Translating English to Chinese.

[sunnysingh]

Hi I have a couple of paragraphs in English that i need to get translated into Chinese. The text is basically a self introduction to myself, qualifications and my career background.

Are there any websites or apps that will help me ?

 

[Maccy]

https://translate.google.co.uk/

 

[Rainmaker]

https://translate.google.co.uk/

What could go wrong?

OP you need to hire a translator, even if it's an advert in a local uni with international students or something. Just FYI though, there's no such language as 'Chinese'. You'll want Mandarin, Cantonese or some variant thereof.

 

[flexo786]

I'd recommend finding someone who speaks it and having them translate as ive found google a bit hit and miss in my experience

 

[Meddling-Monk]

Depends on how professional you need it to look. I'd try and grab someone who's from China, Hong Kong or Taiwan depending on your targetted locatisation for the translation.

I could for example translate the English into any of the Chinese (Mandarin or Cantonese, Simplified or Traditional) for you, but no way would it be remotely close to how it would be normally laid out (grammatically) from those localised regions and will look very amatuerish because of that missing stylisation.

So it's entirely based on who you want reading it in the end that'll really decide how you should go about this.

 

[garsands]

A tattooist will happily translate it for you.

 

[Jimbeam3678]

Hi I have a couple of paragraphs in English that i need to get translated into Chinese. The text is basically a self introduction to myself, qualifications and my career background.

Are there any websites or apps that will help me ?

My wife can help mother tongue is mandarin but speaks fluent English. Drop me a pm and she’ll sort it. Simplified or traditional mandarin?

 

[Dis86]

My wife can help mother tongue is mandarin but speaks fluent English. Drop me a pm and she’ll sort it. Simplified or traditional mandarin?

No no. He wants it translated to Chinese. What use is Mandarin?! Sheesh.

The lol that you think he'll know whether to have it translated to simplified or traditional mandarin when he doesn't even know what language he wants in the first place.

 

[Raymond Lin]

Chinese and Mandarin are essentially the same thing how people refer Chinese these days, but you don't write Mandarin.

Chinese is the written version of the language. Mandarin is the spoken language, it is the pronunciation of the words. Cantonese, Hakka and Mandarin are the speaking language. Each one is different enough that you can't really understand each other, well, a couple of them you can.

Written down they are all the same. Simplified Chinese are if you are in China, but all the Chinese that has immigrated from China in the past 50 years are mostly from Hong Kong and thus writes Traditional Chinese.

So, in the west, if you want to translate into Chinese, chances are is traditional Chinese.

If you are trying to get a job in China however, then you want simplified Chinese.

 

[Rainmaker]

Chinese and Mandarin are essentially the same thing how people refer Chinese these days, but you don't write Mandarin.

Chinese is the written version of the language. Mandarin is the spoken language, it is the pronunciation of the words. Cantonese, Hakka and Mandarin are the speaking language. Each one is different enough that you can't really understand each other, well, a couple of them you can.

Written down they are all the same. Simplified Chinese are if you are in China, but all the Chinese that has immigrated from China in the past 50 years are mostly from Hong Kong and thus writes Traditional Chinese.

So, in the west, if you want to translate into Chinese, chances are is traditional Chinese.

If you are trying to get a job in China however, then you want simplified Chinese.

TIL. That was really interesting.

 

[Raymond Lin]

TIL. That was really interesting.

The short version is:-

Chinese started out all traditional for thousands of years but when Mao was in power he got a bunch of scholars together and simplified the written words to raise the literacy of the country and as you can imagine, learning 10,000 complicated words is quite a task so that was his idea (not only how it looks but there is a strict order how each stoke, cross, dot is written). But during that time in the 50's, the Chinese people that fled from the Communist regime into Taiwan kept their Traditional Chinese, so if you are in Taiwan, all the words on all the newspaper, books are in traditional Chinese.

Same as in Hong Kong, as in the 50's it was under British rule, therefore the whole "modernisation" of the written Chinese to simplified it never happened in Hong Kong and Macau. And anyone from HK will write traditional Chinese. They also would struggle a bit to read simplified Chinese either. Sometimes it is the same word (if it is simple to start off with), sometimes it is "gutted" and leaving a shell…and then you are end up guessing what was removed! Sure you can guess the gist of what the sentence is saying but it's like reading shorthand.

And also, in Japanese, their Kanji characters which is based in Chinese characters are based in traditional, not simplified.

Lastly, Chinese calligraphy, the art of the written words is all done in traditional Chinese. To me, simplified Chinese is a bit ugly, it lacks the art of traditional Chinese.

 

[Rainmaker]

That was really good to learn, thanks for sharing!

 

[Raymond Lin]

That was really good to learn, thanks for sharing!

Another thing.

The writing language in Chinese of the word Chinese literal translation is "Centre Language". Same as the word for China in Chinese, it means Centre Country or Centre Kingdom. It basically means the centre of the world. (yes I know….)

In Hong Kong, the word for Mandarin, its literal translation means "Country Language" As in my Chinese Country (motherland) Language, that's how they refer to Mandarin is HK and Taiwan. However, in Mandarin, in mainland China, it's word for Mandarin in Mandarin means "simple language".

So even Chinese people themselves refers to Mandarin with different words, and it all depends where you are from.

 

[Feef]

While Raymond Lin's explanation above is an excellent summary, I would point out that the simplification of Chinese had been proposed as early as 1919 by scholars involved in the May 4th movement, and Mao himself was in favour of an ultimate move to a phonetic system. Not wanting to be seen as defending the Communists' actions at all, I much prefer traditional characters myself, just that the idea was floating around before they came to power. This is just being picky, however, as it's the topic I wrote my dissertation on way back when

 

[Feek]

Sadly, google gets things wrong.

我的气垫船上到处都是鳗鱼