While Traditional uses a single character to express a word or part of a word, Simplified may represent multiple words or concepts using the same character.įor example, the character 发 in Simplified Chinese equates to either 髮 (hair) or 發 (become/develop) in Traditional Chinese. When Simplified Chinese was developed, some Traditional characters were merged, so the new language has fewer commonly used characters. Simplified Chinese characters have fewer strokes than their traditional counterparts, and therefore have simpler, less ornate structures. Key Differences Between Simplified and Traditional Character Structure Throughout the 50’s and 60’s, Simplified Chinese was adopted in mainland China, Malaysia, and Singapore, while the people of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau continue to use the Traditional writing system. Approximately 2,000 traditional characters were modified, primarily by reducing the number of strokes and/or merging the characters. Believing the steep learning curve of Traditional Chinese characters to be a factor, the government launched a campaign to promote literacy and education by simplifying the writing system. When the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, the literacy rate in China was around 20%. As its name suggests, Simplified Chinese consists of simplified versions of the traditional Chinese characters. Traditional Chinese preserves the orthodox characters that have been used for thousands of years. Today, there are two different written forms of Chinese: Traditional and Simplified. While the Latin alphabet has a core of 26 letters that can form an entire vocabulary, Chinese consists of tens of thousands of characters (or logograms) that are used to write single- and multiple-character words. The Written Language - Simplified and Traditional Chinese A question we often hear is: “What’s the difference between Simplified and Traditional Chinese?” In this article, we examine the various forms of the language, so you can plan an informed translation strategy. One quarter of the global population speaks some form of Chinese, and this includes 800 million active internet users-making the language hugely relevant to any organization that communicates globally.īecause Chinese is such an intricate and complex language, translation can be confusing to the uninitiated.

With 1.3 billion native speakers, Chinese holds the title of the world’s most widely spoken language.

What font style denotes ancient chinese