The sadness of a poorly edited English newspaper in Taiwan causes expats islandwide to blush at the paper's incredibly poor editing and rewriting: if this newspaper is trying to make a good impression in the international community, it might as well face facts: it needs to hire a completely new copyediting staff or shut the paper down: it's embarassing for TAIWAN to have such an English-language newpaper published on these shores! Communist China would never stoop to such a poorly-edited newspaper on its shores, so why does democratic Taiwan allow this to go on this way? It's embarrassing!

Examples of what appeared in the newspaper today, verbatim: (and this happens every day, 24/7/365)

"one was found drown offshore yesterday"

"holding on to a portable fridge and floating in sea"

"Wang ...was seen drown offshore almost 45 minutes after..."

"the temperatures in sea was only 10 degree Celsius"

"people who fall into sea will lose body temperature in a short while"

The maritime patrol said that the temperatures in sea was only 10 degree Celsius"

"While Some members of the team..."

"Another rescue squad with 33 people comprised rescuers and medical staffers from Taipei arrived in the quake-ravaged country ..."

"but the 4 year old daughter of a Taiwanese businessman in Haiti ....was proved dead  as of yesterday.."

"Her mother....continued to look for miracle in the stricken city"

"Looking to visit the famous shave ice mounted with big chunks of mangoes on Yong Kang Street?"

"..when it began selling the huge portion of mango shaved ice that now rings up at NT$160 a plate."

"Nine firefighters were injured after attending a blaze in a factory...."



SEE IF YOU CAN SPOT THE ERRORS above. That was just 4 stories in a newspaper with over 100 stories. And this newspaper calls itself "an English newspaper". It is not an English newspaper. It is an embarrassment to Taiwan and the international image of Taiwan. Either hire a competent editing staff or get out of the newspaper business! This puts a serious black eye on Taiwan's international reputation. And this newspaper is presented this way, in the same poorly-edited way, every day, 365 days a year. It's a disgrace to newspapers everywhere, but especially to the international image of Taiwan.

Imagine what a Western businessman reading this newspaper in the morning at his hotel in Taipei must think! Said one traveller to me one day: "Omigod, this English-lanuage  newspaper in Taiwan is basically illiterate! It makes Taiwan look like a Third World banana republic of uneducated hacks posing as newspaper publishers!"