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1456 points pulisse | 7 comments | | HN request time: 1.389s | source | bottom
1. jefe_ ◴[] No.21185233[source]
The craziest part of this article is the note at the end about airlines being forced to remove mention of Taiwan in order to do business in China. Went to Delta website to find a flight to Taipei, and sure enough every stop of trip lists city, state/country and for Taipei is just says:

Taipei,

According to the article, even this is still 'out of compliance,' because it should say 'Taipei, Taiwan China,' blown away this is how the booking page appears on the Delta website when loaded from the United States.

Makes me worry, localization takes effort, and effort often leads to blanket solutions that 'check everyone's boxes.' The most worrying examples of this in my opinion have been the superhero movies of the past decade. These blockbuster franchises were all written to accommodate distribution in China (and worldwide for that matter) as a goal. This led to simplified dialogues for translation, story lines that avoided pushing controversial buttons, and the result was a decade of moderately entertaining and decidedly safe cinema. Sure, blockbusters are not the best barometer for a nation's ability to push artistic boundaries, but they have historically spoken to the sentiments, dreams, and challenges of a time. Unfortunately with the sequels and superheros era, it seems the tone has been one of risk-averse idealism, which strikes me as a particularly low form of entertainment, entertainment that is truly disposable, unable and unwilling to stand the test of time. Possibly straying into problems with corporate consolidations, but I think it's all related as larger corporations tend to take smaller risks in efforts to appeal to broader audiences. If very few companies are able/willing to tell China no, censorship features become acceptable, and then they become normal, and then maintaining two branches becomes burdensome, so then censorship becomes the compliant option, and at that point the dream of technology empowering regular people to do amazing things, to become real superheros, fighting corruption, injustice and oppression, that dream will be truly dead. Think about how much things have changed since the Arab spring... it happens quickly.

replies(2): >>21185472 #>>21186319 #
2. chrischen ◴[] No.21185472[source]
I don’t see what the big deal is. Taiwan’s own passports say China on them.
replies(1): >>21185757 #
3. pwinnski ◴[] No.21185757[source]
I'm graciously assuming ignorance here. They say "Republic of China," which is the legal name of Taiwan. That is different from "People's Republic of China," which we in the west just call China.
replies(2): >>21186081 #>>21187357 #
4. TazeTSchnitzel ◴[] No.21186081{3}[source]
Both “Taiwan” and “China” agree there is only one China and Taiwan is part of it, but they disagree on which government is legitimate :)
replies(2): >>21186126 #>>21186588 #
5. dragonwriter ◴[] No.21186126{4}[source]
The ROC “agrees” with that framing of the conflict in the sense that they recognize that the PRC has signalled that a good way to get the conflict to become an imminently mortal one would be to publicly disagree with that framing.
6. surajama ◴[] No.21186588{4}[source]
The current government of Taiwan actually openly disagrees with the one China policy [1]. This is a major reason China has ramped up their pressure on Taiwan.

[1] https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/united-states/a...

7. chrischen ◴[] No.21187357{3}[source]
I'm not sure what ignorance you think I hold... both of them are "... of China". China being the entity disputed. It's not as if Delta is being made to make it say "Taipei, People's Republic of China".