3 ms·

> Simplified and traditional characters are in perfect correspondence right? No, there is no perfect correspondence between simplified and traditional Chinese.

by hker 6y ago

> Simplified and traditional characters are in perfect correspondence right? No, there is no perfect correspondence between simplified and traditional Chinese. The simplified Chinese collapses important characters such as “after” and “back”, often causing confusion (you can read more here [1]). [1]: http://pages.ucsd.edu/~dkjordan/chin/SimplifiedCharacters.html http://pages.ucsd.edu/~dkjordan/chin/SimplifiedCharacters.ht...

dheera 6y ago
Not only that, but there are a couple of characters that are collapsed in traditional but split out in simplified: "乾" in Simplified refers to only one of the 8 trigrams, as is used in the word "乾坤" "乾" in Traditional can mean either the above OR the Simplified "干" (dry) "干" also exists in Traditional but only means "stem" not "dry" However, GP's point about translating on the fly is possible. You don't need a very advanced algorithm to translate simplified<->traditional almost perfectly. Unless you're translating poetry they can almost always be disambiguated by the nearby characters very well. Note though that there are lots of actual word differences in mainland Mandarin and Taiwanese Mandarin. It's not difficult for one to read the other and maybe occasionally asking a question or two but it's nice for every human to have materials available in their native dialect and vocabulary. Much like you probably appreciate that your system offers both UK English and US English and doesn't force you to use the "other" one from what you're used to.
- im3w1l 6y ago
  As a non-native English speaker, I actually hate that there is a split.
  - dheera 6y ago
    You should check out Singaporean English or "Singlish", which uses a lot of Chinese grammar and Hokkien and Malay vocabulary in English sentences. It's a wonderfully efficient dialect taking the best from all of these languages.
    - im3w1l 6y ago
      I heard it spoken when I was in Singapore. It was pretty fun, but I'm glad it isn't given equal status, and that we didn't have to learn any in school.

by hker 6y ago

dheera 6y ago

Not only that, but there are a couple of characters that are collapsed in traditional but split out in simplified: "乾" in Simplified refers to only one of the 8 trigrams, as is used in the word "乾坤" "乾" in Traditional can mean either the above OR the Simplified "干" (dry) "干" also exists in Traditional but only means "stem" not "dry" However, GP's point about translating on the fly is possible. You don't need a very advanced algorithm to translate simplified<->traditional almost perfectly. Unless you're translating poetry they can almost always be disambiguated by the nearby characters very well. Note though that there are lots of actual word differences in mainland Mandarin and Taiwanese Mandarin. It's not difficult for one to read the other and maybe occasionally asking a question or two but it's nice for every human to have materials available in their native dialect and vocabulary. Much like you probably appreciate that your system offers both UK English and US English and doesn't force you to use the "other" one from what you're used to.

im3w1l 6y ago
As a non-native English speaker, I actually hate that there is a split.
- dheera 6y ago
  You should check out Singaporean English or "Singlish", which uses a lot of Chinese grammar and Hokkien and Malay vocabulary in English sentences. It's a wonderfully efficient dialect taking the best from all of these languages.
  - im3w1l 6y ago
    I heard it spoken when I was in Singapore. It was pretty fun, but I'm glad it isn't given equal status, and that we didn't have to learn any in school.