双方语言"雷区"阻碍中国台海两岸官员会晤

A long-anticipated June meeting between Taiwan's and China's cultural ministers has been scrapped for a pretty bureaucratic-sounding reason.

要是两岸关系都能像熊猫外交那样简单就好了。图为第一只在台湾出生的大熊猫“圆仔”，照片于2014年1月4日在台北市立动物园拍摄。外界期待已久的台湾与中国大陆文化官员6月份的会晤已被取消，而取消的理由颇具官僚主义色彩。

According to Taiwan's state-run news agency CNA, the two sides couldn't agree on which titles to use to address each other.

据台湾官方媒体中央通讯社(Central News Agency)报道，在使用什么样的头衔来称呼对方的问题上，两岸未能达成一致。

But for Taiwan, titles are serious business. Since the two split in 1949 after civil war, China has continued to consider Taiwan a part of its territory. Meanwhile Taiwan -- a self-ruled, democratic island -- has all the trappings of being an independent country, except that neither the U.S. not the vast majority of countries in the world recognize it as such.

但对台湾来说，头衔是个很严肃的问题。两岸经历内战之后于1949年陷入分离状态，自那以来中国大陆一直认为台湾是中国领土的一部分。与此同时，台湾这个建立了民主制度的自治岛屿已具备了一个独立国家的所有特征，只是还没有得到美国以及全球绝大多数国家的承认。

Under Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou, who was elected in 2008, relations with Beijing have warmed considerably and there has been more frequent cross-strait exchange between officials.

自2008年当选台湾总统的马英九上任以来，台湾与中国大陆的关系明显改善，两岸官员之间的交流也更加频繁。

However, each meeting is a linguistic minefield. China refuses to meet if any official titles are used that imply Taiwan is an independent country, while Taiwan is unwilling to take part if the language implies that it's a part of Beijing's turf. To complicate matters, both agree that they are part of 'One China,' while referring to different things: Taiwan means the 'Republic of China,' tracing its roots to the Chinese Nationalist (or Kuomintang) regime that lost the Chinese civil war and fled to Taiwan, while Beijing means the 'People's Republic of China,' the modern China governed by the country's Communist Party.

不过，历次会晤都有一个语言上的“雷区”。如果使用的官员头衔传达出台湾是一个独立国家的意味，中国大陆会拒绝会晤。但如果所使用的语言暗示台湾是中国的一部分，台湾则不愿参加。使问题更加复杂的是，双方都承认自己是“一个中国”的一部分，但所指的“一个中国”却各不相同。台湾所指的是“中华民国”，也就是在内战中失败并逃到台湾的国民党政权。而中国大陆所指的是“中华人民共和国”，也就是由共产党领导的现代中国。

The long-standing workaround to all of this has been that lower-level Chinese and Taiwanese officials tend to meet unofficially using their titles as representatives of non-government organizations such as the Straits Exchange Foundation in Taiwan and the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits in China. It was unclear why such a solution wasn't possible this time.

围绕这个问题长期以来的变通方式是，较低级别的大陆和台湾官员在举行非正式会谈时倾向于使用非政府组织代表的头衔，例如台湾方面是海峡交流基金会(Straits Exchange Foundation)，大陆方面是海峡两岸关系协会(Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits)。不知为何这种方法此次行不通了。

The two sides are gradually finding ways to dance around these issues for higher-level meetings, as well. In February, China and Taiwan held their first high-level formal meeting since the end of the war in 1949. During that meeting--between the heads of Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council and China's Taiwan Affairs Office --both leaders simply avoided reference to the full names of their ministries altogether, according to local media reports.

大陆和台湾政府也慢慢为高级别会晤找到了绕过这类问题的办法。今年2月，大陆和台湾方面举行了1949年内战结束以来首次高级别正式会谈。台湾的大陆委员会(Mainland Affairs Council)和大陆的台湾事务办公室(Taiwan Affairs Office)负责人举行了会谈。据当地媒体报道，会谈期间双方似乎都尽量避免提到各自部门的全称。

The next stage would be a direct meeting between Taiwan's Ma and China's President Xi Jinping. But titles again there are a major sticking point. China would not accept a meeting with Ma as Taiwan's president, and much of Taiwan's public would oppose Ma being presented in another capacity, such as chairman of the Kuomintang Party.

下一步可能会是台湾总统马英九和中国国家主席习近平直接会面，但头衔的问题又将成为主要症结所在。大陆方面不会接受马英九以台湾总统的身份举行会面，而多数的台湾民众又反对马英九使用其他的身份，例如国民党主席。

Ma is keen to meet Xi before his second and final term runs out in 2016, as he has long hoped his presidential legacy will be closer cross-strait relations. But the two will have to be cleverer wordsmiths than their cultural ministers to make it happen.

马英九希望在2016年他的第二届也是最后一届任期结束前与习近平举行会晤，因为他一直希望能够在总统任内促进海峡两岸的关系。但习马二人需要比他们的文化部长更擅长玩文字游戏，才有可能实现双方的会面。