With 1.3 billion native speakers, Chinese is the most spoken language in the world. Interestingly, it is also considered the most difficult language to learn. Mandarin alone has more than 80,000 characters, making Chinese translation particularly difficult.

Here are some of the challenges linguists face when translating Chinese.

Several dialects are part of the language

Mandarin is the official language of China, but it is only one of several distinct Chinese dialects. The four main languages are Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese (Cantonese) and Min. In Mandarin, there are four tones that determine the pronunciation of a word, so a word can have four meanings. For example, the word ma can mean mother, scold, rude or horse, depending on how the word is pronounced.

Since the dialect used will affect the choice and meaning of words, translators must thoroughly understand which dialect is needed for Chinese translation.

Use idioms

As a language rooted in traditional culture, Chinese is rich in idiom usage. Known as an idiom, Chinese idioms are composed of four characters. Idioms are mainly derived from ancient literature, in which a story, myth, or historical fact can be explained in an effective and short way. More than 5,000 official idioms are deeply rooted in the language, and the cultural context in which translators understand and convey them in their translations is crucial.

Know how to construct a sentence

In Chinese, there are two sentence structures; They are simple and complex sentences. Although a simple sentence structure may seem simple, with a subject, predicate and object, it differs from English in many ways. In Chinese, for example, predicates are not always verbs, as they are in English. In addition, Chinese complex sentences consist of groups of simple sentences. Therefore, translators need to have a thorough understanding of Chinese sentence patterns in order to accurately transfer concepts to another language.

Master complex grammatical systems

Perhaps one of the most challenging aspects of Chinese for translation is the difference in grammatical systems compared to other languages, such as English. For example, words don’t have singular or plural forms; There’s only one word for both. Another grammatical rule is that Chinese sentences focus on the topic, which means stating the topic of the sentence first.

In addition, verbs do not change to express tenses.

Therefore, the meaning of words must be worked out by considering the context in which they are stated. Given the challenges of Chinese translation, working with a language translation agency that specializes in Chinese is the best way to ensure that your translation is accurate and takes into account all the cultural nuances of the language.