© 2024 Richard Zhu
© 2024 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
RICHARD ZHU
Translator of the simplified character version of The Urantia Book
Simplified Chinese language and Traditional Chinese language are two types of written Chinese language, the spoken Chinese language may be the same, Mandarin. The main differences between these two written Chinese languages are as follows:
Simplified Chinese characters are one of two standardized character sets widely used to write contemporary Chinese languages, the second set being the traditional characters. The development of simplified characters during the 20th century was part of an initiative by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to promote literacy, and their use in ordinary circumstances on the mainland has been encouraged by the Chinese government since the 1950s. The official simplified forms are used in mainland China, Malaysia, and Singapore, while the traditional characters are officially used in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.
The traditional Chinese language system is more difficult to learn and allows people to communicate a little better with a population of about 23 million. The simplified Chinese language system is easier to learn and allows people to communicate better with the majority of China’s population of over 1.4 billion people.
Initially, the differences between Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese were only in character types. However, new words and concepts that have developed since the 1950s, including words such as internet and software, have different forms in Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. In addition, the political and physical distance between mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan has also led to variations in style and vocabulary, similar to those between British English and American English.
Since these two character sets continue to diverge in terms of vocabulary, translating from Simplified Chinese to Traditional Chinese and vice versa is not as easy a task as it seems.
A simple machine translation will not produce acceptable results, as this challenge requires an experienced translator to notice certain unique linguistic terms and contexts and correct all the potential errors that a character-by-character translation will cause.
In fact, even in a document whose traditional characters have been perfectly converted from simplified characters, a native speaker from Taiwan or Hong Kong will be able to tell that the document has simply been converted and not properly translated. Conversely, a simplified Chinese translation version that attempts to incorporate the good aspects of the traditional Chinese language will also be recognized by professional simplified Chinese translators as not being comprehensible and of poor quality.