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Chinese Translation

Chinese is a complex language with a complex writing system. Moreover, there are many complex grammatical structures, cultural nuances and technical considerations that must be taken into account to produce a natural copy. Orange Text provides professional natural-sounding copy whether the source is simplified Chinese (mainland Chinese and Singapore) or traditional Chinese, such as found in Taiwan and Hong Kong.



Chinese (ZH)

With a written tradition reaching back more than three thousand years, Chinese is a language rich with history, idiomatic expressions and culture. Although between 2,500 and 3,500 thousand Chinese characters must be learned for basic literacy, the Yìtǐzì Zìdiǎn (異體字字典) contains more than than a hundred thousand characters—though it may be noted that many listed are obsolete or simply variant forms. [1, 2] In addition, social and political changes have resulted in Chinese language spreading and evolving. For example, following the Communist Revolution in 1949, a simplified form of Chinese characters were developed in mainland China to make it possible to write faster. In Taiwan and Hong Kong, however, the traditional characters continue to be used.

Chinese <> English

Although unrelated, Chinese and English actually have the same basic word order: subject-verb-object. Because they are both SVO type languages, there are some shared grammatical structures that make translation between the two advantageous compared to translation between languages of different typologies.

Chinese <> Japanese

Like English, Japanese is unrelated to Chinese; moreover, Japanese is of the subject-object-verb (SOV) typology. These factors mean that translation between Japanese and Chinese require special attention to grammatical structures. In addition, Chinese is known as an isolating language while Japanese is an agglutinative language. Despite these differences, there are some similarities because Japanese borrowed the Chinese writing system and draws on Chinese characters for a large portion of Japanese vocabulary.
Shanghai

Shànghǎi

The Great Wall of China

The Great Wall of China (Chángchéng)

A city street in Beijing

A city street in Běijīng