we have seen rapid economic development,
especially in mainland China, this makes both government and
individuals prioritize education, not only science and technology subjects, but
also languages. So English is simply a key to effective
learning. Then Chinese accelerated growth in the recent
decade captures virtually global attention to Chinese cultural
trends. This means much more people who do not speak Chinese
would need an effective medium to learn the country, the people,
and the new developments and trends. English is certainly an
essential medium for this. Lastly, the Chinese are also keen on
learning about the world to grow themselves, promoting their products and sharing
their culture and values with the world. Once again, English has
become a good medium. So when we set up the New Words Programme, we
have identified a few objectives. First, the programme
aims to collect hot and trendy terms of popular semantic domains
in the region, whether they originated from Chinese communities
or not. Hot and trendy do not mean we may casually collect
terms, which have high frequency only within a short period of time. Also the
candidates are not limited to those that have frequent use, mainly within
the greater China region. Instead, we would consult
internal corpora for monitoring new words in English media too,
and study the candidates forms and usage in the English world. We also aim to
study and identify established word or word forms, modern or
historical which precisely interpret Chinese
objects or concepts. We focus on specific semantic domains,
which generate more interest in the non Chinese world. Lastly, we
would like to provide more timely updates to our lexical reference
databases and products to support learning and studies of the
English language. No limitation addition of extend, we plan to
realize new entries be available to our dictionary app
subscribers on quarterly basis.
Apparently, Chinese related entries in OED attract growing
interested in global Chinese communities. Our New Words Programme
is not part of the OED, perhaps for the time being. It is, however
related to OED in some ways. For example, the selection and
inclusion criteria are much inspired by OED. In the recent
decade, people in the Greater China region have more world
English and paid more attention to world English because of the
rapid spread of information through media, and Chinese are often
thrilled to learn some Chinese related objects or concepts are
included by OED. When you do advanced search, by choosing
language of origin in the OED site, you would find over 230
entries labelled for their Chinese related origins. So
let's take a few examples here. In the first group, feng shui,
jiaozi, and qigong are borrowing from Mandarin directly, but they
are also generally popular in the non Chinese world, but please
note that Chinese terms are borrowed from different Chinese
communities. In the second group, dim sum is from Cantonese, which
specifically refers to Cantonese style snack or meal consisting
of these. Boba or boba tea is from Cantonese too, but it actually
refers to a cold drink of Taiwanese origin. Now a loan
translation, bubble tea is also commonly used in English, and
bubble tea is included in OED too. The third group are terms
originated from Hong Kong. Shroff means the cashier, especially at the
car park. And sitting out area is chiefly Hong Kong English, which
means a small outdoor public space with seating, in a built up
urban area. So from these examples, you can see Chinese
related entries originated from different language and dialect
sources, which are chiefly spoken by different communities
or in different locations. So our New Words Programme should
accommodate these too. This little complexity probably attracted
some Chinese academics' attention. They have been
systematically studying Chinese related entries in OED from the
recent decades. And some suggest that actually over 500 OED
entries and phrases originated from or are related to Chinese.
Food and drink, politics and culture are the top three
semantic domains of Chinese related entries in OED. Other popular
domains include religion, language and dialect and
festivals. Going back to our New Words Programme, it's in the
beginning stage. We have not collected many candidates by
now. But here we can share a few entries which have not been
included in OED yet. These words are not necessarily from Chinese
language or its dialects. But they are objects or concepts frequently
mentioned or discussed in the region. We must all agree the
COVID 19 pandemic has brought so much impact on our lives and
it also creates new and trendy words. For example, here you can see cold chain,
health code and mobile cabin hospital. Cold chain has been discussed
rather frequently since the vaccines came out and later in
context of our logistics. Health code is an E passport that
reports the real time health conditions in China since early 2020. And
it has virtually been an inseparable companion to people in China.
Mobile cabin hospital, which is also as shelter hospital,
makeshift hospital or fangcang hospital, refers to a hospital
rapidly built or converted from an existing public building such
as a stadium.
As mentioned previously, accelerated growth in China attracts
attention to Chinese culture and trends. Therefore, we find mini
program, self media, KOL and golden week are viable candidates
too. Mini program is a small program with limited
features that can be accessed and used on a bigger app,
especially popular in China. If you have heard our app called
WeChat, then you should know miniport is a very common
feature within WeChat. Self media and KOL are very popular
in social marketing context in China. Self media, may be more
commonly used within China at the moment. KOL however, has
has started to make more footprint outside China. I
remember when I mentioned the term KOL to friends and
colleagues in Oxford two years ago. None of them had heard
about it. But in recent couple of years, either KOL or the
full form key opinion leader is a bit more comprehensible in the
non Chinese world, as it is discussed and often compared
with another concept influencer. Lastly, golden week, if you have families, friends of colleagues in China,
you would know it is somewhat like the Thanksgiving holiday in
the US that it is one of the busiest travel periods of the
year. And many of you may agree, before the pandemic, that
its impact on tourism was globally. Certainly there are a few
candidates originated from Chinese, as the object or
concept described is from China or has achieved its biggest impact. And
so here are two examples. So as you can see, the first one danmu
sometimes as bullet screen or bullet screen comment
is a feature on some video websites that enables viewers to
make comments that are shown on the video in real time, or a comment made
in this way. Danmu was not invented in China, but it has
made the biggest impact in China so far, and then obtain more
attention globally. It is a popular audience engagement
tool. It also has become a topic of academic research. The other
example is tang ping, or lying flat. So tang ping either in one
or two words. It literally means lying flat. And now it is widely
used in its metaphorical meaning as a lifestyle, that someone
rejects the competitive work culture in society and adopt a
low desire and indifferent attitude towards life. Lately,
tang ping has also been compared with the Great Resignation in the western
world too.
Our New Words Programme has been kicked off and running for less
than a year, we aim to enhance the quality of content and
efficiency and cost effectiveness of the operating model. Here are few
things we plan to work out on. Ideally and perhaps most
importantly, we would like to build and maintain specific
corpora to monitor the English language and Chinese language in
the Greater China region, or even some foreign Chinese
communities such as Malaysia and Thailand. Besides region, we
want to focus on key semantic domains too. We appreciate
content contribution by both academics and language enthusiasts.
Reading programme of OED has been proved an effective
model. We also consider adopting crowdsourcing like using chatbot
and monitoring failure searches of our websites and dictionary
apps. Certainly, we are looking for access to more good resources of
language research for both modern and historical texts.
Lastly about future plans. Domain model would be an
effective approach that we may focus on semantic domains with
bigger social interest, higher cultural importance and
linguistics significance. For example, here are some prioritized
domains with reference to social-economic and political
development in the Greater China region. These include internet,
computing, technology. And for this one, I think AI is a very
good example. In commercial context, e commerce is one of
the key areas to look at in the region. As mentioned previously,
politics and law, and social life including food and drink,
entertainment and sports should be covered too. Other popular
domains include medicine and health, civil engineering,
manufacturing, art and culture etc. We're keen on collaborating
with OED, as the team contain excellent expertise and resources in terms
of research and editorial about lexicography in English
language. And we hope to contribute our knowledge of
Chinese language and culture to any related future OED World English
additions. So we also look forward to inviting more experts
and readers to join us to the quality content. That's all for
my presentation.
Thank you