The English name for the five mascots of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games was silently changed
last week, according to a local paper today.
Original English
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Updated
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Beijing Star Daily said sources from the Beijing
Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG)
confirmed that the mascots' collective English name was officially
changed from the "Friendlies" to the "Fuwa," the Chinese
pinyin spelling translation, last week.
Those mascots and their names were unveiled last November. The
newspaper said that "the change was made due to integrated
consideration of various factors." Most references to them have
been changed on the Beijing Olympics' official website, although
not all have been corrected.
An official from BOCOG's media and communications
department? said that he had not received a formal message and
did not know specific reasons behind the change.
The veracity of the translated international name "Friendlies"
was always questioned by many people, especially netizens ever
since their release last year. A doctor surnamed Li from Lanzhou
University was among the first to criticize the translation, saying
the name could mislead foreigners. The pronunciations of
"Friendlies" and "friendless" are close, while some others may
think that "Friendlies = Friend + lies."
Li even suggested three other translations for consideration:
Forworld; Forward; Forwards. The latter two pronunciations are
similar to the mascots' Chinese name's pronunciation, while having
positive meanings. However, "Fuwa" has now been
decided.
An Olympic-themed garden party for citizens to learn foreign
languages was held in Beijing last weekend. Jiang Xiaoyu, BOCOG
executive vice president, attended the party and called for
participants to learn and improve their foreign languages, creating
a good environment for 2008. The famous English language-teaching
expert Li Yang led people to read English out loud at the event.
Many foreign volunteers were also there to communicate with
language learners and nearly 100,000 people attended the two-day
event.
(China.org.cn by Zhang Rui, October 16, 2006)
