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dear all

this is the email replied by the UN personnel regarding the issue.

my conclusion, 'UN to abolish traditional chinese' is a hoax.

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Thanks for your enquiries regarding United Nations' abolishment of Traditional Chinese in 2008.

Early this year, someone on internet made an ungrounded claim that UN will abolish Traditional Chinese in 2008. To clarified the rumor, correspondent from Xinhua News Agency at UN interviewed a senior Chinese staff who did Chinese translation at UN for more than 30 years. At the United Nations, the Traditional Chinese was used until 1972 when GA voted the seat for China should be represented by mainland China. In 1973, all the type setting machines(Chinese typewriter) were imported from China and Simplified Chinese was the only characters on those machines. We can say that UN has been using the Simplified Chinese in all its documents since 1973.

There was no UN resolution to specify which variant of official language should be used. (Only Chinese has the Traditional vs. Simplified character problem). The consensus was that the official language should be the language which the member state used. In this case, the Simplified Chinese is used by the Chinese government. The Traditional vs Simplified sometime became political issue due to their representing. Fueled by possible political reasons, some people made the online petition. Most people think it is just a hoax.

Hope it helps.

Jianqun

Ms. WANG, Jianqun (Jane)
Information Systems Officer
Communications and Information Management Service
Department of Economic and Social Affairs (http://esa.un.org)
United Nations, New York, NY, 10017, USA
Room DC2-1428
Tel: (212) 963-3385
Fax: (212) 963-4444
E-mail: wangj@un.org