How is today’s HK? 現今的香港是怎樣? (Isaac Ng)

How is today’s HK? 現今的香港是怎樣?

 28 September 2014 was a remarkable day to all Hong Kong citizens. “ Occupy Central” (佔領中環) was announced to start in this early morning.

 What is “Occupy Central”?

Occupy Central is a proposed civil disobedience movement which would take place in Central. Its aim is to call on thousands of protesters to block roads and paralyze Hong Kong's financial district if the Beijing and Hong Kong governments do not agree to implement universal suffrage(普選權)  for the chief executive election (特首選舉) in 2017 and the Legislative Council elections(立法會選舉) in 2020 according to "international standards."

 With this issue, we can see different reporting styles in the same publisher – BBC (英國廣播公司)
 In English version:Link: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-29398962
In Chinese version:Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/trad/china/2014/09/140928_hk_live 

1. Content

We can see that both topics are related to the use of tear bombs to disperse the protesters. However, when we look into it, we can find there is a huge difference in the content. As long as both versions are reporting the whole process of the movement from morning to evening, but we can easily see that the content of Chinese version is much more detail than in English version.

 Just take a part of the news as example: 
「由下午警方開始以武力拘散示威者以來，香港醫院管理局稱，由28日下午四時至晚上九時四十五分，共有至少26人送院接受治療。
由下午開始的清場行動，警方多次向示威者釋放催淚彈。據香港電視台從示威現場發回的直播畫面顯示，警方在金鐘向示威人群發出「速離，否則開槍」的警告。」

 “Dozens of demonstrators were arrested, with hundreds vowing to stay put to continue the protest.”“Police used pepper spray and repeatedly shot tear gas into the air to drive back the protesters from the busy Connaught Road. Protesters used umbrellas and facemasks to defend themselves.” 

Through comparison, Chinese version tends to describe more details, like it included the number of patients, how the police handle the conflict etc. Meanwhile, English version just generally describes what happened through the day.

 2. Layout   

We can see that the layouts of both versions are different. For English version, only 1 post is about Hong Kong protest. But for Chinese version, nearly all posts shown are about Hong Kong protest.

Only 1 post related to the protest in English version

Most of the posts are related to the protest in Chinese version

  Under this observation, we can deduce that since English is a powerful English, which is dominant in many countries, it has a greater number of target audience. As a result, the news reported should be wider and includes more news from other countries. Meanwhile, in Chinese version, we can see that most news are related to Hong Kong protest, even in the top readings section, the news are also about Hong Kong Protest. 

  But when we switch from traditional Chinese to simplified Chinese, we can see that the top readings content are different. (Photos are taken at 11:26pm on 28 Sep) 

Traditional Chinese

Simplified Chinese

 3. Bilingual elements  

Translation:

In Chinese Version, the photo shown captures the banner, which writes “Stop Charging Or We Use Force”. Meanwhile, it also translates it into Chinese 「停止衝動 否則使用武力」 

Transliteration:

In English version,
“A spokesman for China's Hong Kong and Macau affairs office said that Beijing "firmly opposes all illegal activities that could undermine rule of law and jeopardise 'social tranquillity' and it offers its strong backing" to the Hong Kong government, Xinhua news agency reports.” 

Beijing (北京)- Pinyin
Xinhua news(新華網)- Pinyin