Chinese translation

Since the reform, a number of lists of simplified characters have been published. The most well know is the"Comprehensive List of Simplified Characters,"which appeared in 1964. This list has undergone several revisions. The latest edition, containing 2244 simplified characters, was published in 1986.

In addition, to the creation of simplified characters the government of China developed and introduced system known as pinyin. Pinyin uses the Roman alphabet to represent the phonetics of Chinese characters.

To determine whether you need translation into the simplified or traditional characters set, you have to know the physical location of your audience. Mainland China, Singapore and Malaysia use simplified characters. Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and most overseas Chinese communities use traditional characters set.

By keeping the simple rule of the physical location in mind, you will avoid confusion, and never again ask to translate you document into Mandarin or Cantonese.

The first thing that anyone needs to understand if they are interested in Chinese translation is the fact that there is no single Chinese language. What we call Chinese encompass a number of different languages, though Cantonese and Mandarin are the most commonly spoken within the Chinese language group. Most people who are learning Chinese will learn one of those two, with the majority focusing on Mandarin.

Even when you focus on a single dialect there are a number of important differences you need to keep in mind when translating from or to Chinese. For example Chinese languages don't incorporate inflection into their speech patterns. Instead of changing their pitch or tone or using other small changes in their vocalizations to show off mood, Chinese utilizes small words at the end of sentences to indicate the mood of what they're saying or writing.

Chinese just isn't a tonal language in any sense of the word, which is one of the biggest stumbling blocks that people run into with Chinese translation. Not only does the language lack tonal inflections, but it also doesn't stress different syllables within each word. In English and a number of other languages syllabic stresses can indicate accents, but they can also indicate different emotional emphases. Chinese lacks these tonal stresses.

There are a variety of grammatical differences between Chinese and English as well. Chinese doesn't utilize plurals, nor does it use articles to indicate singularity. Chinese uses shorter words than English and sentences do not need to contain verbs. Assigning gender is handled differently in Chinese than in English, and there are no past, present or future tenses in the language. That last point is a large sticking point in Chinese translation, as past, present and future are indicated through specifically stating the time framing the verb mentioned.

Overall these are totally different languages, and it's understandable that so many English speakers have a hard time wrapping their mind around Chinese translation. These differences are also the reason why it's generally unreliable to try to use an automatic translation service when it comes to this language. Overall, if you are interested in high quality, clear and completely understandable Chinese translation than you need to go to a linguistic expert who understands the huge differences between these languages. While there are differences between all languages that a translator needs sensitivity to, Chinese is an exceptional example of this truth.