From online discussions to adverts, Chinese culture is full of puns. But the country’s print and broadcast watchdog has ruled that there is nothing funny about them.
互聯網論壇、廣告、甚至是整個中國文化里都充滿了俏皮話。但是中國新聞出版廣播電視總局卻覺得這些俏皮話一點也不好玩。
It has banned wordplay on the grounds that it breaches the law on standard spoken and written Chinese, makes promoting cultural heritage harder and may mislead the public – especially children.
目前國家新聞出版廣電總局發布新規，禁止媒體生造詞語亂用成語，因為這些誤用會影響文化傳承，還容易誤導公眾——尤其是孩子。
The casual alteration of idioms risks nothing less than “cultural and linguistic chaos”, it warns.
廣電總局警告媒體說不能因為肆意亂改亂用造成文化斷代和語言混亂。
Chinese is perfectly suited to puns because it has so many homophones. Popular sayings and even customs, as well as jokes, rely on wordplay.
由于中國的語言體系中有許多多音字，所以非常適合使用諧音雙關。許多俗語、俏皮話和風俗都和諧音有關。
But the order from the State Administration for Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television says: “Radio and television authorities at all levels must tighten up their regulations and crack down on the irregular and inaccurate use of the Chinese language, especially the misuse of idioms.”
國家新聞出版廣電總局下達的規定中說各級廣播電視管理部門必須強化監管力度，打擊不正規不準確的漢語使用，尤其是誤用成語。
Programmes and adverts should strictly comply with the standard spelling and use of characters, words, phrases and idioms – and avoid changing the characters, phrasing and meanings, the order said.
規定要求電視頻道和廣告必須嚴格遵守標準的字、詞、短語、成語的拼寫和使用方法——避免改變成語中的字，變換結構和意思。
“Idioms are one of the great features of the Chinese language and contain profound cultural heritage and historical resources and great aesthetic, ideological and moral values,” it added.
規定中指出成語是漢語的重要特征之一，包含著深遠的文化影響和歷史因素，其中不乏重要的美學、意識形態和道德價值。
“That’s the most ridiculous part of this: [wordplay] is so much part and parcel of Chinese heritage,” said David Moser, academic director for CET Chinese studies at Beijing Capital Normal University.
首都師范大學CET對外漢語學習項目的負責人莫大偉(David Moser)對此表達了自己的意見：“這項規定最荒唐的就是這點：文字游戲是中國文化重要的組成部分。”
When couples marry, people will give them dates and peanuts – a reference to the wish Zaosheng guizi or “May you soon give birth to a son”. The word for dates is also zao and peanuts are huasheng.
中國人結婚的早生貴子(棗生桂子)就是其中一個例子。
The notice cites complaints from viewers, but the examples it gives appear utterly innocuous. In a tourism promotion campaign, tweaking the characters used in the phrase jin shan jin mei – perfection – has turned it into a slogan translated as “Shanxi, a land of splendours”. In another case, replacing a single character in ke bu rong huan has turned “brook no delay” into “coughing must not linger” for a medicine advert.
規定引用了“晉善晉美”和“咳不容緩”的誤用例子，但是這些例子看上去卻無傷大雅。
“It could just be a small group of people, or even one person, who are conservative, humourless, priggish and arbitrarily purist, so that everyone has to fall in line,” said Moser.
Moser對此評論說：“很可能是一小部分保守的人，甚至有可能是一個保守派，這幫人沒有幽默感，是死板又專橫的純粹主義者，搞得每個人都要遵守規定。”