The word “Oriental” comes from the Latin “Orientalis” meaning “from the east”, and is used to indicate only a direction or orientation. In the 19th century, its use in English came to refer more to people and things from eastern regions of the world.
At some point, the term was also applied to East Asian peoples and cultures. If you watch an old Charlie Chan movie you might hear someone refer to the title character as an “Oriental gentleman.” Americans used to think it was nice to call Asians “Orientals.” However, Asians and Asian-Americans today find this term offensive and made the phrase won’t be used anymore.
But In the past, it could have referred to Near Eastern or Far Eastern languages.
Currently, the most well-known oriental languages are Chinese and Japanese. The profession of a Chinese and Japanese translator is also increasingly in demand, considering that these two languages are also increasingly being used in the international business world, as well as the proliferation of Japanese and Chinese companies.
Challenges in Chinese Translation
Chinese is one of the earliest known forms of writing. The first historical attempt to analyze the form and structure of written Chinese, which in thousands of years has undergone various transformations, dates back to 100 AD. In the 1950s and 1960s, the government of the People’s Republic of China formulated a standard to simplify the language, thus leading to two parallel systems named Simplified and Traditional Chinese.
The People’s Republic of China and Singapore currently use Simplified written Chinese, whereas Taiwan and other Chinese communities around the world use Traditional written Chinese. Overall, it has been estimated that about a quarter of the world’s population uses Chinese. All Chinese characters have been classified into 5 main categories:
- Pictogram
There are only a few hundred pictographic characters. Although it is a small number compared to the tens of thousands of characters in the Chinese language, these characters are still fascinating. pictographic characters are derived from ancient drawings of concrete objects used daily, even if the modern form has been simplified and standardized over time.
- Ideograms
Ideograms represent abstract ideas and concepts. For example, they can denote concepts such as “above” and “below”, or natural numbers such as “three” or “four”.
- Compound Ideograms
The meaning of these ideograms can be deduced from the combination of their constituent parts. For example, the ideogram that denotes the word “honest” comprises two characters: one that means “man” and the other that means “word”. A further example, the ideogram used to express the verb “sit” is formed by the character that denotes “man” positioned above the character that means “earth”.
- Phonetic Loan Character
Phonetic loan characters preserve the phonetic value of a homophonic character, without considering its meaning. Therefore, it’s almost always impossible to explain their etymology.
- Ideophonetic Compound
These compounds account for 90 percent of all Chinese characters. These characters combine the elements of two separate characters: including the meaning of one and the phonetics of the other. These ideophonetic compounds allow new symbols to be continuously created.
Chinese characters are composed of 8 fundamental (or radical) strokes, which form the basis for creating all complex characters. In the modern classification, 214 radical strokes are recognized and essential for collocating words in dictionaries of the Chinese language. Each character comprises one or more strokes arranged according to a specific sequence.
Currently, Chinese language translator services are increasingly needed in various circles. However, due to the difficult language structure, there are several; challenges for translators when translating Chinese into other languages. Someone who wants to learn Chinese must learn about the characters or the Chinese used, as well as learn grammatical and sentence structures, which of course are different from other languages such as English.
Advantages of Being a Chinese Translator
The same Chinese character, when combined with other characters, can have very different meanings and will lead easily to confusion. The addition or subtraction of a single character can lead a whole sentence to express a very different concept. Chinese translators who are also experts in your particular field of business are even harder to source. seatongue.com. As for some common challenges in translating to Chinese:
- The Chinese language has more than one version. The Chinese language has several different versions based on region, including Mandarin, Wu, Gan, Xiang, Min, Cantonese, Hakka, Jin, Hui, and Pinghua. Some of the seven varieties of Chinese are so different that even native speakers won’t understand one another.
- Written Chinese uses characters. In Chinese, the most basic unit is its characters, where each character represents one symbol with its meaning. Chinese doesn’t have an alphabet like English. Today, China has adopted a phonetic system using Latin letters to help children learn to write and speak but not widely used. Chinese has thousands of characters that create words and phrases where each character takes up one syllable.
- Formality is important but looks slightly different. Chinese does designate formality through place names and surnames, which are written differently. In writing surname, it must be placed first and the first name should be placed behind. This was caused by the belief among the Chinese that surnames are passed down from ancestors and are more important than the personal name.
- Chinese is a tonal language. In spoken Chinese, tones dramatically change the meaning of Chinese words and are just as complex to learn as tenses, agreements, or word order of grammatical structures of Latin languages.
- Chinese uses simpler grammatical structures. Chinese grammar is much more straightforward without tenses or plurality. Chinese nouns do not have plurals, and verbs have no changes in tense, voice, subjective, and others. Chinese words have only one unique form in use.
Although there are many challenges to being a Chinese translator, there are also benefits to it. These advantages include the job opportunities which will appear when someone decides to become a Chinese translator. This is because the demand for professional Chinese translation services has been increasing for years and makes experienced Chinese translators can expect to receive lucrative pay and be consistently employed.
Currently, a Chinese translator can receive an annual salary as high as US$89,000 and as low as US$23,000. All recent studies also predict that Chinese translation services will grow for at least another decade.
Challenges in Japanese Translation
Aside Chinese language, the other most known oriental language is the Japanese language. The Japanese language consists of Kanji characters, based on Chinese characters, and two syllabic alphabets called Kana, which date back to the 9th century AD. However, their linguistic forms and use were only established in the 20th century.
Although the two systems can be used separately in modern written Japanese, it is customary to use a combination of Kana and Kanji. Some people believe that this is required to minimize any ambiguity in written Japanese since the Japanese language largely comprises homophonic words.
In the syllabic nature of the Kana alphabets, the remote influence of the Indian script can be recognized, probably due to the spread of Buddhism from India to the Far East.
Written Japanese consists of three different graphic forms: Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana. Hiragana and Katakana are syllabic systems and can be used as Furigana, i.e. short annotations, similar to a Kanji character, which represents a meaning or pronunciation.
- Kanji
Around 2,000 Kanji characters are regarded as essential to current use, although the number of existing characters is significantly higher. Kanji symbols are used for simple elements in sentences such as word roots, stems, and base forms, whereas compound words are written using more than one Kanji symbol. Since Japanese and Chinese significantly differ in phonological terms, the Japanese use of Kanji characters entails the additional difficulty of dual reading for each symbol.
- Hiragana
With a more circular form, Hiragana is a syllabic alphabet comprising 46 characters and some diacritical symbols. Hiragana is used for grammatical morphemes (elements) of a sentence, such as auxiliary verbs and inflectional affixes. Hiragana is not usually used alone in Japanese, except in children’s books
- Katakana
Katakana, with a more angular shape than the two Kana alphabets, also originates from the cursive forms of Kanji and can be considered parallel to the Hiragana alphabet. Each Kana alphabet has different yet equivalent symbols for the same sounds. Katakana is generally used for foreign words and names, onomatopoeic expressions, and telegrams.
Japanese is the typical language and follows three character sets that are not related to any other language in the world. Thus, there are more challenges in Japanese translation and require attention to minute details to effectively translate the language. Several challenges in translating Japanese translation including:
- Complicated writing style (Kanji). Kanji have thousands of characters being regularly and officially used and making the inclusion of a native translator while handling the language becomes crucial.
- Challenges arising out of cultural aspects. It required context needs to be expressed correctly that meet the crucial Japanese culture and traditions.
- Reviving the essence of the actual text. In translating language, retaining the actual sense of the word without actually changing the meaning of the word is important. However, there are quite a few words in the Japanese language the direct translation of which is not possible. So it needs a professional translator to do the job.
- Grammar difference. The Japanese language uses two tenses (past and non-past) which is different from the English language which uses three tenses (past, present, and future).
- Non-expertise in translation. For a translation to be successful, the translator should have extensive knowledge of the languages involved to achieve the desired goal of an error-free translation. The precise translation is worked upon by an expert who keeps in mind all basic and complex aspects related to translation.
Advantages of Being a Japanese Translator
Despite all challenges in translating Japanese, there are also advantages in become a Japanese translator
- A job type for everyone. The job opportunities available to interpreters and translators are diverse and flexible. And, thanks to the internet, one doesn’t have to limit their professional world to the city, state, or country they live in.
- Learning is a part of the job. The deeper the cross-cultural understanding, the better the translator. A variety of international events, conferences, and courses are always available and will help to sharpen your skills while networking with other professionals.
- Rare and highly requested. Due to the high threshold of expertise Japanese translators working in every language pair must reach, they remain comparatively rare. And, with Japan’s ever-growing economy and expanding powerhouses in almost every single industry, they remain highly requested.
- Rich worldview. The wider the worldview, the better the translator. This deep understanding of the cultures involved is what guides a translator, interpreter, or localizer through the trickiest details, and inspires them to give an accurate and evocative translation.
- Have A wide and diverse market. A Japanese translator will get interesting, challenging, and diverse work, even within very specific areas of expertise.
Although Chinese and Japanese are difficult languages to translate due to the complexity of the language structure and the way the languages are written, working as a translator or interpreter for these two languages has many advantages and can open up many opportunities.
The expansion conducted by these two countries is also one of the reasons why many opportunities can be obtained by people who work as translators of these two languages.
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