CHINESE TRANSLATION SERVICES

Over the years, ITC has developed a strong network of linguists whose native language is Chinese. These linguists have passed several rounds of tests and are evaluated regularly. In addition, ITC project managers have drawn up language guides to help translators follow the specific rules that apply to Chinese.

1,2 billion

people have Chinese as their mother tongue

+56 000

characters make up the Chinese language

Mandarin

is the most widely spoken language in China

History of the language: translation into Chinese

Chinese in its written form is one of the oldest languages still in use, if not the oldest. Egyptian, which used hieroglyphics, and Sumerian, which used cuneiform script have been extinct for a long time. The oldest vestiges found of its written form date back to 1500 BC, and were found in animal bones and turtle carapaces used as oracles. Even by then, this script was considered mature.

Unlike most Western languages, Chinese is an ideographic language and not phonetic, in the sense that each character represents a concept instead of a sound.

Over history, Chinese characters have been evolving and getting more abstract in their representation. There is not an exact figure of all existing Chinese characters, but estimations vary between 80,000 and 90,000. Of course, most of them are archaic forms no longer in use that are found in older manuscripts or occasionally in family names. In general, there are 3,500 common characters that cover 99 percent of communication requirements.

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Specific features of the Chinese language

We refer to “Chinese” as the standard language known as “Mandarin” in Western countries, “Putonghua” in mainland China and “Guoyu” in Taiwan, but there are many regional dialects spoken by Chinese people, as well as other languages spoken by ethnic minorities. Nowadays, Chinese has two different methods of writing, simplified form (简体字) and traditional form (繁体字). Essentially, the difference between both forms is cosmetic. Each version of a character has the same meaning and it is pronounced in the same way. However, due to historical and geopolitical reasons, each form is associated to the Chinese used in different areas, each one having its own characteristics in usage and vocabulary, much like the different variations of English that are used in the United Kingdom, United States, Australia, etc.

TRADITIONAL CHINESE

Traditional Chinese has its origin directly from the written form of Chinese. It is easy to tell the difference with the simplified form because most characters look very complicated and are composed of more signs than their simplified counterparts. Traditionally, Chinese was written vertically from top to bottom and from right to left, and sometimes horizontally from right to left. It is only in recent decades that Chinese, influenced by Western languages, has been written from left to right.

Currently, Traditional Chinese is the official written language in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao, each with its own idioms and vocabulary.

SIMPLIFIED CHINESE

The history of Simplified Chinese is comparatively short. Although there were some scholars that proposed a simplification of the writing system in the 1920s and even earlier, it wasn’t until 1956 when the State Council of the PRC implemented and promoted a nation-wide reform, with the purpose of improving literacy among the Chinese population. Nowadays the simplified form is officially used in Mainland China and Singapore.