![]() ![]() However, in Traditional Chinese, single quotation marks are rendered as「…」 and double as『…』. When embedding quotes, the single marks are placed inside the double marks like this: “…‘…’…”. As an example, Simplified Chinese uses Western-style quotation marks “…” and ‘…’. Simplified and Traditional have some punctuation differences. ![]() 土豆 means potato(es) in Simplified Chinese, but in Traditional, it means peanut(s).Next, we have an example of two characters that have very different meanings: Late night supper: 夜宵 (Simplified), 宵夜 (Traditional).Authentic: 地道 (Simplified), 道地 (Traditional).These examples show the same word, written with the same two characters, but with the sequence reversed: In this example, when the Simplified Chinese usage is put into Traditional Chinese (講話), it means only “to speak,” as a verb, but not “speech,” as a noun. speech: 讲话 (Simplified), 演說 (Traditional).video: 视频 (Simplified), 影片(Traditional).default: 默认 (Simplified), 預設 (Traditional).Here are just a few examples that illustrate how the same word can be represented by completely different characters: Simplified and Traditional Chinese have some differences in word choice, vocabulary usage, and character sequences. Traditional Chinese represents each word in this phrase with a unique character: 頭髮發白. When writing the phrase 头发发白 (hair turns gray) in Simplified Chinese, the two characters in the middle are identical, but have different meanings. While Traditional uses a single character to express a word or part of a word, Simplified may represent multiple words or concepts using the same character.įor example, the character 发 in Simplified Chinese equates to either 髮 (hair) or 發 (become/develop) in Traditional Chinese. When Simplified Chinese was developed, some Traditional characters were merged, so the new language has fewer commonly used characters. Simplified Chinese characters have fewer strokes than their traditional counterparts, and therefore have simpler, less ornate structures. Key Differences Between Simplified and Traditional Character Structure ![]() Throughout the 50’s and 60’s, Simplified Chinese was adopted in mainland China, Malaysia, and Singapore, while the people of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau continue to use the Traditional writing system. Approximately 2,000 traditional characters were modified, primarily by reducing the number of strokes and/or merging the characters. ![]() Believing the steep learning curve of Traditional Chinese characters to be a factor, the government launched a campaign to promote literacy and education by simplifying the writing system. When the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, the literacy rate in China was around 20%. As its name suggests, Simplified Chinese consists of simplified versions of the traditional Chinese characters. Traditional Chinese preserves the orthodox characters that have been used for thousands of years. Today, there are two different written forms of Chinese: Traditional and Simplified. While the Latin alphabet has a core of 26 letters that can form an entire vocabulary, Chinese consists of tens of thousands of characters (or logograms) that are used to write single- and multiple-character words. The Written Language - Simplified and Traditional Chinese A question we often hear is: “What’s the difference between Simplified and Traditional Chinese?” In this article, we examine the various forms of the language, so you can plan an informed translation strategy. One quarter of the global population speaks some form of Chinese, and this includes 800 million active internet users-making the language hugely relevant to any organization that communicates globally.īecause Chinese is such an intricate and complex language, translation can be confusing to the uninitiated. With 1.3 billion native speakers, Chinese holds the title of the world’s most widely spoken language. ![]()
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