Hi everyone, I'm new on this forum but the company I work for has been posting now for a while on these forums and gotten great advice from the wonderful members!

I am in the process of translating my site. My first transalation project is to Chinese and since I'm doing this myself I need to know if I should translate to Simplified or Traditional Chinese or both.

Thank you to anyone who can help me out with this one!!

hi

i am italian working in china for 4 years already
as per my experience you can first translate in SIMPLIFIED chinese as people who read traditional chinese are only people from Hong kong and taiwan and systems that supports traditional chinese also support simplified chinese but not always viceversa.

this is my suggestion.

regards
APACHE

Thank you very much for your suggestion, APACHE. I've been holding off on my translation project for a while now. I will take your advice and get started finally!
A little off topic but I am very interested in speaking and exchanging ideas with Europeans, just to talk politics and way of life and such. I will be relocating to Barcelona late this year and am looking forward to making new Europeans friends!
Thank you again

hello Christina

where are you located now?

APACHE

Originally posted by apachedave

as per my experience you can first translate in SIMPLIFIED chinese
as people who read traditional chinese are only people from Hong kong and taiwan

systems that supports traditional chinese also support simplified chinese but not always viceversa.




I would like to clarify this... if we set to traditional chinese, we cover both traditional and simplified chinese systems. Or we need to do both.

Originally posted by apachedave
hello Christina

where are you located now?

APACHE

South Beach :D

erm... damb small country so much languages... even russian has 1 language...

Originally posted by andreys
erm... damb small country so much languages... even russian has 1 language...

It seems they may be different languages or different dialects of one language...as is the case with many arabic languages. It is a bit confusing. When I visited Spain last year, I thought I would be okay since I spoke spanish/castellano (very similar) but when I arrived in Barcelona, the most spoke language (including all street signs and such) was Catalan, which is a mix between french and latin.
I find it all to be very interesting! :D

Christina,

Actually, you will only need to translate one version and use tools NJStar to convert to Simplified version. Simple as that.

Originally posted by hostingasia
Christina,

Actually, you will only need to translate one version and use tools NJStar to convert to Simplified version. Simple as that.

NJStar seems to be an excellent resource and I will give it a try. Thank you very much for your time and advice, hostingasia :)

Originally posted by bliksembug
NJStar seems to be an excellent resource and I will give it a try. Thank you very much for your time and advice, hostingasia :)


NJSTAR has a lot of bugs as per my experience.
So better be careful.
Go for the simplified chinese and you will always win.

regards

APACHE

Originally posted by apachedave
NJSTAR has a lot of bugs as per my experience.
So better be careful.
Go for the simplified chinese and you will always win.

regards

APACHE

Thank you again for your time APACHE. Your suggestions are much appreciated ;)

erm... damb small country so much languages... even russian has 1 language...
Long historical reasons why there are two versions of written mandarin in usage. not planning to go into it...



Go for the simplified chinese and you will always win. APACHE

Actually, it really depends on who are your target audience.

Simplifed = China, HK, Singapore, Malaysia, etc.
Traditional = mainly Taiwan now thought some older generation of S.E.asian still understand them.

Going with just one version might just pissed some of your site visitors off due to any perceived discrimation. :p

Also, if you are planning to sell stuff with those languages, i suggest you hire a proof-reader to go thru the text after conversion from any language-translation. They have a way of messing up the language. Take my word for it. :stickout:

Originally posted by jummer
[B]
Long historical reasons why there are two versions of written mandarin in usage. not planning to go into it...



[B]

Actually, it really depends on who are your target audience.

Simplifed = China, HK, Singapore, Malaysia, etc.
Traditional = mainly Taiwan now thought some older generation of S.E.asian still understand them.



HK, they use TRADITIONAL CHINESE not simplified.
APACHE

Originally posted by jummer



Actually, it really depends on who are your target audience.

Simplifed = China, HK, Singapore, Malaysia, etc.
Traditional = mainly Taiwan now thought some older generation of S.E.asian still understand them.

Going with just one version might just pissed some of your site visitors off due to any perceived discrimation. :p

Also, if you are planning to sell stuff with those languages, i suggest you hire a proof-reader to go thru the text after conversion from any language-translation. They have a way of messing up the language. Take my word for it. :stickout:

Hi jummer, thank you for the information and the tips. I've decided, in the meantime, to translate to both simplified and traditional. I think it may be the more respectful thing to do.
I appreciate you taking the time :) Anyway, I've been so busy that I haven't had the chance to even start yet. I'll be sure to post on this thread about my progress and method so others can learn also. Thank you again ;)

traditional would be best in my opinion!

Thank you much premium!
I think I'm going to translate into both traditional and simplified since I am getting so many differing opinions. It seems that both traditional and simplified play a great deal into chinese language. I had always thought it may be something like spanish. Something like the difference between latin america and spain (castellano, not catalan or the like) which are different but the same. However, I guess I was wrong and it's more of a spanish vs portugese difference, which is pretty big, IMHO.
Anyway, thank you again for taking the time to help me out!

It really doesn't matter, only some terms are different.

Bus is BaShi in Cantonese (sometimes in Traditional), but GongGongQiChe in Simplified Chinese (mainly in Mainland).

The difference is not significant.

Again, you can translate to either one and then use NJStar for convertion, no problem at all.