9 Key Challenges in Chinese to English Translation

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Chinese to English Translation

Chinese is the most widely spoken language globally, with 1.3 billion native speakers. Curiously, it is also widely considered the hardest language to master. Chinese translations are particularly tedious because Mandarin alone contains over 80,000 characters. Because of its tonal nature, Chinese is also very nuanced.

Unfortunately, several obstacles can be overcome while translating from Chinese to English and vice versa. When the Chinese perspective gets in the way of an accurate English translation, the result is Chinglish.

Differences in cognitive patterns and how the two languages differ undoubtedly contribute significantly to transferring the meaning of the mother tongue. In addition, there is a wealth of idioms, cultural knowledge, grammatical norms, and subject-verb formation.

So, if you are interested in Chinese to English translation, here are the difficulties linguists encounter that you should take note of.

1. Complex Grammar System

The grammatical discrepancies between Chinese and other languages, like English, pose a significant challenge for translators in this field. For example, there will only ever be a single term for both the singular and plural forms of a word.

Focusing on the topic, or stating the topic of the phrase first, is another grammatical norm that non-Chinese speakers may find strange. Also, the tenses of verbs are not altered. Therefore, it is necessary to look at the context of a word to determine its meaning.

A Chinese-specialized language services company can help you translate accurately and account for all the cultural nuances of the Chinese language, which might be tough to do on your own.

2. Evolving Language and Slang

As a result of the continuous development of new vocabulary and idioms, the English and Chinese languages are ever-changing. You need to be up-to-date on the linguistic landscape of both languages to translate modern idioms or colloquialisms.

Most importantly, missing the subtleties of contemporary language might lead to uncomfortable or out-of-date translations that might not connect with the target audience.

3. Formality

Like Latin, Chinese emphasizes formality in its grammatical structures and addresses. Chinese does indicate formality through place names and surnames, which are written differently, although there is no formal “you” like in Spanish or French.

The same applies to surnames, which are placed before personal names and follow this designation.

4. Multiple Dialects

Although Mandarin is the official language of China, there are many other varieties of the Chinese language. The four main languages spoken now are:

  • Mandarin
  • Wu
  • Yue (Cantonese)
  • Min

In addition to this, there are other dialects spoken from other regions of the country, such as:

  • Gan
  • Xiang
  • Hakka
  • Jin
  • Hui
  • Pinghua

Some of the major Chinese dialects are so dissimilar that not even people who speak the same dialect can communicate with each other.

Although Cantonese is the more common dialect in Hong Kong, the mainland uses Mandarin Chinese as its official language. For this reason, zeroing down on your target demographic is crucial. You can better engage the appropriate translation if you have additional information about their needs, dialects, and location.

5. Sentence Structure

Simple and complicated sentences are the two main types of Chinese sentence forms. There are numerous distinctions between this form and English, despite the seeming simplicity of the sentence structure with a subject, predicate, and object. For instance, unlike in English, the predicate is not necessarily a verb in Chinese.

In addition, clusters of basic sentences make up complex Chinese sentences. Consequently, translators must possess in-depth knowledge of Chinese phrase structures to convey the ideas correctly from Chinese to another language.

6. Technical and Specialized Terminology

The difficulty of accurately translating highly technical and specialized terms is growing due to the exponential rate of innovation across many different sectors. Identifying English equivalents to new phrases or concepts that the Chinese embrace can be difficult.

Translators must know languages and industry trends to produce reliable and current translations, especially in technology, health, and law.

7. Tonal Complexity

The majority of Chinese speakers speak Mandarin, which is a tonal language. A word’s meaning might shift depending on the tone employed. This feature is absent in English since it is not a tonal language.

For example, one word can have four different meanings in Mandarin because each of the four tones affects the word’s pronunciation. Take the word “ma” as an example; its pronunciation might signify mother, scold, rough, or horse.

Translators must comprehensively grasp the required dialect for the Chinese translation, as the dialect impacts word choice and meanings.

Since maintaining the intended meaning depends on expressing the right tone, translating tonal languages is difficult. An integral part of Chinese-to-English translation is to avoid misinterpretation by accurately interpreting tones.

8. Understanding the Use of Characters

The most crucial part of learning Chinese is realizing that ideographic characters are the foundation of the writing system. In many cases, a single character can stand in for a whole idea, and each character might have multiple meanings.

Additionally, there are around 3,000 characters that are used most often, and another 6,000 characters are often employed in literature and technical publications.

The uniqueness of Chinese writing is that symbols can be written in any direction—up or down, left to right, or even diagonally—depending on the meaning being expressed. Because of this, translations can be challenging, especially when using Chinese with a language that has a more linear writing system.

Since precise translations depend on character meanings and context, you must be fluent in Chinese before learning Chinese in English or other languages.

9. Working with Idioms

Idioms abound in Chinese because of the language’s deep roots in culture and tradition. The four-character idioms used in Chinese are called chengyu. The chengyu mainly originates from old texts that sought to convey stories, myths, or historical events concisely.

Translators must understand the cultural background of the idioms in translated texts because over 5,000 official chengyu words are embedded in the language.

Bridge the Gap Between Chinese and English Languages

Translating from Chinese to English is an art form that requires more than just language skills. A thorough familiarity with cultural nuances, idiomatic expressions, and the dynamic nature of language is required.

Translators are increasingly vital in bridging linguistic gaps as you go deeper into a globalized society. The first step in creating effective cross-lingual communication is recognizing and overcoming these issues.

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