Chinese Mandarin Translation; Twice

Mandarin Chinese is written in two scripts; Traditional Mandarin Chinese, and Simplified Mandarin Chinese. If you want to communicate to all Chinese speakers then you will require both Traditional and Simplified Mandarin translation. Unless you only want to target a specific Chinese speaking market such as Taiwan, two Mandarin translation versions are vital. By offering Traditional and Simplified Mandarin translations you are catering for markets in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and so on.

Written Mandarin Chinese - TWO Scripts!

Unlike phonetic or alphabetic written languages, Chinese is character based - one character represents a concept. Each character may be a word on it's own, but many words are a combination of two or more characters.

Historically, all written Chinese languages ('dialects') used the same basic script - but often two characters put together in one language mean something entirely different in another. Today, many dialects in China don't have written scripts - some because they never did, some simply fell out of use. The two most commonly written Chinese languages are Mandarin and Cantonese. While the characters used are the same, the meaning doesn't always carry across the linguistic barrier.

Significantly complicating matters was the switch after 1949 by the communist government of Mainland China to a new Simplified written Mandarin Chinese script. Nationalist Taiwan continued to use the traditional script. Today, very few Taiwanese or Mainlanders can read each other's written materials without great difficulty - even though they both speak Mandarin Chinese.

Hong Kong and Macau continue to use the Traditional Chinese characters for written Cantonese, while overseas Chinese in places like Singapore, Malaysia and the West use one or the other, and sometimes both.

TIP: When planning your Mandarin translation determine if your target market uses Traditional or Simplified characters.

To properly market your business to both of these Mandarin Chinese groups, a translation for each is vital. We can provide you with accurate translation into or from both written languages using our Taiwan and China translation offices.

A Little History on Mandarin Chinese

After the communist revolution of 1949, the nationalist government of China decamped to Taiwan. For ideological reasons, China closed itself to the world, and Taiwan closed itself to China. With virtually no linguistic contact, the two Mandarin Chinese speaking societies developed in significantly different directions. In China, Simplified Mandarin Chinese was developed while in Taiwan, Traditional Mandarin Chinese was kept.
» Simplified Chinese Translation and Traditional Chinese Translation

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For more on our Chinese Mandarin Translation Services...

You can contact us for more information and quoting on your Mandarin translation project. We are also in the process of creating a new Translation FAQs that is worth reading as your questions may have already been asked and answered.