4 ms·

140 characters go a lot farther in Hanzi.

by jjs 17y ago

tlrobinson 17y ago
What's an estimate of the equivalent of 140 Hanzi characters in, say, English?
- patio11 17y ago
  美利坚合众国（英文：USA ），简稱美國，旧称花旗國，是由50个州和一个聯邦地區组成的聯邦立宪制共和国。美国本土位於北美洲中部，东濒大西洋，西滨太平洋，北靠加拿大，南接墨西哥及墨西哥湾；首都华盛顿哥伦比亚特区与除夏威夷州和阿拉斯加州之外的48个州都位于美國本土。 This is half of the first paragraph of the simplified Chinese entry for the United States in Wikipedia. I cheated a bit to bring it under length: the 英文 portion actually spelled out United States of America. It clocks in at about 138 characters. A rough translation from someone who is not literate in Chinese just to show you the information density: --- The United States of America (English: USA), referred to commonly as the United States, formerly known as the United States [editor's note: anachronistic Chinese 花旗國 rather than 美國], consist of 50 states and one federal district, forming a constitutionally established federal republic. The United States is located in the center of North America, bounded on the east by the Atlantic Ocean and in the west by the Pacific Ocean, on the north by Canada and the South by Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico. The capital is Washington, DC. It is comprised of Hawaii, Alaska, and the 48 contiguous states. --- [Edit: I was curious so I checked in Japanese, too, to substantiate my feeling that it would be at the midpoint between Chinese and English. Yep. アメリカ合衆国（アメリカがっしゅうこく、英：United States of America）、通称アメリカまた合衆国（合州国）、米国（べいこく）は、北アメリカ大陸および北太平洋に位置する連邦共和国。イギリスの北米植民地が1776年7月4日に独立を宣言して成立した国家である。 --- The United States of America (insert pronunciation guide in Japanese here, English: United States of America), usually referred to as America, the United States (the US), or another way to say the US in Japanese is a federal republic located on the North American continent and in the north Pacific Ocean. The United States of America was founded a nation when the North American colonies declared their independence from England on July 4th, 1776.] --- And, for the comparison to English, here is what fits in a Tweet: The United States of America (commonly referred to as the United States, the U.S., the USA, or America) is a federal constitutional republic There wasn't enough space for the period.
  - tr4nslator 17y ago
    Or for a more quantitative approach, with 1.7 Chinese characters per English word[1] and an average English word length at 5.1 letters[2], then somewhere around 420 characters. (But of course, it really depends on the nature of the text.) [1] http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002379.html http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002379.h... [2] http://blogamundo.net/lab/wordlengths/ http://blogamundo.net/lab/wordlengths/
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    In other words, if your characters contain more information your words get shorter, that seems to be a pretty logical consequence. English clocks in at about 5 bits per character, so 140 characters is about 700 bits of data. The unicode representation of the Chinese text above is 378 bytes, and it can be compressed only a little bit (about 20%). 'Number of characters' is not a very good way to measure information density I think, especially not when 'character' is something that is variable length.
silencio 17y ago
140 characters in Korean also go a long way. My Korean-speaking (and Chinese, for that matter) Twitter followers manage to write the English equivalent of entire paragraphs in 140 characters (and unfortunately, some of them like to rant in multiple tweets in a row instead of going to a blog to do so). So while I see some tweets in Korean that are similar to ones in English where the message is short and to the point, they're side by side with those paragraph-like tweets that break how I read twitter because they're addressing something more deeply than would be possible in one tweet in English. I can only speculate this 140-character difference both ways also causes differences in use with other languages.
gojomo 17y ago
Does Twitter still offer 140 characters in Hanzi? ('How Stuff Works' says SMS only offers 70 characters in Hanzi, rather than 160... so I suspect the Twitter limit might be similarly truncated.)

140 characters go a lot farther in Hanzi.

by jjs 17y ago

140 characters go a lot farther in Hanzi.

tlrobinson 17y ago

What's an estimate of the equivalent of 140 Hanzi characters in, say, English?

patio11 17y ago
美利坚合众国（英文：USA ），简稱美國，旧称花旗國，是由50个州和一个聯邦地區组成的聯邦立宪制共和国。美国本土位於北美洲中部，东濒大西洋，西滨太平洋，北靠加拿大，南接墨西哥及墨西哥湾；首都华盛顿哥伦比亚特区与除夏威夷州和阿拉斯加州之外的48个州都位于美國本土。 This is half of the first paragraph of the simplified Chinese entry for the United States in Wikipedia. I cheated a bit to bring it under length: the 英文 portion actually spelled out United States of America. It clocks in at about 138 characters. A rough translation from someone who is not literate in Chinese just to show you the information density: --- The United States of America (English: USA), referred to commonly as the United States, formerly known as the United States [editor's note: anachronistic Chinese 花旗國 rather than 美國], consist of 50 states and one federal district, forming a constitutionally established federal republic. The United States is located in the center of North America, bounded on the east by the Atlantic Ocean and in the west by the Pacific Ocean, on the north by Canada and the South by Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico. The capital is Washington, DC. It is comprised of Hawaii, Alaska, and the 48 contiguous states. --- [Edit: I was curious so I checked in Japanese, too, to substantiate my feeling that it would be at the midpoint between Chinese and English. Yep. アメリカ合衆国（アメリカがっしゅうこく、英：United States of America）、通称アメリカまた合衆国（合州国）、米国（べいこく）は、北アメリカ大陸および北太平洋に位置する連邦共和国。イギリスの北米植民地が1776年7月4日に独立を宣言して成立した国家である。 --- The United States of America (insert pronunciation guide in Japanese here, English: United States of America), usually referred to as America, the United States (the US), or another way to say the US in Japanese is a federal republic located on the North American continent and in the north Pacific Ocean. The United States of America was founded a nation when the North American colonies declared their independence from England on July 4th, 1776.] --- And, for the comparison to English, here is what fits in a Tweet: The United States of America (commonly referred to as the United States, the U.S., the USA, or America) is a federal constitutional republic There wasn't enough space for the period.
- tr4nslator 17y ago
  Or for a more quantitative approach, with 1.7 Chinese characters per English word[1] and an average English word length at 5.1 letters[2], then somewhere around 420 characters. (But of course, it really depends on the nature of the text.) [1] http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002379.html http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002379.h... [2] http://blogamundo.net/lab/wordlengths/ http://blogamundo.net/lab/wordlengths/
- jacquesm 17y ago
  In other words, if your characters contain more information your words get shorter, that seems to be a pretty logical consequence. English clocks in at about 5 bits per character, so 140 characters is about 700 bits of data. The unicode representation of the Chinese text above is 378 bytes, and it can be compressed only a little bit (about 20%). 'Number of characters' is not a very good way to measure information density I think, especially not when 'character' is something that is variable length.

silencio 17y ago

140 characters in Korean also go a long way. My Korean-speaking (and Chinese, for that matter) Twitter followers manage to write the English equivalent of entire paragraphs in 140 characters (and unfortunately, some of them like to rant in multiple tweets in a row instead of going to a blog to do so). So while I see some tweets in Korean that are similar to ones in English where the message is short and to the point, they're side by side with those paragraph-like tweets that break how I read twitter because they're addressing something more deeply than would be possible in one tweet in English. I can only speculate this 140-character difference both ways also causes differences in use with other languages.

gojomo 17y ago

Does Twitter still offer 140 characters in Hanzi? ('How Stuff Works' says SMS only offers 70 characters in Hanzi, rather than 160... so I suspect the Twitter limit might be similarly truncated.)