When flying a China Airlines flight to return to
Taiwan from the Indian city of Delhi last month, a Taiwanese citizen discovered a place on the map of Taiwan shown on the in-flight TV screen that he had never heard of. Then he realized that CAL translators worked from an English
translation and had misinterpreted the
romanization for "Chiai" (this is a county in southern Taiwan), and had re-translated it back into
Chinese as "Chi-ai" instead of "Chia-i". The normal romanization of that county is "Chiayi".
The mistranslation also provoked the rage of Chung Ming-shih, tourism bureau chief of the southern county, who described it as a "serious mistake" and demanded an immediate correction. In response, CAL promised to correct the Chinese characters for the place name as soon as possible.
Local language experts have attributed a glaring translation error on a map published by Taipei-based China Airlines (CAL) to a lack of respect for translation professionalism on the part of the airline.
