China’s censors ban TV shows and ads from using internet slang

The folks from China’s State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT) are at it again. Late last week, the Chinese censorship organ issued new regulations governing the use of language in China’s television shows and advertisements. The new rules require all TV shows and ads to stick to standard Mandarin words and expressions, and forbid them from using internet slang terms.

The new regulations are aimed at stopping the use of internet slang that appropriates or imitates “standard” colloquial expressions, and particularly the Chinese language’s four-character chengyu sayings. The internet has invented or adapted many new chengyu for its own uses, but SAPPRFT’s new regulations ban the use of any of that creative language on television. The full text of the regulations stresses the historical significance and beauty of China’s language, and emphasizes that television content producers cannot “wantonly change or use expressions to create a divide with [traditional] culture and linguistic chaos.”

The regulations order China’s television content producers to do a thorough self-investigation and to strengthen oversight and inspection efforts to assure that non-standard language and internet slang doesn’t sneak its way into any future television programs.

Given the sort of language the Chinese internet often comes up with, these regulations may just have been a matter of time. But it seems unlikely that controlling what’s said on television will have much effect on the spread of new and popular expressions throughout the population at large.

See: Killing China’s subtitle sites won’t stop movie piracy. Here’s what will.

(Source: Techweb)