All of us know that China is a major player in today’s global economy. It is the world’s most populous country, with a population of over 1.3 billion.
This means there is an enormous potential for any kind of market. Businesses are reaching out to the Chinese public and this has created a huge demand for translation services. All good, but where to begin?
Most people fall at the first hurdle – Traditional or Simplified Chinese. Errr what? Yes… Chinese has a myriad of dialects that are spoken throughout the country, Hong Kong and further afield such as Singapore. It would be impossible to translate them all so the Chinese have actually smartly split the two main differences. The following paragraphs try to explain it.
Demystifying Chinese with ICanLocalize
Simplified Chinese (or Chinese Simplified):
The written text (of Chinese) that is used in mainland China and among people of Chinese origin in Singapore nowadays. This written form mainly evolved and was adopted after the end of civil war and the establishment of today’s P.R.China in 1949, so you may also call it as a relatively “modern form” of Chinese text. The reason and purpose for the Chinese government to develop this simplified writing system is believed to be “simplifying the writing method, easing the effort in writing, and encouraging more people to become literate.”
Traditional Chinese (or Chinese Traditional):
The written text (of Chinese) that is used in Hong Kong and Taiwan nowadays. As its name tells, this is a traditional version that had been written by Chinese people for thousands of years. Although people in Mainland China and Singapore began to adopt the Simplified text after 1949, people in HK and Taiwan continued to use the “old” traditional text due to the political separation.
Mandarin and Cantonese:
They are two spoken styles/dialects of Chinese language. As an official spoken “dialect”, Mandarin is widely used in Mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore. In the translation industry, Cantonese is specifically targeted to the HK audience only.
The Difference:
Theoretically and at the beginning, they are not different except for the writing method of the Chinese characters!
Simplified Chinese (SC) characters have fewer strokes and are easier to write than Traditional Chinese (TC), that is why it’s called “Simplified” and is the only difference when the SC writing system was first developed. However, the rapidly changing world have brought out more and more new words (such as the “Internet”, “Software”) into our daily life, and naturally, these new words may have different local versions in Mainland China, HK and Taiwan respectively. To use proper terms is the first concern when a specific version (either SC or TC) is specified as the target translation language; Secondly, the political isolation between P.R.China and HK, Taiwan for several decades also created some slight variation in the style and wording of language, which are naturally reflected in their written forms (to understand the second situation, comparable to the difference between the written styles of US English and British English).
For Simplified Chinese translators who wish to translate into Chinese Traditional, or for Traditional Chinese translators who wish to translate into Chinese Simplified, they need to get familiar with style and wording of the target language, and make sure to use the proper version for those specific terms. If you doubt whether they can do this compare it to asking whether a well-educated American guy can write good British English.
To conclude:
The above information may sound a little bit complicated to non-Chinese speaking people. To make things simple, let’s put it this way:
- For Chinese mainland readers, translate into Simplified Chinese text, mandarin style
- For HK readers, translate into Traditional Chinese text, Cantonese style
- For Taiwanese readers, translate into Traditional Chinese text, mandarin style
- For Singapore readers, same as for mainland readers.
