“If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.” Ludwig Wittgenstein

People talk about Mandarin and Cantonese, Traditional and Simplified Chinese. What are they talking about and what’s the difference?

When we talk about Mandarin and Cantonese, we’re talking about Spoken Chinese Language
When we talk about Traditional and Simplified Chinese we’re talking about Written Chinese Language

So what’s the difference between Mandarin and Cantonese?

Spoken Chinese is made up of a number of dialects which span the whole of China. The most commonly spoken of these is Mandarin which is the official adopted language of the People’s Republic of China. It is used in Government, Education and the Media. Because of its wide-spread adoption, most Chinese people can understand basic Mandarin, even if they prefer not to speak it. Geographically, Mandarin is spoken by people in Northern China, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia and (since the economic growth and development of mainland China) increasingly among Overseas Chinese Communities.

Cantonese, on the other hand, is the second most widely-used dialect but it tends to be used by people in Southern China, with a high concentration around Guangdong and Guangxi provinces, Hainan Island in China and also in Hong Kong and Macau. Until more recent times, most Overseas Chinese Communities had tended to come from these areas so they too are more likely to use Cantonese as their preferred Chinese dialect.

How do I know whether I’m supposed to ask for Simplified Chinese or Traditional Chinese and what’s the difference?

Written Chinese has developed over thousands of years but by the beginning of the 20th Century it had been distilled into one widely-recognised set of Characters which today we refer to as Traditional Chinese. However, these characters were very complex and illiteracy among ordinary people was high.

By the middle of the 20th Century, in an attempt to improve literacy, the Chinese Government sought to adopt a new set of Chinese characters which were easier to memorise and write. These newly modified characters are now known as Simplified Chinese.

As a general rule of thumb, Traditional Chinese is still used by Cantonese speakers, the Taiwanese (who chose not to adopt Simplified Chinese as dictated by the Mainland Communist Government) and most Overseas Chinese.

Simplified Chinese is most widely used by those living in Mainland China, predominantly in the North, East and West rather than the South.

If in doubt, tell us which community your translation is for and we’ll be happy to advise you accordingly.

How much does a translation cost and does it make any difference if I ask for Traditional or Simplified Chinese?

No two pieces of work are ever the same, so unfortunately we can’t give you a definitive price without seeing the work first and understanding your brief. Prices will vary according to a number of different factors, some of which may be:

• How long is the document and what is the word count?
• Turnaround time - how fast do you want the work back?
• Subject matter - is it general, technical, medical, legal?
• Is the document available in electronic format, printed copy, fax, handwritten?
• If it's in electronic format, what program is it currently in and in what format do you want it back?
• Are there any graphics involved?
• Are we dealing with desktop publishing or HTML files?

Once we get a brief and can see a sample of the original text, we can begin to work out a price. One thing we can tell you is that generally, it won’t affect the price if you ask for Traditional or Simplified Chinese.

How do I know if you’ve done a good job?

You don’t. But over the years we’ve been working at this, we’ve never had anyone tell us we’ve done a bad job and we take so much pride in what we do that if we don’t think we can deliver you a good job we’ll decline the work.

China has opened up a lot now. Why shouldn’t I just approach an agency in China directly and get the job done cheaper?

Go ahead. However, we’ve tried that ourselves and had to reject the work because the quality wasn’t good enough. We’ve even tried a company that claimed it had ISO9000 and still had to tell them we couldn’t use their work. The problem with going to China directly is that most of the people who claim to do translation work have no direct experience of the target language they’re working in. So if you give them Chinese text to translate, you’ll get a translation back but the English won’t be great – or if it’s the other way around, they won’t understand the nuances of the English language and often they’ll have mis-translated something when you receive the Chinese back.

Our translating team is hand-picked. We only work with people whose abilities are tried and tested and in any case, all the work is proofread and checked before it ever reaches you. Working with us may not be the cheapest solution but we’ll deliver you a good job.

Why can’t I just use Google Translate?

You can. But have you taken a look at the results? The language you get back is often stilted and in some cases completely misses the point. It works on the basis of transliteration (the practice of converting a text from one script into another, often in a systematic way). Anyone can take a dictionary and look the words up one by one but that doesn’t convey the true meaning. In order to give you a quality piece of work we need to know that the words haven’t just been converted from one language to another – we need to know that the translator was brave enough to change the words and phrases so that the accurate meaning is conveyed in the target language. As we said on our home page, translation is both an art and a science…

If I have a large piece of work can I split it up between several agencies to get the job done quicker?

Of course you can – but we wouldn’t advise it. In order to keep the tone of voice and the technical terminology consistent, it’s always best to use one agency. Just make sure, if it’s a large piece of work, that they’re capable of delivering the volume back within your given deadline.

Isn’t Chinese written back to front, up and down?

Occasionally, yes. But we try to give you all our work in a conventional format (left to right, etc.) whilst formatting the text in such a way as to give you a clear indication of what relates to what.

So will I get back something that looks exactly like what I gave you?

As much as we can we try to mirror the layout of whatever we receive so that it’s easier for you to relate one document to the other. However, unless you’ve asked us to actually replicate the document (e.g. you’ve commissioned us to do a piece of desk-top publishing) the layout will only be an approximation, not exact.

What happens if I’m a designer and I need to be able to select the translated text and put it into one of my software packages?

We’re assuming this relates to jobs where we’ve translated from English to Chinese but it can work equally well the other way around. We can either supply you with text in Word format, paragraph by paragraph (most computers will display Chinese these days) or we can put the text into an outline PDF format which you can then manipulate and put into your design work. Ideally this FAQ requires a more specific answer so our best advice is to call us or email and we’ll talk it through with you.

If I ask you to translate some text which includes my name, my title, my company name and address, why have you left parts of it in English?

Some of it is common sense. The address where you work doesn’t change because the recipient of the business card will need to know accurately where to find you. And unless you ask us to, we won’t be attempting to give you a Chinese name because this is very subjective. (Do you translate the sound of your name when it’s spoken out loud or the meaning of your name, if it has one? Highly unlikely that we would ever agree to the latter as it is too subjective). As for your company name, we have to be very careful – it may be well known and already have its own ‘official’ translation or maybe we’re doing this for the first time? That being the case, we need to know that we’re not infringing anyone else’s copyright so generally we prefer not to do it. However, we will attempt to correlate your job title with a corresponding one in Chinese.

What happens if the work I want translating is confidential?

We pride ourselves on the confidentiality we provide for our clients, but if it helps and gives you extra peace of mind, we’re happy to sign an NDA.