Translating in to Chinese

A best practise paper by Vincent Liu

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Variants of Chinese

 

This article introduces the family of languages that are spoken and written by Chinese people in and outside China. You may find information about their origin, history and characteristics, as well as useful tips on translation and localization of Chinese.

Chinese Characters

Some European and American people still find Chinese a bit of foreign, although there are lots of books and papers about the language. This is partly due to the complicated Chinese characters. Unlike most Latin languages, the Chinese characters indicate meaning, and they evolved from ancient hieroglyphs. The following are some examples from omniglot.com.

 

 

The majority of Chinese characters are composed of phonetic and semantic components. For example, the character  (mother) has two components. The left part  indicates that this is a woman, while the right part  tell you how to read it (Pinyin: mā).

 

The oracle bone script (14th -11th centuries BC) is the one of oldest well-developed writing system. In the history of 3 thousands years, the Chinese people developed various writing styles, like seal, clerical, cursive, semi-cursive, regular scripts. The following graphic shows the same character 書 (writing) in different writing styles.

 

Seal script	Clerical script	Cursive	Semi-cursive script	Regular script

 

The regular script is used in most printed publications, while the semi-cursive script is the most popular hand-writing style.

Classical Chinese and Vernacular Chinese

The classical Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese, which was used by the officials and literati in ancient China. Until the beginning of 20^th century, the classical Chinese was used in almost all formal correspondence. This style is extremely concise and compact, and it is quite different from the spoken language. Only a little educated people understood the classical Chinese.

 

In Ming (1368 to 1644) and Qing Dynasty (1644 to 1912), people started using the spoken Chinese language in literature works. This style is called vernacular Chinese, which is a written style modeled after the spoken language. In 1920s, the vernacular Chinese were promoted by many progressive scholars and intellectuals. Since then, it has gained wide-spread popularity and become the Standard Written Chinese.

Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese

We are referring to the vernacular Chinese written in traditional characters, when talking about traditional Chinese. As the name indicates, simplified Chinese means the vernacular Chinese using simplified characters, which are formed by reducing the number of strokes. For example:

 

書 → 书

 

The character simplification first took place in 1930s and 1940s, with the aim to boost literacy in China. In mainland China, the current set of characters is mostly the result of the first round of official character simplifications in 1956. The existing list of simplified Chinese characters was issued in 1986. But traditional Chinese is still in use in some ceremonies, cultural events, decorations and publications on ancient literature. Xinhua News Agency reports that China will soon issue a modified list of simplified Chinese characters in an effort to further standardize a language used by billions around the world (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-04/09/content_11157349.htm).

 

In the mean time, Singapore and Malaysia also carried out some simplification initiatives. The resulting set of characters is largely identical to that used in mainland China.

 

You may find some interesting articles at the websites like Languages of China and Chinese-Tools.com.

 

Hong Kong and Taiwan

Simplified Chinese is the official language in People's Republic of China, while traditional Chinese is officially used in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

 

In Hong Kong, the dominant spoken dialect is Cantonese, which originates in Guangdong province in southern China. Due to over 100 years' British rule and the city's important position in international trade and finance, there are a large number of loanwords. Over the years, Hong Kong Cantonese has also absorbed foreign vocabularies and developed a large set of Hong Kong-specific vocabularies.

 

It's said that 70% of Taiwan people speak Taiwanese Min Nan, which is a variant of that dialect in southern part of Fujian province and neighboring areas. Another popular spoken language is Hoklo. Sometimes, it may be difficult to find appropriate characters for Min Nan vocabularies, because Min Nan is originated in southern China without much influence from the dialect in northern China. Taiwanese Min Nan also borrows lots of words from Japanese and local Formosan languages.

 

Translating Chinese

The Chinese language is spoken in Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Macau, the Philippines, Australia, Indonesia, Mauritius, Peru, Canada, the United States of America, and other regions with Chinese communities. There are over 1 billion Chinese speakers around the world. The vocabularies vary a lot, depending on their mother tongue – Mandarin, Hong Kong Cantonese, and Taiwanese Min Nan etc.

 

The publications written in both traditional and simplified Chinese are intelligible to most Chinese speakers, although it is very difficult to understand varying dialect. I was born and brought up in mainland China. I'm able to reach articles written in traditional Chinese. However, I can hardly understand a word, when listening to spoken Cantonese and Min Nan.

 

In order to produce high-quality translation, we need to identify the style of Chinese and find the right people, not only traditional Chinese vs. simplified Chinese, but also Hong Kong style or Taiwan style. As a rule of thumb, it's always advisable to work with native speakers. We also need to be careful with the translator's educational and professional background, when talking about native speakers. It's unlikely that a translator who goes to USA at the age of 7 could produce beautiful translation to the eyes of Chinese clients.

Machine Translation vs. Human Translation: Pay Less, Get Less

http://transpanish.biz/translation_blog/machine-translation-vs-human-translation-pay-less-get-less/

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Machine Translation vs. Human Translation: Pay Less, Get Less

13Feb08

In the province of Buenos Aires they exist around 150 helmets of stay with lodging capacity. Of modest to luxurious, all offer varied alternative for all the tastes and budgets. It is possible to be enjoyed an only day of field or one more estadía prolonged.

-Babel Fish machine translation of text from ArgentinaTuristica.com

While you might get the gist of this machine-translated excerpt, the resulting text grates on your ears like fingers down a chalkboard. Using online machine translators such as Babel Fish will give you a rough idea of the foreign-language text, but will not render a translation useful for any other purpose.

Google's translation site renders a slightly more comprehensible excerpt of the same original text:

In the province of Buenos Aires there are about 150 helmets stay with accommodation capacity. From modest to luxurious, all offer alternatives for all tastes and budgets. You can only enjoy a picnic or a longer.

These examples show that translation is not simply transference of words from source text to target text. Rather, effective and accurate translations require a human who understands the context of the source text as well as the nuances of both languages.

Why Human Translations are Better than Machine Translations

The limitations of the most popular online translation tools are apparent from the excerpts above, but there are more points to consider:

• Only humans can understand and effectively translate the cultural components of source text to target text.

• While machine translators can quickly produce target text from inputting source text, the machine does not recognize nor translate idioms, slang, or terms that do not appear in the machine's memory.

• Machine translations are often literal, or word-for-word translations, hence the errors and strange language that often appear.

• Human translators can manipulate language in such a way that they mimic the style and purpose of the source text. For example, if the source text is an upbeat promotional piece, a human can reproduce that to create effective materials in the target language.

Machine translations will always be useful in giving the reader a general idea of what the source text says, but can never replace the human element in translation. For example, if you are looking for an article in a foreign-language newspaper for your business, you can at least get a sense of the purpose of that article from Babel Fish. But once you decide what pieces would be useful for speakers of the target language, only a human translator can render a translation suitable for public consumption.

 

Ranking of Top 30 Language Services Companies

Ranking of Top 30 Language Services Companies

by Renato S. Beninatto and Nataly Kelly May 2009

 

Topic
Common Sense Advisory has published an annual list of the largest language service providers (LSPs) since 2005. Increased market visibility and transparency have led us to increase the number of vendors we cover in this year's report.
Industry Experiences Continued Growth, Slight Slowdown in 2008   The revenue data reveals that 2008 was a strong year for many suppliers in the language services industry. Among the Top 25 players that appeared in our 2007 ranking, the average year-over-year growth rate was 19.7 percent, a slight decrease from the previous year, in which the average was 26.68 percent. The change relates in part to revenue from a large-scale military linguist contract that shifted from L-3 Communications to Global Linguist Solutions, the new number one company in our ranking. Excluding L-3's 42 percent decrease in revenue, the average is 22.3 percent, closer to the previous year's numbers. Taking into account the somewhat less aggressive growth reported by LSPs in 2008 compared with 2007, we adjusted our market size projections (see Table 1). We predict that the market will reach US$22.5 billion by 2012, slightly less than our prior estimate of US$24 billion. That growth equates to a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.76 percent over the next five years.   Region Market Share 2009 US$  M 2010 US$ M 2011 US$ M 2012 US$ M 2013 US$ M Europe 43% 6,468 7,331 8,409 9,703 10,781 U.S. 40% 6,074 6,884 7,896 9,111 10,123 Asia 12% 1,735 1,965 2,255 2,601 2,891 ROW 5% 722 818 939 1,083 1,203 Growth Totals   100% 15,000 17,000 19,500 22,500 25,000 Table 1: Projected Language Services Revenues for 2009-2013 in U.S. Millions of Dollars Source: Common Sense Advisory, Inc.           How We Ranked the Companies   As always, Common Sense Advisory's ranking includes companies or divisions of companies that make most of their revenue by providing language services, be it in written or verbal form, on paper, over the web, in person, via video, inside software applications – anywhere around the globe. The list includes both public and private companies. However, not many publicly traded companies work in the language arena, so this ranking always involves a lot more legwork than producing a similar register for the automotive or telecommunications industries. §                             Public companies. About a third of the companies in our ranking are public. For most of these firms, we have the luxury of reviewing annual reports and official filings. However, some of these are large corporations with specialized business units for which they do not break out numbers. In those cases, we considered only the revenue from the unit providing language services. Getting these numbers can be a challenge. §                             Privately-held companies. These firms consume most of our time, because we approach 100-plus candidate companies to come up with our list of 30. We call their executives to find out what they earned in the preceding year, probe for the magic number, and then ask them for financial statements to confirm their data. Private firms in some countries are not obligated to release any data, so we can only check their financials to the extent that they allow us. Each year, new companies qualify for a spot in our ranking. Video interpreting provider Purple Communications catapulted onto this year's list due to the merger of several companies. Newcomers Crestec, (Japan), CBG Konsult (Sweden), SEPROTEC (Spain), and Telelingua (Belgium) also debut on this year's table. Various suppliers in the government and military contracting space – such as Allworld Language Consultants, CACI, CALNET, McNeil Technologies, Mission Essential Personnel, MPRI, SM Consulting, TCS Translations, and TRW – have also received language services contracts large enough for them to be contenders for the ranking. However, not all companies are forthcoming about the revenue derived from language services, making it difficult to uncover exact numbers.           The Top 30 List Remains Global in Nature   Our list for 2008 includes suppliers from 15 countries across the globe: the U.S. (9), U.K. (4), Belgium (2), Japan (2), Sweden (2), Switzerland (2) and China, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, and Spain (one each). While American and British companies still dominate the rankings, Asia continues to expand its share of dominant players with a total of three LSPs from China and Japan. Figure 1: Geographic Distribution Top 30 Language Services Providers in Total Revenues Earned in U.S. Dollars Source: Common Sense Advisory, Inc. Given that the companies on our Top 30 list report revenue in an array of currencies, we convert them into a baseline unit – the U.S. dollar – to allow for a direct comparison. For non-U.S. companies outside the United States, we divide revenue in local currency by the average exchange rate for the 365 days of the firm's fiscal year. Thus, the average exchange rate for twelfth-ranked RWS Holdings was US$1.9731 per pound sterling (GBP) for the fiscal year ended on 30 September 2008. Fourth-ranked SDL, reporting its results on a calendar year, is affected by the devaluation of the pound against the dollar for the balance of 2008, with the pound quoted at US$1.8551.           Three Tiers of Language Services Suppliers Comprise the Top 30   The market for translation, localization, and interpreting services is organized into three major tiers (see Table 2). The six highest-ranked companies on the list report annual revenue in excess of US$200 million. The second tier includes seven companies in the US$106-166 million range. The bottom half of the list includes companies that report US$20-60 million in revenue. Rank Company HQ Country Revenue in US$M Employees Offices Status 1 Global Linguist Solutions, LLC* US  691.00 6500 6 Private 2 Lionbridge Technologies US  461.00 4500 40 Public 3 L-3 Communications (LOTS) US  434.59 1049 1 Public 4 SDL International UK  294.54 1981 55 Public 5 Language Line Holdings US  212.64 4719 7 Private 6 Transperfect / Translations.com US  204.77 1115 56 Private 7 STAR Group* CH  164.83 910 42 Private 8 SDI Media Group US  140.00 800 1 Private 9 Purple Communications, Inc. US  130.08 577 5 Public 10 euroscript international S.A. LU  129.03 1267 32 Private 11 Xerox Global Services* UK  113.74 506 9 Public 12 RWS Holdings PLC UK  106.76 451 12 Public 13 CLS Communication CH  57.62 360 14 Private 14 Manpower Business Solutions NL  55.91 150 7 Private 15 Semantix A/B SE  53.26 160 10 Private 16 Logos Group IT  50.22 135 17 Private 17 thebigword Group UK  49.90 270 9 Private 18 Welocalize, Inc. US  49.86 402 12 Private 19 AAC Global Corporation FI  48.99 304 14 Public 20 Moravia Worldwide CZ  42.80 446 12 Private 21 Honyaku Center Inc. JP  42.68 193 7 Public 22 Jonckers Translation & Engineering s.a. BE  37.21 280 13 Private 23 hiSoft Technology International Ltd. ZH 35.10 926 16 Private 24 HP ACG FR  30.06 150 9 Public 25 Merrill-Brink International US 30.02 100 4 Private 26 Crestec, Inc. JP 28.56 511 22 Private 27 CBG Konsult AB SE  28.54 180 9 Private 28 VistaTEC Ltd. IR  27.23 102 5 Private 29 Telelingua Group BE  21.98 135 5 Private 30 SEPROTEC Translations ES  20.12 358 15 Private Table 2: Top 30 Language Service Providers Worldwide for 2008 (* estimated) Source: Cited Companies and Common Sense Advisory, Inc.             The Market for Language Services Remains Fragmented   In previous research, we've noted how little of the overall language revenue is earned by the largest language service providers. This trend remained consistent in 2008, with the top 30 booking just 26.6 percent of the market total (see Figure 2).  Figure 2: Top 30 Aggregate Revenue for 2008 as a Percentage of Total Language Services Market Size in U.S. Dollars Source: Common Sense Advisory, Inc. Finally, to determine whether this fragmentation is getting worse or consolidation increasing too much, we apply the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) to gauge industry concentration and competition in the marketplace. The HHI calculates a weighted average market share (which is represented by the sum of the squares of the market shares of each individual firm). The scores range from 0 to 10,000. Low numbers indicate a very large amount of very small firms, while a large number correlates to a single, monopolistic producer. The language services industry has an extremely low HHI concentration. Although the consolidation has increased slightly since last year, it remains on the lower end of the HHI scale. In fact, even if the 10 biggest companies in the industry merged to form a US$3 billion company, it is unlikely that it would be challenged by anti-trust authorities in the United States.           Most Large Providers Exceed Ten Percent Revenue Growth   Acquisitions continued to fuel the growth of companies like AAC Global, SDL, and Welocalize. However, most companies report significant organic growth from the increased demand for their language services. L-3's language services division reported negative growth due to the loss of a contract to provide linguist support in combat zones for the United States military. The number for LCJ EEIG (now Jonckers) shrank after the merger of three member companies due to the fact that it no longer reports revenue for Logoscript. Company Revenue Growth (Reduction) from 2007 to 2008 hiSoft Technology International Ltd. 59.5% AAC Global Group 54.7% thebigword Group 51.1% Welocalize, Inc. 48.0% Manpower Business Solutions 44.0% Transperfect / Translations.com 31.3% Hewlett-Packard ACG 30.7% SDL International 25.3% VistaTEC 24.9% Semantix 21.8% Honyaku Centre 17.6% RWS Group 17.4% CLS Communication 17.1% SDI Media Group 16.9% Language Line Holdings 16.1% Xerox Global Services 15.0% Moravia Worldwide 12.0% Logos Group 8.0% euroscript International S.A. 6.7% Amesto Translation Holding A/S 3.8% Lionbridge Technologies 2.0% STAR Group 1.9% Jonckers Translation & Engineering s.a. (2.2%) L-3 Communications Linguist Operations & Technical Support Division (42.3%) Table 3: Revenue Growth (Reduction) by Company from 2007 to 2008 Source: Common Sense Advisory, Inc.             The Biggest LSPs Trail in Revenue per Employee   Revenue per employee is a measure of how efficiently a particular company is using its workers. In general, rising revenue per employee shows that the company is using its workers more efficiently. Some of the companies with the most employees – such as Global Linguist Solutions, Language Line, and Lionbridge – are among the least efficient (see Table 4). L-3 Communications, on the other hand, made reductions to its workforce, boosting its efficiency to claim the top spot. The top providers showed a marked improvement in average efficiency this year (US$191,897.71) compared to the previous year (US$162,914.48). Ranking by Revenue per Employee Ranking by Number of Employees Company Number of Employees Revenue by Employee in USD 1 7 L-3 Communications (LOTS) 1049  414,289.80 2 25 Manpower Business Solutions 150  372,729.33 3 27 Logos Group 135  371,966.44 4 24 Semantix A/B 160  332,903.13 5 30 Merrill-Brink 100  300,200.00 6 12 Crestec, Inc. 511  270,878.67 7 29 VistaTEC Ltd. 102  266,911.76 8 14 RWS Holdings PLC 451  236,728.25 9 11 Purple Communications, Inc. 577  225,443.67 10 13 Xerox Global Services 506  224,772.73 11 22 Honyaku Center Inc. 193  221,139.90 12 26 HP ACG 150  200,400.00 13 21 thebigword Group 270  184,822.93 14 6 Transperfect / Translations.com 1115  183,650.22 15 9 STAR Group 910  181,131.56 16 10 SDI Media Group 800  175,000.00 17 28 Telelingua Group 135  162,845.66 18 19 AAC Global Corporation 304  161,165.43 19 17 CLS Communication 360  160,061.33 20 23 CBG Konsult AB 180  158,553.33 21 4 SDL International 1981  148,684.25 22 20 Jonckers Translation & Engineering s.a. 280  132,889.92 23 16 Welocalize, Inc. 402  124,029.85 24 1 Global Linguist Solutions, LLC 6500  106,307.69 25 3 Lionbridge Technologies 4500  102,444.44 26 5 euroscript international S.A. 1267  101,841.37 27 15 Moravia Worldwide 446  95,964.13 28 18 SEPROTEC Translations 358  56,209.41 29 2 Language Line Holdings 4719  45,061.24 30 8 hiSoft Technology International Ltd. 926  37,904.97 Average of Top 30 Companies 984.5 191,897.71 Table 4: Top 30 Language Services Companies Ranked by Revenue per Employee Source: Common Sense Advisory, Inc.

 

	Ranking of Top 30 Language Services Companies
	By Renato S. Beninatto and Nataly Kelly May 2009 ISBN: pending Copyright © 2009 by Common Sense Advisory, Inc. Lowell,  Massachusetts,  United States of America. Published by: Common Sense Advisory, Inc. 100 Merrimack Street Suite 301 Lowell, MA 01852-1708  USA +1.978.275.0500 info@commonsenseadvisory.com www.commonsenseadvisory.com No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the Publisher. Permission requests should be addressed to the Permissions Department, Common Sense Advisory, Inc., 100 Merrimack Street, Suite 301, Lowell, MA 01852-1708, +1.978.275.0500, E-Mail: info@commonsenseadvisory.com. See www.commonsenseadvisory.com/others/citation_policy.php for usage guidelines. Trademarks: Common Sense Advisory, Global Watchtower, Global DataSet, DataPoint, Globa Vista, Quick Take, and Technical Take are trademarks of Common Sense Advisory, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Information is based on the best available resources at the time of analysis. Opinions reflect the best judgment of Common Sense Advisory's analysts at the time, and are subject to change.