There
has been a recent breathtaking rise in the popularity of translation
into the various Chinese languages. Doubtless a barometer for future
direction. "Chinese" is an umbrella-phrase for several
languages and dialects, many of which are incomprehensible one to
another, with speaking being wholly incomprehensible and writing
being only half readable between dialects. Chinese
services are performed directly in the target market including Beijing,
Hong Kong, Tei Pei Taiwan, Singapore, and other. Chinese to English
projects are translated in the United States or London then reviewed
in Beijing or the proper area.
MANDARIN
- MAINLAND
Mainland
China, the largest market, has consolidated under the Mandarin language,
although several regions still retain their regional language preferences.
Within Mainland Mandarin, there are several dialects that affect
pronunciation and word usage, such as spoken in Singapore and other
areas. Dialects may use different pronouns, expressions and/or have
very heavily differentiated spoken accents. The greatest changes
that affected the Western world occurred with the loosening of the
governmental controls on communications and business. Since the
time when the people in China entered the world of computers and
technology, international business has taken an entirely different
spin, with people and companies drawing close to each other across
the Pacific. Yet, there is another hindrance to doing business in
China, and that is the difference in writing - ABC versus Chinese
characters. (Important: see "Simplified-Traditional" below)
MANDARIN - TAIWANESE
Mandarin in Taiwan, though comprehensible to a certain extent to
Mainland counterparts, has very strong word differences, and sentences
are in slightly different order in many cases. Even main business
words such as "internet" and "microchip" are
entirely different in Taiwan than on the Mainland. Therefore, in
business, special marketing effort is advisable from one area to
the other. Additionally, just a few years ago there was a very serious
threat of war between the two parts of China, and emotional hangovers
of this nature do not disappear instantly. Lastly, Taiwan does not
share the writing style of Mainland China. (See also "Simplified-Traditional"
below)
CANTONESE - HONG KONG
Cantonese is an entirely different spoken language than Mandarin.
A person from Hong Kong will look at a Chinese character (word)
and pronounce something entirely different than a person from Taiwan
or Beijing. A Cantonese speaker has no clue what a Mandarin speaker
is saying, unless they studied the language. The main Cantonese
translation market is centered on Hong Kong, though many people
in Southern Mainland China also speak Cantonese. Now that Hong Kong
has been reabsorbed into China proper, the use of Mandarin is increasing,
and, as is the way with all languages, Cantonese is already picking
up Mandarin words into their vocabulary and Cantonese sentence order
is beginning to change to reflect Mandarin preference. (Important:
see "Simplified-Traditional" below)
CHINESE IN THE UNITED STATES
AND BRITAIN
Immigrants to the United States, Britain and other English speaking
countries came from all regions of China, both Mandarin and Cantonese,
having emigrated over the course of the last 20 years. Thus, the
Chinese in America and England are a bit like the wildlife in Australia
... they have been separated from their roots for so long, that
their language has become a dialect, and changes in the "real"
Chinese languages have not crossed over. For example, the word for
"internet" "pound sign" and other technological
expressions are completely different in Asia, never having evolved
in the States. Additionally, Cantonese and Mandarin translations
absorb large numbers of American English words. Thus, banking or
financial Chinese translation for the U.S. will be scattered with
expressions in English such as "money market", which leave
the Chinese in China clueless as to their meaning. Yet, if proper
banking terms were used (rather than English for "money market"),
U.S. Chinese are often lost. To solve this dilemma, in some Chinese
translations, client may wish to consider using both expressions,
the Chinese and the English, so that both groups of speakers comprehend.
But this is not the end of the complications. Chinese speakers in
the United States often do not read the same character set. (See
"Simplified-Traditional" below)
CHINESE
CHARACTERS
Chinese characters are becoming quite computer-friendly
as computer operating systems around the world prepare for localization.
Chinese is what is called a "2-byte" language. That means,
that each Chinese character uses two letter-spaces (example: takes
the space for "ab" rather than just "a"). To
create new text in Chinese requires special operating system and
Chinese-compatible software, although most computers can read-only
if they have certain elements installed that are found on the user's
system installation CD. @International Services assists clients
to become Chinese-compatible, or delivers documents and translations
as PDF files that can be read on any computer or used by any professional
printer without having the Chinese fonts or 2-byte capability.
SIMPLIFIED
- TRADITIONAL CHINESE WRITING
Although
all Chinese characters may look alike to Westerners, there are two
very distinct and important writing styles in Chinese: Simplified
and Traditional.
Basically, original Chinese characters (called "Traditional")
were an artistic attempt to "draw" the subject the word
represented. Thus, the character for "mountain" tried
to look like a mountain in written Traditional Chinese language.
As the number of characters grew into the thousands, the drawings
became more and more complex, with the average words taking 12 to
24 strokes just to make one word. The effect of this writing style,
though attractive to the eye, meant that writing correspondence,
a business receipt or a contract took an enormous amount of time
and effort. One of the major hindrances to progress in that region
can actually be laid at the door of the lengthy communication process.
With the revolution in China, it was a determined by the government
that the writing process was simply too long and arduous, holding
back economic development. Therefore, the government of Mainland
China organized a "simplification" of the Chinese character
set. In doing so, a word that required 24 strokes to write was pared
down to 8 or 12 strokes. This process affected thousands of characters
... the entire written language was "simplified" - and
is now called Simplified Chinese.
These days, of course, computers have removed the effort formerly
devoted to handwriting, relieving much of the time pressure. But
by the time that computers came into vogue, Mainland China had switched
to Simplified. But Hong Kong, Taiwan and expatriates had not. While
Mainland China began learning a new way of reading and writing,
Hong Kong, Taiwan and expatriates in other countries remained with
the Traditional characters of their ancestors. These groups, in
general, cannot read Simplified Chinese. And even though they can
read each other's Traditional written language, they will pronounce
different sounds for each word, and there are characters in one
language that do not exist in the other. Plus, the grammatical order
of the sentences vary somewhat from Cantonese to Taiwanese. Therefore,
a Cantonese is aware when reading a Taiwanese document, and vice
versa.
About half of the expatriates in the United States, Britain and
other English language countries left China a decade or two ago,
and brought Traditional characters with them, which they passed
on to their children. The Chinese people in America therefore, grew
apart in dialect, adding a smattering of English words written in
ABC letters. They were also separated from the Simplified process,
as well as behind in the changes technology brought to the Cantonese
and Mandarin languages.
WHICH
CHARACTER SET TO USE
The
"simplification" of Chinese characters has had an enormous
effect on business. If a company wishes to write correspondence,
marketing materials or a website ... which character set should
be used? And, isn't it possible to have one single Chinese character
set only? The answer is, unfortunately, that if a company wishes
to attract clients from all of these markets - Mainland, Taiwan,
Cantonese and the United States - then both character sets, Simplified
and Traditional, are needed. If only one group of marketing materials
will be translated, then choose the character set of the largest
target market for the product.
And, equally unfortunately, these two character sets are not just
"fonts", like "Times" or "Arial".
A document cannot be hilited, and a new Chinese character set chosen.
Rather, the entire Chinese system is different, and a serious document
conversion must take place. The conversion process will produce
a high error rate of incorrect characters. Following conversion,
the document must be lengthily and seriously reviewed, and the high
numbers of computerized errors detected and corrected. Thus, converting
documents into the second set of Chinese characters is less expensive
than the first, usually by about 50%, but must nonetheless be considered
when budgeting.
IN
SUMMARY
Slowly,
Simplified is filtering into Hong Kong, Taiwan and the United States.
Until then, two sets of characters may be the best way to go for
a broader audience and higher revenue generation.
