We dare not tell the reader how to write Taiwan English postal addresses and zip codes, but instead refer them to
There is little reason to use English if you already know the address in Chinese. Just remember to slap a "Taiwan" at the bottom so you letter makes its way out of your country. You may add an additional "ROC" distraction at your own risk.
拼音系統 Romanization: You will notice on the websites above, you are offered the choice of several romanization systems, including my personal favorite, Hanyu Pinyin.
First let's just talk about Lane 444. So you are walking down the road (Sec. 5 Dongguan Road in this case), and odd numbered houses are on one side, even on the other. You get to where house 444 should be, but there is no house (usually), but instead a road intersection, that of Lane 444. Full name: Lane 444 Sec. 5 Dongguan Road.
And if it is a four way intersection, on the other side would be Lane 443 or 445. (But usually way off: 416 or worse. Alas, no e.g., "5 meters per house number" standard was followed. P.S., 444 is a very unlucky number, so would probably be 442 or 446.) The same numbered lane concept applies to alleys too. OK, back to picking apart that address:
(Read "11th floor dash seven, (number) twenty two dash six"...) In SomeCity, Taiwan, postal code 198765, we go down Dongguan Rd. till we get to section 5 (sections are perhaps maybe 1-2 km long). We continue down Dongguan Rd. to where house 444 would be, turn onto the lane there, we go down this Lane 444 until we get to where house 333 would be, turn onto the alley there, go down this Alley 333 until we arrive at the house marked 22 (assuming that the house and indeed the roads bear their markers at all!). (It turns out (up to this point in the address) this format is better for mountain house location than any system I have seen in North America *)
We the look all around this neighborhood for a house hopefully labeled 22-6. We then go to the 11th floor of this 22-6 house, and look for unit 7... or maybe look for unit 7 and then go to its 11th floor. (Maybe they could also throw in a block A, B, C...). By the way, throughout this page I write "22-6" vs. the government's "No. 22-6" which though longer you really should use too.
In this case we might be referring to all the floors and all the apartments on each floor of the former example. Or just its first floor. Or, the seventh floor of the building with address 22.
In rural areas the houses 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, (but not 1-4 (at least lately)) etc. may be scattered throughout the hillside on various small roads about 1-2 km. from house 1. For instance I live at 1-6 but have no idea where 1-1, 1-2 are. Well I found 1-2 on the city's house address website, but the owner of that barn doesn't know why that number ended up their on the web map. It may be a mystery deep withing the steel cabinets of the local Household Bureau... Also e.g., 7-9 is closer to 1-6 than 1-3: due to different Household Bureau personnel assigning numbers at different times, with different answers of "what address is it nearby?" by different applicants... quite unsystematic. There are even "1-1-1" etc. (See also: 台灣門牌號碼規劃 Taiwan address planning.) I know this road/lane/alley stuff must be a mathematical graph labeling algorithm, but I don't know which one.)
我們發現我們並非只是把中文排序作相反，如 We see that address component ordering customs are not just a simple reversal of the Chinese order. Perl program:
my %h=qw/路 Road 段 Section 巷 Lane 弄 Alley 號 No. 樓 Floor/;
$_='東山路1段333巷99弄44號2樓';
for my $k (keys %h){s/$k/ $h{$k} /};
print join " ",reverse split;
Floor 2 No. 44 Alley 99 Lane 333 Section 1 Road 東山 #Program output, vs.
Floor 2 No. 44 Alley 99 Lane 333 Section 1 東山 Road #Most people write
探索郵局3+2郵遞區號查詢及轉碼軟體 Exploring the Taiwan Post Office's postal code software
One notices Taiwan has some major roads, 健康路 "Health Road", 食品路 "Food (products) Road", whose names seem to call out "發展中國家 developing nation". I'm not sure if new roads would be called such.
臺北市道路列表路名由來。
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Taiwan/Taiwan_tagging#Romanization
稀有妙牌： There are rare cases of twins:
同號多屋。 Identical house number plate affixed to more than one building.
同屋多號。 More than one number plate affixed to the same home.
If you still find any, report them to the Household Bureaus.
X 之 Y 號 translates to X-Y or No. X-Y. But that is also what X 號之 Y translates to, right? So what if both addresses exists in Chinese?
台中市東勢區「第 X 橫街」不幸譯成 "Xth Side St."。 其實連 "Xth Cross St." 不要。 應直接譯 "Xth St."
In Dongshi District, Taichung, 「第 X 橫街」 is translated as "Xth Side St." Actually even "Xth Cross St." is unnecessary. It should be directly translated to "Xth St."
Speaking about North America, at 85 & 86 Westland Street, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada The Pinecroft Co-operative Homes bear numbers 85-11, 85-12, etc. too. However the government officially resolves them as e.g., "Full Street Number 85; Unit 11; Street Name Westland;..."
One also notes the address plates use 85-01A instead of 85-1A.
Queens NY block numbers are different...
Last modified: 2024-08-01 02:02:41 UTC