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Chinese Language Translation Services
An Accent on Accuracy
The highest quality translations, brisk turnaround schedules,
competitive rates, and sharing of our knowledge, are all requisites for ALT's
success. The complete and accurate translation of your company's communications
is vital to your success. That's why ALT is obsessed with providing the best
translators for YOUR project. High-quality translations are the product of a
highly talented and experienced translation team with expertise in your
industry. ALT puts all the pieces together to make it happen.
Why Choose Advanced Language Translation Inc for English to Chinese
or
Chinese to English Translation?
Advanced Language Translation’s Professional Chinese
translation services utilize only native speakers to ensure quality and
precision translations for your target audience. With Chinese in particular, a
deep understanding of Chinese culture, as well as the language, is needed for
translation to be successful. Careful attention must be paid the Chinese
culture; a successful translation does not just translate the words, but adapts
the content to fit the culture of the Chinese people. When doing business in
Chinese, professional, human translation is a must. Do not expect to close a
business deal or impress your clients with spotty software translation. Only
through human translation, edited and customized to your target audience, can
your meaning be honestly conveyed and not offend your audience.
With Chinese typesetting and desktop publishing in particular,
not only are specific software tools and high quality fonts required to
properly lay out Chinese text, but professional knowledge and expertise is
needed to produce professional looking results.
We are proud of our excellent reputation for reliable and high
quality Chinese to English and English to Chinese translation and desktop
publishing services. We have assembled teams of translators from around the
world, with an array of skills and specialties and can custom fit the knowledge
and strengths of our teams to your specific projects. To demonstrate our
commitment to quality and our dedication to our clients, we offer free
consultations and provide an industry leading 180-day warranty on translation!
We provide quick and easy custom
quotes for your Chinese translation and localization needs.
Need to get the “gist” of Chinese?
Although professional translation is highly recommended for any business, legal
or sincere correspondence in Chinese, sometimes it’s necessary to use machine
translation (or translation software) to get the gist of an e-mail or web page.
By no means is software translation an acceptable substitute for professional
translation—the technology is not there yet. But it is great for getting the
general idea of an article, e-mail, web site, etc. Advanced Language
Translation offers excellent Chinese Translation Software for this purpose
in our
online store.
Interesting Facts about the Chinese Language
Chinese is a member of the Sino-Tibetan language family (including Burmese and
Tibetan) and despite popular belief, is not closely related to Korean,
Japanese, Thai or Vietnamese. Although Chinese influence is evident in Japanese
writing systems and in some adopted Vietnamese words, the history of each
spoken language is quite separate.
A common misconception is that Chinese is a single language,
when in fact it is the name given to a vast group of languages spoken in the
region of China. Like the Romance Languages, Chinese is the name of a group of
closely related languages of which speakers of one cannot necessarily
understand speakers of another. The name for this group of languages is called
the Sinitic languages. The close history of the dialects allow for speakers of
one language to learn another quite easily, as is the case of an English
speaker learning another romance language, such as Spanish or French. It is not
uncommon for speakers of Chinese to be able to speak several variants of the
language.
Mandarin, the official spoken language in the People’s Republic
of China, is the most widely spoken form of Chinese with Cantonese, Gan, Hakka,
Min, Wu and Xiang being other popular Sinitic languages. Each language can then
be subdivided into regional dialects totaling more than 1500.
Different varieties of Chinese are used in different
situations, depending on the need, education and location of the speaker or
writer. For example, a Hong Kong native may use a mix of local Cantonese and
Mandarin depending on the situation. The mixed use of Sinitic languages is
complex and yet forms a national unity of the language, and thus the common
name: Chinese.
Chinese is a very tonal language. Mandarin Chinese consists of
4 tones (flat, falling, rising and rising/falling). Some dialects can have up
to 9 tonal variations. Tone is extremely important to the understanding of
spoken Chinese. For example “ma,” the Chinese word for “mother”
has a flat tone. While “mâ,” or “horse” has a
rising/falling tone. Using a rising tone when saying “ma” will
change the meaning to “hemp.” Depending on how the tone is
applied to “ma,” the meaning can vary drastically. It’s easy to then conclude
that “ma” has potentially 4 meanings based on tone, but it is far more
complicated than that. Depending on context (specifically the words surrounding
“ma”) the meaning can change drastically. Making it safe to conclude: with
Chinese, Context is Everything.
Chinese does not have a grammatical distinction between
singular and plural nor does it have verbs that indicate tense. These are
indicated by syntax. Tense is implied by the addition of adverbs of time
(yesterday, tomorrow) and singular/plural is sometimes implied by the addition
of numbers (and modifiers to pronouns), but in most cases words are not
modified. Questions share the same grammar as do other sentences, but have the
addition of the particle “ma” on the end, making it a
question.
The Chinese language is known for being indirect or to
understate meaning. It is attributed to a cultural trait, older than the
language itself. Double negatives, euphemisms and ambiguity are not uncommon in
the Chinese language. For example, while we are not reserved in spouting off
“Perfect!” for a job well job well done, the Chinese equivalent
may be toned down more as to say “The errors are few.” Contracts
and laws written in Chinese often carry the same characteristics, making it
difficult for European and American companies to do business in China, while
for the Chinese, the gaps are filled by cultural understanding. The
indirectness and allusion of the Chinese culture and language is not a
shortcoming, but an expression of culture and character that should be
appreciated for its difference.
History of the Chinese Language
Archaic Chinese is considered the first evidence of written
language of Chinese, dating back to the Shang and Zhou Dynasty (12-7th
centuries BC) and the Chinese Bronze Age. Bronze inscriptions show a written
language full of pictograms and simple grammar. Although the pronunciations of
the archaic language have long been lost (since pictograms contain no
pronunciation information), there has been progress to learn how to pronounce
Archaic Chinese by studying poetry.
Ancient or Middle Chinese dates back to the Sui, Tang and Song
dynasties (5-10th centuries AD). This incarnation of the Chinese language was
more streamlined and simplified than Archaic Chinese. The writing system was
less pictorial and more stylistic. Progress reconstructing the pronunciation of
Middle Chinese has gone far due to Middle Chinese rhyming tables and the
phonetic translations of foreign names.
The history of the many variations and dialects of the Chinese
language is complex and mostly unknown. Through most of Chinese history
dynastic rule was the primary sense of linguistic unity. As China entered the
Modern political world, a language revolution took place as Mandarin Chinese
was taught in schools and finally adopted as the official language.
Written Language
Archaic Chinese was written as pictograms, representing actual
objects or actions. Later on, characters were added to the writing system based
on the sounds of the word rather than illustrating the object. As time went on
Chinese characters became less pictographic and more stylistic and phonetic.
The example to the left shows a group of Archaic Chinese pictograms,
representing different animals.
 Modern
Chinese is far from pictographic and one cannot simply decipher the language by
looking for meaning in the characters. During the 3rd century BC, the Chinese
writing system was fairly standardized, as the pictographs were modified over
time to increase efficiency, effectiveness and allow for more words. In many
cases elements from one character were incorporated into another to hint at
pronunciation, while the other hints at subject or meaning. The example to the
left shows a group of Modern Chinese characters for different animals.
Although one written character represents one syllable of
spoken Chinese, it does not mean that the Chinese language is monosyllabic as
the majority of Chinese words are composed of many syllables and written with
combinations of characters.
The most important fact about the written language is that
despite the numerous Sinitic languages, there is only one common writing
system. Which means that speakers of different Chinese variations, may not be
able to understand each other, but if literate, can write to each other with
excellent understanding. This is solely due to the fact that the various
Chinese languages share common grammar and syntax, but have different
pronunciations.
 The
writing system is further divided into 2 subgroups: Simplified and Traditional.
The standard Chinese writing system is referred to as Traditional. When the
People’s Republic of China took power, a massive campaign to increase literacy
was launched to promote the use of Mandarin and to simplify the writing system.
Complex characters were written using less strokes and some were replaced
altogether. Simplified Chinese is the official writing system on mainland China
(despite the continued popularity of Traditional Chinese in Hong Kong), while
Taiwan and Singapore continue to use Traditional. Recently there has been a
surge in the use of Traditional Chinese, due to growing complaints about the
over-simplification and resulting similarities of some characters. Originally
written from right to left, in vertical columns, the writing system was also
changed to match European languages: left to right in rows. Vertical text can
still be found on some banners and publications throughout Taiwan, where a mix
of the two is used.
Pinyin was also adopted as the official Romanization of the
Chinese language.
Chinese Language Statistics
• The writing system contains roughly 40,000 characters.
• One fifth of the world speaks Chinese as their native language.
• The Chinese language population on the Internet is one of the fast
growing.
• The majority of Chinese in the US speak Cantonese and prefer the
Traditional Chinese writing system.
• Literate Chinese need to be able to understand a minimum of 2,000
characters.
• The P.R.C. has a literacy rate of 85%
Translation/Localization Issues with Chinese
Advanced Language Translation Inc has extensive experience with
the in and outs of the Chinese Language and we have a long and flawless record
of success with complicated Chinese translation projects. Here are some of the
common issues with English to Chinese translation and desktop publishing that
we have learned:
• Chinese translation typically shrinks 10% in size from
English.
• Not all applications support Chinese text and great care must be taken when
using
Chinese in complex layouts. Some applications such as Quark Xpress and
Adobe
PageMaker, require the use of native Chinese versions in order to
typeset Chinese.
Unfortunately, to view and print documents created in these versions,
you have to have
the Chinese software.
• Chinese is a double-byte language, meaning each character takes up twice as
much
memory to display than European languages. Typesetting Chinese is
resource
intensive and saved files can take up more disc space than their
European
counterparts.
• Although Chinese does not have specific hyphenation rules, text should be
width
justified and care must be taken to break certain words appropriately.
• Great care must be taken when applying Bold and Underline styles to Chinese
fonts.
Some styles may make the characters unrecognizable.
• Chinese fonts are difficult to make and thus not as common as European and
Cyrillic
fonts. Sometime shortcuts are taken when creating a Chinese font and
many of the
40,000 characters are left out. Usually the rarely used characters are
omitted.
• It’s good practice to typeset Chinese at a larger font size than the
corresponding
English. Since Chinese characters are more dense than roman letters,
expanding the
size makes it more legible.
• For voice work, it is extremely important to know the dialect of the target
audience.
Chinese Language Vital Information
Speaking Population: Mandarin Chinese
1.2 Billion, Han Chinese 1.1 Billion, Minority Languages 91 Million
Where Spoken: People’s Republic of China, Indonesia, Malaysia,
Vietnam, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Japan, Canada and the United
States.
Writing Systems: Chinese (Traditional and Simplified)
Code Pages:
10001
MAC – Traditional Chinese Big5
10008
MAC – Simplified Chinese GB 2312
20000 CNS
– Taiwan
20001
TCA – Taiwan
20002
Eten – Taiwan
20003
IBM5550 – Taiwan
20004
TeleText – Taiwan
20005
Wang – Taiwan
20936
Simplified Chinese GB2312
50227
ISO-2022 Simplified Chinese
50229
ISO-2022 Traditional Chinese
52936
HZ-GB2312 Simplified Chinese
54936
HZ-GB18030 Simplified Chinese
Unicode Supported: Yes
Common Phrases:
Chinese: 
(guó yû)
Hello: 
(nî-haô)
Good-bye: 
(zaì-jiàn)
Please: 
(qîng)
Thank you:  (xiè-xiè)
Yes: 
(shì)
No: 
(bí-shì)
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