Talk:Jenny Kwan

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 3 September 2019 and 20 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): A.danderfer. Peer reviewers: Kwaaktime, Adriannaphillips.

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Just a note re: Samaritan's edit: "(community legal counsel -> community legal worker as she was not an attorney)", the BC Government bio page uses the title "community advocate", which might be more appropriate instead of "worker". Minor distinction in any case. Southsloper 21:10, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Pinyin/Mandarin usage?

"Pinyin: Guān Hùizhēn" - why should that be here, if she's Cantonese speaking and not Mandarin speaking, and uses her name in a different Latinization reflecting her own kind of Chinese? Does it really matter how her name is spelled in Mandarin/Pinyin, any more than how it's spelled in Cyrillic or Armenian or in Polish or Hungarian alphabets?? Isn't it enough to have the Chinese characters? Why impose a name on her she doesn't use herself, or spell it that way herself?Skookum1 (talk) 02:27, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

There seems to be an effort to pinyinize Wikipedia. Several KMT Generals who only used Wade-Giles in their lifetimes, appearing in English language press during their lives with that romanization have been moved to pinyin names already. 65.95.15.116 (talk) 06:02, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

But Pinyin is Mandarin, yes, or is it "set up" so a Cantonese speaker can read it out in Cantonese? Is it relevant to someone whose origin is Cantonese-speaking and has no reason - here - to have her name also in a language/dialect she does not speak? Using pinyin for all chinese-language uses in Wikipedia when the context is neither mandarin nor pinyin....that's somehow not right. It's as I said, we might as well provide the Russian and Polish and Turkish spellings, too.....Skookum1 (talk) 06:23, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Pinyin is only in Mandarin, and cannot be read as Cantonese unless it is that very rare beast "Cantonese Pinyin" which no one uses, and is different from regular pinyin. Cantonese has an official, a defacto and a widely used romanization coming out of Hong Kong (Jyutping, "Hong Kong romanization", and Yale, respectively). I think all this pinyin should be restricted to the {{chinese}} infobox personally, for non-Mandarin or non-Communist China people, unless it is the common name. One of the Chinese languages is actually written natively in Cyrillic (Dungan) and another was written natively in Arabic script, but Jenny Kwan is not part of those groups. 65.93.15.73 (talk) 07:12, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Further to the discussion here, I have removed the Pinyin translation of her name.--Darryl Kerrigan (talk) 23:01, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

@Darryl Kerrigan: I will refer to the China WikiProject. I anticipate that the Pinyin will be restored, because it is Standard Chinese that is universal to all ethnic Chinese matters. The Sinology community has always used Mandarin as the standard dialect. I read W. E. Willmott's article on the "small town" (towns other than Vancouver and Victoria) Chinese communities in BC in the 1960s, and the names of organizations were given in both Pinyin and Cantonese. (names of organizations are given on pages 31 and 34, explanations of names are on page 31) WhisperToMe (talk) 02:54, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

ONE academic article from the 1960s does NOT establish a standard, in Wikipedia or otherwise. Mandarin may be a standard dialect; but it was not in use in regular English in the 1960s, in its Pinyin form or otherwise. The sinification of English coverage of Chinese people mandated by WP:China goes on and on, along with its circular arguments about why "making it easy for everyone" as your edit comment goes, means "imposing Mandarin even on people who do not/speak it and were not raised using/speaking it". And you'er part of that "what we say goes" mentality that has plastered this kind of not-relevant-to-English language content on pages and pages beyond count. Refer to your WikiProject all you like, what it says should not hold sway over standards in other WikiProject guidelines. WP:USEENGLISH should apply...but Chinese exceptionalism is your own well-established agenda, as I know all too well. Refer to the matter to RfC, then, but your insistence on this is not in line with guidelines or current standards of common use in English, in BC histories/biographies, or within Wikipedia; that is, within Wikipedia where WP:China's self-mandated exceptionalism has not already imposed this. Ms Kwan may speak Mandarin by now......but she, and the Chinese in her constituency and community, speak near-entirely Cantonese. PRC/Mainland cultural imperialism is your agenda, and the agenda of WP:China. It should not be wikipedia's standard just because the PRC/Mainlander agenda says so, including you.Skookum1 (talk) 09:23, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

re "Pinyin will be restored", it seems that means you're about to edit war over this huh? And ignore what everyone else says, just as you have everywhere else. Are you Editor-in-Chief of Wikipedia or something? No doubt you will respond with long posts building SYNTH arguments out of distorted/convoluted extrapolations of guidelines and insist they are "rules" and MUST be obeyed, load with links and bad logic and projections as you have so extensively on countless other talkpages and boards, ad nauseam.Skookum1 (talk) 09:32, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

You always sound like the Borg when you talk like that: "Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated". And that you make your edits in such volumes, and your argumentative self-justirications and obstructive arguments, as noted elsewhere you really do behave more like a bot than an actual human who thinks and listens and works with others; you are a rule-set in your own right. Yours. That's not an NPA or AGF, just a straighforward observation about your very imperious tone and mechanistic thinking.Skookum1 (talk) 09:36, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Skookum, Jenny Kwan was born in 1967. By the time she was 20 Pinyin was already supplanting Wade-Giles and the Mainland had "opened up." By the time she was 30 Hong Kong was taken over. I was already aware that the "ordinary people" in North America generally only spoke Cantonese for many years. In any event I've agreed with the compromise Colipon referred to. WhisperToMe (talk) 14:38, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Summary. This is English Wikipedia, not Mandarin Wikipedia. She is a Cantonese-speaking Canadian, not a citizen of the PRC or of China, her community is historically Cantonese-speaking. If "making it easy for everyone" (which is not in a guideline, unless you'd care to extrapolate/synth an argument that it is, as you probably will...) applies, then Cyrillic, Arabic and Devangari scripts should be here too; and she does have Punjabi and Russian and Arabic speaking constituents.Skookum1 (talk) 09:40, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

I am in agreement with IP user above who suggested that in the case of Kwan a good compromise may be to relegate Simplified Chinese and pinyin to the Template:Chinese, while having only the traditional Chinese characters in the lede of the article. I personally am also opposed to the pinyinfication of Wikipedia, particularly those users who insist on using pinyin tones in the article body. At the same time, could we conceivably have some readers who reference Wikipedia to see how her name is written in Simplified Chinese or pronounced in Mandarin (and Cantonese)? Absolutely. That's what the Chinese template is for. Chiang Kai-shek and Sun Yat-sen did not speak Mandarin, yet you find pinyin transliteration on their articles. Jenny Kwan campaigns partly in Mandarin because the Vancouver/Victoria Chinese community is no longer monolithically Cantonese and Mandarin has become even something of a local Chinese lingua franca, and would refer to herself with Mandarin pronunciation from time to time (even Olivia Chow's supporters sometimes does this), so this may well be useful in a context that has nothing to do with the PRC. Colipon+(Talk) 14:07, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

@Colipon: That's a perfect compromise: having it in the template works out. Generally the Chinese template is used when there are more "parameters" (a difference in simplified or traditional Chinese, different applicable dialects) anyway. WhisperToMe (talk) 14:31, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

I agree, that seems to be a good compromise.--Darryl Kerrigan (talk) 18:21, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Colipon, by your logic, if she uses Punjabi in her campaign speeches or non-campaign speeches or her publications e.g. campaign brochures, then the Devanagari version of her name should be here too; and that mandarinization of Wikipedia has produced lots of examples of "but it's used in this other article so should be used here too" does not mean that they establish precedent in wiki-guideline terms.(there's an acronym for that false logic, I've forgotten it for now). Olivia Chow, too, has other-language constituents and she probably campaigns in what she knows of them, too. Vancouver politicians publish materials in at least half-a-dozen languages and various scripts. And compromise as usual means that the right way and the wrong/imposed way are compromised, or rather the right way is compromised into being half-wrong; truth and falsity cannot be compromised without truth becoming untruth; the same applies for correct and incorrect, good and evil. And that is a tool of self-serving and circular self-justifying arguments advancing the cause of incremental cultural imperialism as what I have seen going on, a very common one. Exclusionism and demands for compromise are the context and I've seen too much of it to be accepting of the notions being advanced, nor is logic. She has Russian-speaking constituents in Vancouver, and Korean and Japanese ones too; so include the Russian, Korean, Japanese and Devangari and Arabic and so on.

This is not Chinese Wikipedia, and WP:China's priorities should not be used to steamroll this agenda...but they have been doing so, and continue to do so....because people are not willing to do anything but compromise or accede by default, and they know this. The demands for official language status for Mandarin (not Cantonese) in BC that emerged at one point were part of this mentality, as is the resistance to ever deigning to speak the language of the colonized and remain apart and aloof. This is a POV matter...but it is being comprised by consensus and bulldozed, as is English Wikipedia. It's not the same as giving the Inuktitut scripts on an Inuk biography (an official language in NU btw) but something loaded with political-cultural intent. I will be outruled, and condemned as usual, but "this article over there uses it to" and "this other person does too" and "she uses it in her camnpaign speeches" are not valid logics, and whatever those acronyms are I can't remember they're about exactly these kinds of self-perpetuating claims of cultural necessity and they're against guidelines. But so is so much of WTM's arguments and how he argues and I've seen it before on the Gueilo, Chinaman, Chinaman (term) and Chinatown and related pages lots before - dismissive disdain for anyone who doesn't page-cite or doesn't own a book ref'd, for example, and massive walls of SYNTH constructs and distortions and selectivism and demands that he be obeyed NOW and more, always falling back on what sounds like reasonable speech, but always on the advance and attack and conquest of the field of debate, content and what can be mentioned and what not. It's straight out of the Art of War and I've seen it before on other China/Chinese-related battlefield titles; it's not right, but Wikipedia is suscept to compromise for compromise's sake, and not what's right or valid. So goes the world and the same agenda all over. Same kind of thing has gone over Tibet articles and others, and this goes back to UseNet days on the net.....it's not like it's all OK.....but hey, enjoy your compromise; I say it's wrong and the points raised are invalid in Wikipedia terms. But the victors write the history...and are into deleting it too. Especially when not page-cited for a person who will never physically possess the book, because he says so. I feel like vonnegut's hero in Cat's Cradle watching the water of the world incrementally, and then rapidly, morph into ice-nine. the scifi novel Guangzhuo also comes to mind....in a big way.Skookum1 (talk) 19:24, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you Skookum1. I have reconsidered my position. Now that I see the info box in the article, it appears overly crowded and does not seem to add to the article. If people really want to read about Jenny Kwan in Chinese, someone can add this article to the Chinese Wikipedia (if it is not already there). If Jenny often uses her name in Chinese then so be it, but we should not be adding multiple name styles to the English article. If she regularly goes by her name in Chinese, add it, if not exclude it, but in any event I am not sure what use there is for using Pinyin.--Darryl Kerrigan (talk) 04:21, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

I just checked other MLA articles, e.g. Jagrup Brar and Moe Sihota who are Indo-Canadians; no Punjabi script is used on them; doubtless WP:China's questionable influence on this matter means that other Canadian bios, political or otherwise, probably also have had Chinese characters and/or pinyin versions of their names added. Premier Boss Johnson was Icelandic, that doesn't mean his bio infobox should have the Icelandic form of his name; same with Greek Canadian or Arab Canadian politicians; they are Canadian, not Chinese nationals or Greek nationals or Arab-country nationals, they are Canadian and that country's normative and MOSTCOMMON usage should prevail over what another-country WikProject mandates for anyone with ancestral roots there.Skookum1 (talk) 11:31, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

I don't have any objections with putting Jagrup Brar's name in Devanagari script either in parentheses after his name or in an infobox, nor would I insist that since Devanagari is used we must also use Russian, Chinese, Urdu or whatever. Nor am I approaching this from the point of view of Chinese linguistic imperialism, or Mandarin imperialism, or whatever you said. I am approaching it from the point of view of the reader who may benefit from knowing how this person's name is pronounced or written in Chinese, which is a plausible inquiry. If indeed Ms Kwan is serving constituents who are mostly Punjabi speaking and if her Punjabi name appears frequently on lawn signs of a local Punjabi language newspaper, then I would not object to putting Punjabi in the infobox either, so long as the infobox is collapsible. Also, it is true, that a third or fourth generation descendant of Chinese immigrants (Michael Chong for instance) may no longer even remotely identify as Chinese and therefore may not need to have a Chinese infobox, but I really don't think having it there causes as much harm as has been suggested in this discussion. Colipon+(Talk) 15:59, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

I think her name in traditional Chinese should appear at the top of the info box (directly underneath her name in English). Clearly she does use traditional Chinese (see her website here). The simplified Chinese and Pinyin are unnecessary, and only serve to clutter the article. Interestingly I note that there is a Chinese Wikipedia entry for her 關慧貞. Unless she is frequently and prominently using simplified Chinese and Pinyin, we should not do so here. It does not assist the reader, it distracts from the English content.--Darryl Kerrigan (talk) 19:05, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

I removed it from the lead, and put the traditional Chinese in the Main infobox. I think this looks better and only minimally distracts from the other information. Please let me know what you think. If this works, perhaps we can remove the other infobox.--Darryl Kerrigan (talk) 19:29, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

@Darryl Kerrigan: It it is possible to get the Cantonese pronunciation of the name. Readers will want to know how to pronounce those Chinese characters. However there is an expectation among editors in the Chinese side of things that other parameters should be included. Consider this template: Template:Infobox Chinese-language singer and actor. This infobox is used for actors and actresses in the Chinese world. Andy Lau is an actor from Hong Kong, but his name is listed not only in Cantonese but also in Mandarin, and in both traditional and simplified forms. While the template doesn't do this for Chow Yun-fat, the "Chinese" template below it does. The editors decided that it's not clutter to show both Traditional and Simplified Chinese, nor Mandarin, for Hong Kong actors and actresses. In my opinion it shouldn't be clutter for a Hong Kong-origin Canadian Chinese politician, who would be served by a similar biographical template. WhisperToMe (talk) 18:04, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

I am not making the calls here. Of course that should be done by consensus, but I do not see a problem with adding the Cantonese pronunciation, presuming she regularly uses in in campaigning etc. I would have to see what that looks like though, in the article though, before I can give you my final opinion. I am not keen on these other info boxes you have linked. I think we should be aiming for something like the one used by Michael Chong. Perhaps, the Cantonese pronunciation below her name. If other users don't like it, or have other suggestions we can continue the conversation here. Thanks WhisperToMe. --Darryl Kerrigan (talk) 04:34, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

@Darryl Kerrigan: I didn't know about Michael Chong. I do like the idea of displaying the Chinese characters and romanizations in the infobox instead of using a separate box for Chinese. I went ahead and notified the Hong Kong WikiProject and the China WikiProject to get more feedback on how the Chinese should be displayed. I also notified the Canada Wikiproject. WhisperToMe (talk) 18:01, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

No, we have a separate box for that stuff, {{Chinese}}. Mandarin is not strongly linked to this person, per the already posted discussions. If you want to know how t pronounce her name, it is should be in Cantonese, because she is Cantonese, and that's how to pronounce her name. It should not be Mandarin because she is not Mandarin. -- 65.94.43.89 (talk) 06:06, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

@65.94.43.89: The way people think about Cantonese people is that they are a part of the Han Chinese supraethnicity, and so are "Chinese". CY Leung, Andy Lau, Chow Yun Fat, etc. all are "Chinese" and have Mandarin displayed. A similar analogy is Standard Arabic versus Egyptian Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, etc. The native language of someone from Morocco is not Standard Arabic, but Moroccan Arabic (which is quite different from Standard Arabic), yet a reader would expect to see Standard Arabic on the article of a Moroccan person.

I don't mind whether the Mandarin/Simplified is in the Chinese box or whether it's in the infobox. I think it needs to be somewhere, that's all.

WhisperToMe (talk) 15:27, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

No, the way North Americans think of Chinese people, if they are familiar with the subject, is to ask if you are Cantonese or Mandarin. There is a dichotomy in the North American Experience. Chinese communities in North America are traditionally Cantonese or Hoisanese. Spelling of names of people and things come out of this experience get derived from Cantonese or its dialect Hoisanese. The Mandarin is absent.

And as for Han Chinese, Mandarin is not the proper pronunciation, since it is not the pronunciation used when Classical Chinese was first established, it is neither Xia, nor Qin, nor Han pronunciation. -- 65.94.43.89 (talk) 04:26, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Some articles even in the 1960s mentioned both Mandarin and Cantonese names to Chinese Canadians organizations. This was despite the fact that back then spoken Mandarin was nonexistent in the North American Chinatowns. Remember this isn't a discussion of whether Jenny Kwan's name should be spelled differently: it's a discussion on whether the relevant Mandarin should also be displayed in the article. Hong Kongers in fact write in Standard Chinese: they simply don't speak it (it's diglossia). WhisperToMe (talk) 14:18, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

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