Thanks for sharing these slogans! ‘同一个世界，同一个梦想’ and ‘One World, One Dream’ are so elegant in both languages!

With the improvement of China’s education level, the popularization of compulsory education, the promotion of quality education, the continuous deepening of teaching reform, English teaching has also paid more and more attention to practicality. More and more attention has been paid to the translation, which is concise, clear and easy to understand, and Chinese English has been greatly reduced. It can be seen from the announcement of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.
I think, the translation of English public signs for the 2008 Olympic Games fully pays attention to the following principles, and translates English public signs into a more standardized, concise, and elegant manner, and pays more attention to the awareness of cross-cultural communication.

for instances:The theme slogan of the Olympic Games ‘同一个世界，同一个梦想’ is translated into ‘One World, One Dream’, which fully reflects the conciseness and clarity of the public signs, and also highlights the confrontation and fluency of the slogan-style public signs, which are catchy.
Such slogans are Higher, swifter, stronger. Higher, faster, stronger
New Beijing, new Olympics. New Beijing, new Olympics

Thanks, Khai, for this fascinating historical account!

Just looked it up and what I can find on a quick search is that the term was first used in German in 1978 – how interesting is that?!

Lütjen, H. (1978). Linguistics of ageing, linguistic Gerontology–Why?(author’s transl). Aktuelle Gerontologie, 8(6), 331-336.

Thanks, Anaid! That English is the road to a better life is undoubtedly a worldwide misrecognition … (the privileges of English speakers are misrecognized as resulting from their language)

Since the opening-up policy was implemented in China in 1978, English has become the main foreign language in China’s education policy. In the past 30 years, due to globalization and China’s modernization and internationalization, the “English fever” has swept the country. In 2007, the English training industry created a market value of 20 billion yuan (about 3 billion US dollars). In 2008, there were more than 350 million English learners in China, and this number is growing at a rate of 20 million per year. In other words, one-fifth of Chinese people are learning English, and the remaining one-quarter plan to learn English in the future.

Under the test-oriented education in China, students have invested the most time and energy in English learning. Many students have studied English for many years, constantly memorizing words and doing exercises, but they have not produced positive results. Most students are only good at reading, writing, listening and speaking are weak, and they can’t even test speaking English. Therefore, I hope that in the future, English teaching in China can fully develop students’ listening, speaking, reading and writing skills, because the experience of studying abroad makes me feel how important listening and speaking are.

References:
Sundkvist, P., & Nguyen, X. N. (2020). English in Vietnam. The Handbook of Asian Englishes, 683–703. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118791882.ch30
Le, T. C. (1991). Higher education reform in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Comparative Education Review, 35(1), 170–176. https://doi.org/10.1086/447001

Hi, Ingrid. I found this English term when I was check a Chinese literature. I thought it was introduced from abroad.

Thanks, WAA, for your comment. Actually, the Chinese government has been promoting Chinese via Confucius Institutes globally since 2004. However, this work is not progressing very smoothly due to various reasons. I hope that we can have more languages participate in global governance, rather than letting one single language dominates international affairs.

Hi, Lan. Thank you for your comment and the source. “English fever” has prevailed in China for four decades and reached the peak during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. However, the year 2013 marked the beginning of a fundamental
shift in the ways that China views the English language. At present, the Chinese government is gradually reducing the weight of English in compulsory education. I really doubt that English will dominate China one day, because English is still taught as a foreign language rather than a second language and it is not widely used in administration and people’s daily life. In addition, English teaching resources are not equally distributed in various regions of China. There is a big difference in English proficiency between people living in big cities and people in rural areas.

Source:https://www.britishcouncil.co/sites/default/files/colombia_version_final_-_ingles.pdf

Thanks, 张洁! Also a huge issue in migrant societies like Australia, and – here, at least – directly connected to the failure of the education system to teach and maintain languages other than English. Interesting, that you have a term for it (“gerontolinguistics”). As with “emergency linguistics”, which we featured in our special issue of Multilingua devoted to “Linguistic diversity in a time of crisis“, I’m amazed how vibrant and innovative linguistics in China is; and how separate the discursive worlds of “Chinese” and “Western” linguistics are …

Thanks, 张洁! A really telling example of the inflationary pressure that English is under everywhere …

As China gradually enters an aging society, gerontolinguistics has become a new interdisciplinary research field in China. With the process of urbanization in China, the children of many new immigrants in cities no longer speak their hometown dialect. Language shift from their heritage language to Putonghua has caused communication difficulties between the elderly and their grandchildren.