Chinese Translation Services

China is one of the fastest-growing markets in the world. With over 1.4 billion people, the country has the largest population of any country in the world. Chinese is the second most commonly spoken language in the world after English, also it is one of the six official languages used by United Nations. It belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family. The Chinese language is considered as the oldest written language in the globe with at least six thousand years of history. Chinese character inscriptions have been found in turtle shells dating back to the Shang dynasty (1766-1123 BC), it proves that the written language has existed for more than 3,000 years. Then it developed into different forms of calligraphic handwritings like large seal script, small seal script, official script, regular script, cursive script and running script. The Chinese written language uses single distinctive symbols, or characters, which are meant to represent each word of the vocabulary. The most part of the characters are written versions of spoken sounds that have meaning. The sound system of modern Chinese is marked by its use of tones to indicate differences of meaning between words or syllables.

There exists different dialects and varieties of the Chinese language. Most of them differ from each other in pronunciation and vocabulary, also there are some grammatical differences. The two most popular dialects of the Chinese language are standard Mandarin (spoken in the northern, central and western parts of China); and Cantonese or Yue (mostly spoken in the southeastern part of the country, and also by a large number of Chinese expatriates worldwide). Mandarin is also referred to as Standard Chinese, and this dialect is spoken by 71.5 percent of the population. It is the official state language of China, Taiwan and one of the official languages of Singapore.

There are also two distinct versions of written Chinese. In the mid-twentieth century, trying to increase the literacy level, the People’s Republic of China began a process of simplifying written Chinese. As a result, two versions of written Chinese appeared: Traditional and Simplified. Although it might sound confusing, it is fairly straightforward to decide which form of the language to use based on where your target markets are located. Simplified Chinese is predominantly used in Mainland China, Malaysia and Singapore, whereas Traditional Chinese is primarily used in Taiwan and Hong Kong.