The Danwei web site (Chinese media, advertising, and urban life) is carrying a rippingly funny blog piece by Alice Xin Liu about a recent Chinese government program that would have China Mobile monitor mobile telephone text transmissions for conversations of a sexual nature. Offenders� (messaging) service would be cut off until they wrote a �self-criticism.�
Xin Lilu said bloggers in China are having a ball with the idea that the government is trying to censor dirty jokes, which apparently are a significant part of the culture of Chinese people (as if they were any different than the rest of us).
The Chinese language, however, is structured in such a way that machine filtering encounters even more complexity than it does in other languages.
�Similar to filtering for the Internet, dirty phrases are targeted, but with the make up of Chinese sentences, two completely unrelated characters could be strung together to make something a lot ruder,� she says.
She said that one student blogged that after he returned from dinner at a friend�s home, he sent the text message to his buddy: �you mom�s stewed post [pork?] is excellent.� The next day he couldn�t send text messages.
There is a Chinese euphemism �meat stick,� but you can read Xin Lilu�s original blog post for that discussion.
Dirty jokes are part of the fabric of life she concludes. ��sex is a kind of entertainment. Furthermore, it�s quite important as a form [of] entertainment.�
Thank you Alice.
Blog piece here.
New York Times story "China to Scan Text Messages to Spot �Unhealthy Content�" here.
Tom Kelchner
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