19 October 2006

the politics of language

a guest speaker in my chinese foreign policy class yesterday pointed out a small, subtle and yet significant fact:
english language publications use the term ASEAN+1 or ASEAN+3,
while chinese language publicaions use the term 10+1 or 10+3

ASEAN+1 = ASEAN centric
10+3 = 13 states sitting around a table, which is how china would prefer to think of the grouping

how many nuances (and more) i must be missing by only reading material in one language..

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