Absolute bullshit

Without going into too much detail...

I was translating an article a week or two ago, in regards to the legislative election which just passed. One of the candidates was Chen Yuan-chi (陳源奇). This article came from Liberty Times (自由時報), and it had several paragraphs which was lifted from a 2004 article on a television station's website. To cut a long story short, the articles (the LT and the website one) both contained a short summary of his education according to his resume. It was vaguely worded, and unclear as to whether the "educational history" listed on Chen's resume is something that was simply being quoted, or facts which have been verified. They looked pretty fucking suspect to me, so I took the bother to call some places up.

Chen claims to have graduated from Cheng Kung Universit's (成功大學) Business School. I rang up, and was connected to the School of Management. Apparently, they don't HAVE a business school - didn't have one before, don't have one now. The LT article also changed Lincoln University to Coln University, having missed out the first character in the Chinese phonetic translation. Of course, this does not answer the question of WHICH Lincoln University? Also, the Chinese term for uni could also refer to colleges. This left me with, oh, easily more than 5 choices scattered across the world. Chen also claims to have been a principal a private high school in southern Taiwan. I rang up directory assistance to find their phone number, since on line searches didn't turn up much. The directory assistance woman informed me that the school does not exist. In the end, Stardust (yes, that's her real name, in Chinese too), the super-secretary at our office found out what happened to this school. It had been shut down due to corruption and embezzlement allegations. Sounds suspect?

Chen also claims to have run in a huge number of elections of every sort. The Central Election Commission's database only has him registered for 3. Of course, some elections are not part of the database... but this guy is altogether starting to stink far too much.

I love working where I work because the people are great, and the pay is good. But when I find myself doing things like this, translating a piece of shit that will come out a piece of shit in English, I get seriously depressed. A journalist for LT had obviously plagiarised the website I found in order to get information about Chen to beef up an article about lesser known election candidates. This journalist also reprinted all the extremely suspect claims, and left out the first character of Lincoln University.

I couldn't find any way to get hold of Chen, or any of his associates. Unusual for an election campaign candidate, no? I thought perhaps the media had made false claims on his behalf. Maybe his resume doesn't lie? maybe he's misrepresented? But as I was unable to get hold of him, I couldn't get an answer to these questions.

In the end there's no way of knowing what's real. Not that I ever believed what I read in papers wholesale, but coming to live in Taiwan, and to work for a paper myself, has been a stunning reminder that I can't trust anything I see.