deeper look into the world’s oldest languages, you can click the link below.)
Traditional Chinese is officially used in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, as well as in China. Its characters are referred to in various ways by Chinese speakers, including ‘standard characters,’ ‘orthodox characters,’ ‘complex characters’ and ‘full Chinese characters.’
Read more: What are the world's oldest languages?
What Is Simplified Chinese?
Simplified Chinese is exactly that – a simplified version of traditional Chinese characters. The government of the People's Republic of China on Mainland China introduced this character set in the 1950s. Today, it is used in China, Malaysia and Singapore. Quite simply, many characters have fewer strokes than they used to, making them easier to learn. Some of those that were already fairly simple were left unchanged.
The introduction of simplified Chinese provided language learners not only with characters that were easier to write, but with significantly fewer of them in total. If, for example, traditional Chinese contained two or more words with the same pronunciation but with different meanings (think ‘there’, ‘their’ and ‘they’re’ for an English example of this), the simplified version would use a single character for all of the words, rather than one for each (as was the case with traditional Chinese).
Interestingly, the Chinese government remains officially committed to further simplification of the language. As part of this, a second set of simplifications was launched in 1977. However, the resulting confusion and unpopularity of the new simplifications saw the government eventually withdraw them, nearly a decade later.
The History of Simplified Chinese
It’s important to understand the whole Chinese traditional vs simplified discussion, so let’s take a moment to explore precisely why there are two types of Chinese language when it comes to the written form.
Why is there simplified and traditional Chinese? Largely because literary levels in China used to be incredibly low. When the communists 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 t