The Difference between Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese

The-Difference-Between-Simplified-Chinese-And-Traditional-Chinese

Facts about China.

China is the largest country in Asia covering over 3.7 million square miles with a population of around 1.4 billion. It is considered the most populous country and the world’s second-largest economy after the United States of America. With over 4,000 years of history, China is one of the most ancient civilizations so it is not surprising to learn that the Chinese language is one of the oldest written languages in the world.

In this article, we will talk about the difference between Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese, so let us begin!

The main written languages in China.

The Chinese language uses unique letters or symbols to represent its vocabulary. You will find about 40,000 characters in the Chinese dictionary and you will need to know at least 2,000 of these characters to be able to read a Chinese newspaper.

The Chinese language has several dialects but the written language is more or less the same. You will find it strange to know that Chinese people from different provinces find it difficult to communicate with each other verbally but they can understand the written language.

There are three forms of the Chinese written language: simplified, traditional, and phonetic (or informal slang) but in this article, we will focus on the traditional and simplified Chinese.

What are the main differences between Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese?

 the main differences between Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese

Where They’re Used

Traditional Chinese 

Traditional Chinese is the written language used in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. There are two varieties of Traditional Chinese: Traditional Chinese for Hong Kong and Traditional Chinese for Taiwan. Some unique characters are found in Hong Kong Chinese, but not found in the Traditional Chinese for Taiwan. However, both use a similar set of characters. When it comes to translation, they both are known as “Traditional Chinese”.

Simplified Chinese

Simplified Chinese is the written language used by 1.43 billion people in mainland China and Singapore. Also, it is used by Chinese people in Malaysia.

– Appearance of Characters 

There is a difference between Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese in how the characters look. Traditional Chinese characters are more complicated and use more strokes than Simplified Chinese Characters and use more strokes.

Example:
CharacterTraditional ChineseSimplified Chinese
Dragon

It is easy for people who understand Traditional Chinese to recognize Simplified Chinese, but it will be more difficult for people who understand Simplified Chinese to learn Traditional Chinese.

– Number of Characters

Simplified Chinese uses fewer characters than Traditional Chinese. One single character in Simplified Chinese could represent words that have different meanings but the same pronunciation, but each word has a separate character in Traditional Chinese.

Example:
EnglishTraditional ChineseSimplified Chinese
face
back

– Words Meanings

Like British and American English, many terms and phrases differ in their meaning between Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. For example, ‘potatoes’ in Simplified Chinese means ‘peanuts’ in Traditional Chinese.

– Phonetic Symbols

Traditional Chinese has about 37 phonetics; each one of them represents a sound. For example, if you want to say “爸” (Dad, which is pronounced as “ba”), you will use the phonetics for ㄅ (b) and ㄚ(a) plus the tone.

Simplified Chinese is easier as it uses for pronunciation, which utilizes a Romanized alphabet to frame the pronunciation of each character. However, not all the alphabets are pronounced exactly as they are in English. For example, (q) in pinyin is pronounced as (ch).

Conclusion:

As you can see there is a difference between Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese. Each has its flavor and cultural implications. Chinese in each country can be so similar yet so different. So understanding these differences can help software companies and global businesses for software development and marketing campaigns. 

When it comes to learning how to read and write in Chinese, it doesn’t matter which writing system you choose to focus on. What is most important is that you learn the type of Chinese that will be suitable for your location and your goals!

If you need help translating your documents to Chinese, whether it is Simplified Chinese or Traditional Chinese, just contact our sales team to get your quote by sending an email to sales@translationpartner.com or drop us a message here.