The most-common Chinese language varieties requested of ASIST are Mandarin, followed by Cantonese (also known as Yue, Gwong Dung Waa, Yueh, Yuet Yue, and Yueyu). The written form of Mandarin can use either Simplified or Traditional characters, depending on the target audience, while Cantonese generally uses Traditional characters. If you are planning for a Chinese translation, here are some basic guidelines to keep in mind.
Spoken Chinese
While it also applies to a large group of linguistically related dialects, Mandarin usually refers to the Standard Mandarin variety as spoken in Beijing. The name Mandarin literally back-translates as “northern speech.” This is the official language of the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan (a.k.a. Republic of China), and is also one of four official languages in Singapore.
In China, Cantonese speakers are mainly concentrated in the province of Guangdong (previously known as Canton in English) and Guanxi. It is also spoken in Macau—where it is an official language, along with Portuguese. Cantonese is also the traditionally dominant language in Hong Kong used in education, government, business and the media, although Mandarin is also a co-official language there. “Standard Cantonese” usually refers to the Canton-Hong Kong dialect.
There are also large Cantonese-speaking communities in Southeast Asia, Canada, Australia and the United States. The majority of the Chinese-Americans well into the 1980’s could trace their ancestry to the Cantonese province of Taishan; consequently Cantonese was prevalent for many years in the US. As the demographics among Chinese immigrants have shifted over the last 50 years, Mandarin has steadily increased in prominence as the lingua franca among overseas Chinese.
Written Chinese
Presently, two distinct systems of characters are used for writing Chinese: Traditional and Simplified. As the name implies, the Simplified form decreases the number of strokes required for many (but not all) characters. A finalized version of this system was made official in the People’s Republic of China in 1964. Use of Simplified characters is the norm among Mandarin speakers in mainland China, Singapore, Malaysia and in the United Nations. Additionally, writing in Simplified characters is also gradually gaining popularity among other overseas Chinese.
In contrast, Traditional characters are used for written Cantonese in Hong Kong and Macau, and written Mandarin in Taiwan (where use of Simplified characters is disapproved). Many overseas Chinese communities also tend to use Traditional characters, especially Cantonese speakers and families who emigrated before the mainland’s changeover to Simplified during the 1950’s and 1960’s.
There is also a “romanized” version of written Chinese that uses Latin characters to approximate Standard Mandarin pronunciation. Hanyu Pinyin (or simply Pinyin) was adopted by the ISO as the standard romanization for modern Chinese. Aside from its main use for teaching phonetic pronunciation to non-Mandarin speakers, Hanyu Pinyin is also sometimes used for entering Chinese text into certain computer systems that don’t support Traditional or Simplified Chinese characters.
What To Do?
If Mandarin Chinese is requested, and your principal target audience is worldwide or mainland China specifically, it will most commonly be written using Simplified Chinese characters. However, for “Chinese” speaking audiences within the USA, it is important to check beforehand. It is not unusual for both Mandarin and Cantonese to be required. For example, the San Francisco area has separate radio and TV channels broadcasting in each language, and various American television networks broadcast programming in both languages. For written Chinese, a significant portion of Chinese-Americans may be more familiar with Traditional rather than Simplified characters.
ASIST offers translation, interpreting and voice recording in Mandarin and Cantonese, plus many other languages throughout China, Asia and elsewhere.
ASIST Translation Services, Inc. is a full-service interpreting and translation agency located in Columbus, Ohio. We provide translation, interpreting, proofreading, studio voice recording and media production, localization of interactive and Web content, and specialized language services to clients around the world…
