Chinese - English - Chinese Translation
Our expertise is focused on English to Mandarin
Chinese and Mandarin Chinese to English translation projects.
and Traditional Chinese
Taiwan and China both use Mandarin Chinese
(Hong Kong uses Cantonese) but with slightly different character systems. We cater
for and are well equipped to work on projects that need to be translated for the
China markets, Taiwan markets, or both.
China uses Simplified Chinese characters, while
Taiwan uses Traditional Chinese chatracters. Also, if your project needs to be
aimed at Chinese speaking Singapore and Malaysian markets, you will need to cater
for them with Simplified Chinese character translations. If you need to aim for
the Hong Kong market, you need Traditional Chinese characters but sometimes, there
can be grammar differences.
The normal procedure for companies operating
in Asia is to do two versions of everything - one using the simplified mainland
script and mainland terminology, and one using the traditional script and Taiwanese
History of Chinese Mandarin
There are two different Mandarin Chineses. The
spoken language used in both Taiwan and Mainland China (and other areas as well)
is Mandarin Chinese. However, after 1949, the old Nationalist government of China
was defeated by the communists and driven to Taiwan. The new
communist government of China instituted major changes to the way that Chinese
was written in mainland China - so that the written script used in Taiwan (and
many overseas Chinese) and in China is different - and each side can only read
bits and pieces of the other's. Complicating matters further, because the two
sides were technically at war and didn't communicate until very recently - each
side coined different terms to describe new technologies. Even common words like
'software, 'database' and 'CD' are different and only the most educated are aware
of the terms used in both versions of the language.
As with any language there can be rather varied
accents depending on where you are in a country. China is a very large country
so the difference between a Beijing accent and a Shanghai accent is quite strong.
If you compare these with a Taiwanese accent, you will find even stronger differences.
In the past we have carried out audio translations that required a Beijing accent
because it is more widely recognized.