Talk:Penny Wong

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"member of the Australian Senate since ,"

Looks like there's a missing date there.

  • It should be kept in mind that, although given prominence in the article, the fact that she is a lesbian is not that important in Australian politics, where personal lives are generally not the concern of political debate, and I believe she herself only mentioned her lesbianism as a somewhat offside comment, not giving it too much importance with regard to her role as a parliamentarian.
    • While this is true, as a first, it nevertheless warrants mention in the article. Ambi 00:17, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

My recollection is that she first said in public she was a lesbian while addressing Caucus at the time of the 2004 same-sex marriage controversy. Adam 01:22, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] "industrial officer"

The term "industrial officer" appears to be a uniquely Australian one. From context it would appear to be a salaried trades union official. If that's the case, to what article should it be linked? I guess it's not a shop steward. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 10:41, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

And same link should be made in the articles of a number of other Australians who've been IOs too - list. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 10:50, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Name in Chinese characters

I have no objection to the alternative name if she uses it as an alternative name, but the alternative name should not be there just because she has an Asian background. Can these names please be referenced. Thanks, WikiTownsvillian 23:31, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Read my user page on my opinion regarding adding native text to articles. Wikipedia is a worldwide project. Google hits lead people around the world to this place. Researchers around the world may use this wikipedia as a starting point to gather info elsewhere. It is very helpful encyclopedic information to add native text to disambiguate any alternative spellings. Even though Penny Wong is Australian, Chinese news agency around the world would cover her news more than any other Australians just because of her Chinese ethnicity. I'll bet Chinese media would be the second most abundent source of info about her right after the local Australian sources. It would be a loss if researchers fail to make a connection between the two identities. Please also note that the Chinese text is NOT a transliteration of her English name into Chinese. It is her Chiense name. Since Chinese to English transliteration is not a reversible process, you cannot map Ying-yen Wong back to Chinese due to the large number of homonyms in Chinese. You may be able to transliterate her name back and forth between English and Cyrillic very easily, but because she does not have a Russian name hence the exact cyrillic spelling is irrelevant. It is not the same situation for her Chinese name. Deleting the native text is a loss of information to the article and to many researchers seeking alternative sources. For more discussion on why Chinese text is needed for Chinese people's name, read the talk page on Michelle Kwan. If you need references for Penny Wong's Chinese name, simply cut and past her Chinese name into Google and do an image search or a websearch, or News Search. Don't tell me the Chinese news coverage of her is useless to you because you cannot read Chinese. What is useless to you is helpful to millions other people. A link between the two identities is essential. Kowloonese 02:34, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
I'm not saying such information would be useless to me or anyone else, I just don't know of any such information, and you still haven't cited one... if, as you say, there is a lot of information on Ms Wong from Chinese media than it should not be a problem for you to cite one. Google translation is not a source that her Chinese name is an alternative name for this person, if it is not a translation then how did you find out that that is her ethnic name? If it is only a translation that this information is providing then it is not encyclopaedic, I also note that there is not even a stub wikipedia article on Ms Wong in any other language (remember this is an English language wikipeadia project, there is nothing stopping people {or yourself} from creating a referenced article on the Chinese wikipedia and info can then be translated between the two articles and sourced to their original references). If she does have two identities than that is fine, but that should be a fairly simple thing to source if it is true, I look forward to you producing that source. Thanks, WikiTownsvillian 04:21, 25 May 2007 (UTC) (ps I have tried to do this myself by a googlenews search of 黃英賢 both in English Googlenews and the Chinese Googlenews, both came up with 0 results, although I have never searched with Chinese characters before so I might have done it wrong)
I'm removing the reference to the Chinese translation of her name in 24 hours unless a reference has been provided that it is actually an alternative name for this person that is actually used. Cheers, WikiTownsvillian 13:06, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
Articles about her can easily be found in Chinese printed media. Some references can also be found on the web too. Her Chinese name is used consistently in the majority of publications which indicates her Chinese name is NOT a transliteration, it is indeed her alternate identity to the Chinese community. Chinese can be written in two forms Traditional and Simplified, other than the variation in these two written forms (黃英賢 vs. 黄英贤), the same name is used everywhere. In very rare occasions, you can find her name written as transliteration of Penny Wong (參議員 潘尼∙王 lit. senator "Paan Nee - Wang"), which is obviously just a Chinese phonetic notation of her English name, in contrast with her real Chinese name. In those rare cases, her last name is changed to Wang according to Mandarin transliteration instead of Wong because the translators failed to get her Chinese identity correctly. The translators also failed to realize her native tongue is not Mandarin, hence a Mandarin transliteration results in a totally different last name. In comparison, you can easily find a few dozens Chinese transliteration of George Bush's name because he does not have a Chinese name. The consistency of a real identity vs. the inconsistency of a transliteration can be seen easily in pulbications. Simple Google Web search shows a number of biographical and news articles of hers in Chinese. e.g. [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], etc. They are too numerous to list. [7] will show a list of matches, however, you may want to get a translator to verify all these do indeed refer to the same person because her Chinese name is quite common. The "Translate this page" link on Google's result page is good enough to verify the content of the pages. You can narrow down the search by adding the Chinese text of "Australia" into the keyword.
Google image search [8] shows a few of her picutures too. For some reason, Google news search does not show anything at all. I also tried the same with her English name in Google news search and only a few dozens matches show up. So I am not surprised the Chinese News search does not get much in the Google index. It is a Google news indexing problem, it does not disprove anything. Wikipedia uses two name formats for biographic entries. One is to put all the information, such as alternate identities, birthday etc. in parenthesis on the first line. The other is to create an info box on the right to present all info as a table format. If you think the former is not appropriate, perhaps the latter format will be a good compromise. Kowloonese 01:02, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for providing those references Kowloonese, I will check them out tonight, although I'm sure they are correct. I like your suggestion of using an info box which should really be there anyway as most of the Australian politicians who have decent sized articles do have info boxs. I appreciate the effort you went to and sorry for my confusion based on the lack of results in googlenews. Cheers, WikiTownsvillian 02:51, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
While you are at it, pay attention to read how the Chinese media cover her background and her political views. I can guarantee that you will find some Chinese centric information from the Chinese articles that you probably will never see in Australian English newspapers. The senator may present herself differently to her constituents in the Chinese community than to the general public. It could be an eye opener for you if you were only exposed to one-side view or coverage. I hope you see the value of including alternate names in the article in its native text because it opens up more resources for researchers to get different aspects of the same person/topic. The additional info is encyclopedic regardless who she is and where she lives. It is all about additional information sources and the identity links to them. You will miss out on the additional info unless you know how to translate her name into Chinese. And I am telling you that transliteration of her name will not help you to produce her Chinese name, hence it is important to include it in the article. Kowloonese 17:46, 30 May 2007 (UTC)



生于马来西亚的黄英贤，8岁时随父母从马来西亚移民到澳大利亚南澳州，她从没有想到自己的一生将与澳大利亚的政治联系在一起，而且会成为位居最高、进入工党影子内阁的首位华裔。

端庄美丽、年轻有为的黄英贤，以勇气与才智闻名政坛，她以自己的实力成为澳大利亚首位华裔女参议员、工党影子内阁就业部部长。作为第一位进入联邦议会的华人女性，黄英贤的成功经历一直受到澳洲主流社会和华人社区的关注。

从小受中华文化熏陶

黄英贤说，祖母是她一生最敬重，也是她所见过的最坚强的人。黄英贤的祖母是马来西亚的客家人。当第二次世界大战的战火烧到马来西亚时，残酷的战争夺去了许多亲人的生命，只剩下祖母和她的孩子们处在贫困交加的处境，但是祖母顽强面对。祖母这种坚强的意志也传给了黄英贤。她在澳洲参议院的首次演讲，也专门提到祖母对她的影响。

黄英贤的父亲黄义生是一名建筑师，在上世纪60年代因获得澳大利亚奖学金，到澳大利亚深造。在那里，他与黄英贤的母亲珍尼查曼相识、相爱并结婚。婚后他们在马来西亚生活了一段时间，后移民澳大利亚。

黄英贤从小就受到中华文化的熏陶。父亲经常对黄英贤说："别人可以拿走你的一切东西，但不能将你所受的教育拿走。" 黄英贤说："我很珍惜家庭和文化根基，我对我的华裔血统感到十分自豪和骄傲。"

童年时代受种族歧视

黄英贤是1977年移民澳大利亚的。她继承了父亲的血统，长着一张标致的，典型的中国人的脸和一头秀美的黑发。

那时，澳大利亚的种族歧视较严重，而南澳的华人又较少。她当时是学校里惟一的华裔学生，就免不了经受种族歧视。她亲身体会过那种不被接受的感觉，他们家的房子也被人涂鸦，上下学的途中被人辱骂、丢石块，在她幼小的心灵中，她明白了自己与别人的不同，体会到了受歧视的痛苦。这些经历使得她在小小年纪就立志从政，要追求社会公平。

自从上小学起，黄英贤学习成绩就很优秀，17岁时，她作为交换学生到巴西学习一年。巴西的贫富差距对她触动很大。黄英贤由于自身的经历而对弱势群体充满同情。当时她就认为，同情和仁慈应该是一切政策的基础，国家应对不公平做出反应，铲除不平等。

重视与中国关系

黄英贤回到澳洲后考入阿德莱德大学学习法律和艺术。她在大学期间成为校学生事务的活跃分子，也是在这个时期，她开始与澳洲工党建立起了联系，并加入澳洲工党。2002年黄英贤成为了澳洲历史上首位华裔女参议员。

进入澳洲上议院仅3年，2005年6月，黄英贤被澳洲联邦工党任命为影子内阁部长。黄英贤选入影子内阁，澳洲各媒体纷纷重点报道。黄英贤认为澳洲未来的繁荣和亚洲国家的关系息息相关，她一直致力推动澳洲与中国的关系。

回顾自己的成长历程，黄英贤说，父亲一直重视对孩子的教育，把人生的价值观传递给她，用中华文化熏陶她；而祖母教会她坚强和勇气；母亲教会她用爱心对待别人，教会她有幽默感。对于所有在她成长的道路上给予过她支持的人，她都充满感激，她用坚定的人生信念朝着自己的目标走下去。


—Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.53.184.93 (talk) 16:20, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

For completeness of information: The article reproduced above is from Xinhua.[9] (I didn't post it, I just looked it up.) Mporter (talk) 05:13, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Additional point on Chinese name

having a Chinese name does not designate you a Chinese citizen. she is not quoted as "Penny Wong" in Chinese newspapers in Australia but commonly by her Chinese name. This common usage satisfies her Chinese name being notable enough for inclusion in Wikipedia. Check out Adrienne Clarkson former Governor General of Canada, John So Mayor of Melbourne. Michellecrisp 11:39, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

More overseas Chinese who have Chinese names in their Wikipedia entry

Michellecrisp 11:47, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I will contact Senator Wong next week and ask her if the Chinese name (ie, the name in Chinese script) is one she accepts as being her name and uses in appropriate situations. If she says it is not her name, I will delete it from this article. People have a right to choose their own name and not have foreign names foisted on them. Intelligent Mr Toad 15:05, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

foreign names foisted on them? I doubt it was a name invented by other people but rather given by her parents. Penny Wong's Chinese name is in such common usage in Australian Chinese language print media that a Chinese speaker would identify that as her name. And how about all those Chinese Canadians I've listed? and John So? Michellecrisp 03:18, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

None of that is relevant. All that is relevant is whether it is a name she accepts as being her name. If she doesn't, it must be deleted. Intelligent Mr Toad 10:52, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

It is relevant, because then you need to contact John So and the others to see if they accept their Chinese name as on Wikipedia. You seem to take exception with Penny Wong but not others. It is irrelevant that they are not Chinese citizens. Michellecrisp 15:46, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I think you do need to contact John So etc and find that out, but I am not editing John So's article so that does not concern me at the moment. Of course, John So was born in China so at one time the Chinese-script name was his actual name. That is not relevant here because Wong was born in Malaysia and has lived in Australia since she was eight. The Chinese-script name has never been her actual name: her name is Penelope Ying-yen Wong, written in the Roman alphabet. Any other version of her name is someone's invention, unless it can be shown that she uses it herself. Intelligent Mr Toad 04:40, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I am a Chinese Australian and regularly see John So and Penny Wong's name written in Chinese script in Chinese print media. This was discussed previously by Kowloonese above. The fact that most Chinese readers in Australia would recognise her Chinese script name makes it accepted. I don't get the argument put up by Mr Toad that English is an official language therefore Chinese names are unacceptable...that seems to me a bit of a White Australia policy. 210.56.73.142 05:07, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Kindly spare me such childish insults, they don't intimidate me, OK? Readers of the Chinese, Greek, Arabic and Hindi press regularly see John Howard's name written in the Chinese, Greek, Arabic and Hindi scripts, but that doesn't make those versions his actual name. How various people choose to render Senator Wong's name is totally irrelevant. The sole issue here is "what name does Senator Wong herself use?" When I find out the answer I will let you know. Until then I have nothing further to say. Intelligent Mr Toad 11:21, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

It's not being childish, to simply discount foreign language versions of someone's name as not necessary for Australian citizens is childish or using a WP:IDONTKNOWIT#I.27ve_never_heard_of_it type argument. I'm not trying to intimidate you but merely point out it's a very weak argument to say a Chinese Australian (or Chinese Canadian, Chinese American etc) is not allowed to have a Chinese name because it's not an offical language of that country. You might as well removed all the Chinese names from Chinese Canadians too especially those not born in China. Can you read and understand the script of those other languages and they translate to/from English? I doubt it. John Howard like many non Chinese background persons appears as homophone Chinese characters as opposed to Transliteration into Chinese characters in Chinese print media or simply the English words "John Howard". This is because they have no adopted Chinese name given to them (usually by their parents). Because Penny Wong is of Chinese heritage, her parents gave her a Chinese name. This is not a name invented by the media as you're presuming. Because Greek alphabet can be roughly translated to a Roman alphabet, John Howard appears in Greek newspapers based on this Transliteration of Greek to the Latin Alphabet, similarly in Arabic: Romanization of Arabic. This has been confirmed to me by my Greek and Arabic speaking friends. Please understand the translation of foreign languages into/from English before making broad assumptions. 210.56.73.142 11:57, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
More on Chinese names, including John Howard's "Chinese name" Prime Minister John Howard and most ministers almost always adopt a sound translation - Yue han · Huo hua de (sounds a bit like John Howard, doesn't it) George Bush - Qiao zhi Bu shi Tony Blair - Tuo ni Bu lai er Any Chinese speaker knows this is an invented name rather than a Chinese name with any real meaning. Penny Wong's Chinese name does not fall into this category. from http://www.chincommunications.com.au/chinesenames.php 210.56.73.142 12:04, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

(Disclosure: Michellecrisp asked me to comment here on my talk page.) I am absolutely perplexed that we even have debates like this. In summary, I think she should have her Chinese name listed. I'll make a number of comments:

  • Asking Ms Wong by email if that's her name isn't acceptable practice. This is original research.
  • Malaysian Chinese still identify as Chinese (see the article) - and she was probably given her Chinese name at birth, not just some romanised English name.
  • There is a big difference between say, John Howard's "Chinese name", and Penny Wong's Chinese name. Penny Wong, in all likelihood, being ethnically Chinese, has a Chinese name by birth; the fact that the Chinese media reports her name consistently reflects well on this suggestion. John Howard, in all likelihood, was not given a Chinese name at birth.
  • Whether someone uses their Chinese name publicly is not relevant. I'm Chinese, and I have a Chinese name; however, you will not often see me use my Chinese name in public.
  • Wikipedia:Proper_names#Personal_names suggests that it is not unusual to add native names to articles.

Regards, enochlau (talk) 02:34, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

This topic has been beaten to death over and over again. Many names are simply transliteration, e.g. George Bush, in various non-English publication. However, there are many names that are alternate identity of a person that he/she chose to use in a non-English context. These names are not made up by the media, but issued officially to the media via their PR representative. Instead of repeating myself, I have presented many reasons why native names are encyclopedic info. See other arguments I presented in my User page and in the talk page of Michelle Kwan. Kowloonese 05:43, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I am curious if User:Intelligent Mr Toad and User:Dr.frog are related. Dr. Frog also gave similar arguments in Michelle Kwan's talk page. If these two users are indeed the same person, then all these threads are most likely just trolling. Kowloonese 01:13, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bali Conference

Hi, I just wanted to point out that my information about Penny chairing the working committee at Bali came from a TV report on Sky News Australia. I don't think there's a way to create references to non-web-linked information is there? It's a fairly prominent role on the international stage, so I feel strongly about adding it to her entry nevertheless. Whophd (talk) 03:32, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Which image?

Can people please advise which they prefer, uncropped or cropped. Thanks. Timeshift (talk) 04:14, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Gay

The lead section says Penny Wong is gay. I changed it to lesbian because gay is for males, while lesbian is for females (and the fact that Wong is female is not a disputed fact). Vertical MD (talk) 04:37, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

If you were serious about making improvements to Wikipedia, you wouldn't have subtly vandalised the page as well. Reverted. Recurring dreams (talk) 04:41, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
As with Julia Gillard. What a tool. Timeshift (talk) 04:44, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism

Wow, that's some concerted heavy vandalism that occurred tonight... glad I was out, and glad to see it's been taken care of with a page lock. Gotta wonder the awful lives some people must have when all they have to do is concerted vandalism against a politician. Get a life! Timeshift (talk) 13:04, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] First openly gay/asian born member of an...

Wouldn't it be better to say ministry rather than cabinet? This gives the impression there have been non-cabinet ministers who were openly gay/asian born. Timeshift (talk) 14:58, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

That makes sense to me. --Nick Dowling (talk) 11:31, 8 April 2008 (UTC)