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Re: DPN 21/2012 frozen. Please review and translate.



Hi Christian,

On 10/28/2012 03:37 PM, Christian PERRIER wrote:
> Quoting Justin B Rye (jbr@edlug.org.uk):
>> Guo Yixuan wrote:
>>> I just hope to have my name in the correct order in this issue. I have a
>>> Chinese name, where the family name _precedes_ the given name[1], thus I
>>> wish to keep this order in the latinized version. FYI, in Chinese
>>> characters, my name is 郭溢譞, and it also appears in my pubkey uid. (I
>>> wonder if it's too late to make this correction...)
>>
>> I've corrected it to "Guo Yixuan" - it always strikes me as odd that
>> we omit the tone marks when European names routinely get accented
>> characters, but I see we've also got a similarly unaccented Xiangfu
>> Liu.  Or is that Liu Xiangfu?
> 
> 
> As a side note in this discussion, I'd like to mention the convention
> I personnally use: putting my family name in capitals. I think this is
> an interesting convention to use, particularly by our Asian friends
> as, in most Asian cultures, the family name is used first....but
> confusion is added by the fact that several have indeed adopted the
> "European" use.
> 
> This combined with the deep ignorance we (the so-called "european"
> folks, which usually includes Latin and Anglo-Saxon cultures) have
> from Asian names and surnames, leads to many "cultural mixups" ending
> in calling someone with her first name only, which is often considered
> rude. And all this is made even more complicated because things vary a
> lot between China, South-East Asia, Japan, Korea, India, Thailand, etc.
> 
> As a mirror effect, I often end being called "Dear Perrier" by my
> Asian friends, which I always find a bit weird..:-)
> 
> It's always hard to avoid this but I always found that the "family
> name in capitals" convention sometimes helps...:-). In the free
> software world, this is a way to tell people : "if you want to be
> friendly with me, then please call me Christian".
> 
> Anyway, there is always trouble in these areas and I guess that the
> most important is that nobody takes offense from such mistakes and
> mixups. The most important, for me, is to have "european" folks being
> aware that our way to see things is not the only possible one.
> 
> And, of course, Go Yixuan, you were perfectly right in
> suggesting we use the order you prefer when mentioning your name..:)
> 

Thanks for this bit. Actually many Chinese people (maybe also Japanese
and Korean) tend to adopt the European order when transcribing their
names with the Latin alphabet. While this may work in many situations, I
really appreciate a more active attitude towards cultural diversity and
happy to see the "deep ignorance" being gradually changed to awareness.

Cheers,

GUO Yixuan


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