 took power at the end of the 1940s, China’s literacy rate was less than 20%. The party actively promoted the simplification of the language during the 1950s. Today, China’s literary rate has climbed to 95%, while among young people (those aged 15-24), that figure rises to 99.6% according to UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics.
Clearly, simplified Chinese has been a big win when it comes to literacy levels within China, but where does it leave those from overseas who want to do business with the world’s second largest country (by GDP)? In reality, when it comes to a decision around simplified vs traditional Chinese for your translations, the guiding factor will be who you are planning to connect with.
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Chinese Speakers and Simplified Vs Traditional Chinese
The use of traditional Chinese vs simplified Chinese is, for many, an emotive issue, with different territories sticking vehemently to one version of the other. The exception to this is in China itself, where both are commonly used.
Traditional Chinese proponents include Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau. Educational materials and most other printed materials use traditional Chinese characters. Indeed, the use of simplified Chinese characters is even prohibited in official government documents in Taiwan, though it is legal to import and distribute publications written in simplified Chinese.
Many of those who use traditional Chinese in these territories associate the simplified characters with an erosion of their traditional culture. In both Hong Kong and Macau, this has created tensions, with the simplified Chinese that is increasingly being used to accommodate tourists and immigrants from mainland China ringing cultural alarm bells for some residents.
There are also other reasons why certain regions have stuck with traditional Chinese. The 3.8 million Chinese Americans living in the US, for example, are largely descended from those who emigrated to America prior to the introduction of simplified characters. As such, traditional Chinese tends to be used in the US.
Exploring the Simplified Chinese Writing System
Simplified Chinese altered the traditional Chinese language writing form in several ways. The change from traditional to simplified Chinese was intended to boost literacy levels by making the language easier to learn, so the changes went deeper than simply reducing the number of character strokes.
We provided an example of this above when talking about the reduction of variant characters with the same pronunciation to a single character. This was also the case with variant characters that had identical meanings (such as ‘sofa’ and ‘settee’ in English).
Another form of simplification was the application of regular rules to certain characters. This meant the introduction of a standardised, simplified version of a particular component into all characters that contained that component.
The combined result of reducing the strokes in such a large swathe of characters with these other forms of simplification was a notable reduction in the number of words that language learners needed to master. As at June 2013, the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters consisted of 8,105 simplified and unchanged characters.
A Word on Chinese Dialects and Characters
If you’re in the market for Chinese translation services, there’s also the question of which dialect of Chinese you need. China is home to 297 living languages. The most commonly spoken of these is Mandarin, which some 70% of China’s population speak.
Cantonese is the second most spoken Chinese dialect and is an official language in both Hong Kong and Macau (alongside English in the former and Portuguese in the latter).
Both Mandarin and Cantonese can be written in both simplified and traditional Chinese characters.
Which One Should You Use and Learn?
Are you struggling with the whole traditional Chinese vs simplified Chinese question when it comes to which form of the language to use? Or even to learn? If so, don’t worry, y