It is often considered one of the most difficult languages in the world. It has no alphabet and the characters (also called hieroglyphs) must be remembered in learning. It has five recognized Dialect Groups, meaning fifty-six dialects! Speaking this language has also four tones, sounding like a rapid series of almost identical monosyllables that could easily create confusion.
All of these seem to make it almost inaccessible for the people interested in studying it or get in contact with it.
However, Chinese is a very fascinating and interesting language, full of challenges and not the last, very important in the international relationships, between people of different categories. Chinese is a Sino-Tibetan language, the term sinophone, coinciding in analogy with anglophone or francophone, referring to the people who speak Chinese language natively, or prefer it as a medium of communication. The term sinophone is derived from by "Sinae", the Latin word for the ancient China. There is a dispute about whether linguistic groups of Chinese language should be categorized as languages or dialects. However, it is usually accepted that there are five major dialect groups within the language group of Chinese: Mandarin, Wu, Min, Yue and Hakka.
Mandarin or Simplified Chinese is the official language spoken in mainland China where is known as Pu-Tong-Hua, Taiwan (known as Guo-Yu) and Singapore (Hua-Yu). It is to retain that in Singapore is official language but not the main one. Simplified Chinese is spoken by approximately 1 billion people all over the world, starting from South Eastern Asia until other regions in the world where the Chinese population is very representative, like Australia, Mauritius, Peru, North America, etc.
In China, the Government included the present official language in 1948, after the establishment of the new People's Republic of China; one of the major tasks of the Chinese governments during the second half of the twentieth century, was to standardize the common language in order to make the written language more accessible. Mandarin was created based on Beijing dialect, being used over the years in public institutions, on the radio and television, in government agencies, in the media, and as a language of instruction in schools.
As China was during the years an important economical power in the world, it was also an attractive partner for businessmen from a lot of countries. In the last years, the economy of China has known a major development, becoming in 2008 the third largest economical power in the world, after the United States and Japan. China has been the fastest growing major nation for the past quarter of the century with an average annual GDP growth rate above 10%!
Now, you would say: "Ok, but what is the connection between the China's economical increase and Chinese translations?"
Well, the impetuous development of China's economy in the last years had as consequence the increase of businessmen's interest towards this country, in the same way! In this respect, the necessity and importance of translations from/in Chinese to English (especially) of different texts, correspondence, documents, certificates, etc, used in business relationships appeared as a very important and essential activity. Moreover, it is an important factor, very helpful in the development of relationships between businessmen all over the world that use these two languages.
There are also the ordinary people all over the world that get in contact with Chinese people, establishing different cultural, personal, friendship relationships and even marriages. Thus, in order to facilitate the communication, it appears for them the necessity of translating text, messages, personal documents, certificates, degrees, etc.
Here, intervenes the English-Chinese translators' part, but about this please read in my next article.
Click here for more information about Chinese-English translations: http://www.sparkling-markets.com/ChineseTranslations.html
Cristina Dong is an experienced translator from English to Chinese and reverse of different texts, including also personal documents! Graduate of Beijing Language and Culture University (BLCU), very passionate of chinese language and culture. Do not hesitate: http://www.sparkling-markets.com/ChineseTranslations.html
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