Differences in Hong Kong/PRC grammar and spelling

[jimbob]

Hi All

I need some advice on the differences between Hong Kong and mainland China spelling and grammar. We are a translation agency and have recently completed a translation of a document in Simplified Chinese.

We used a very good translator based in mainland China who we have used for many assignments, with always a good response. The client was based in Hong Kong and said the translation was full of bad grammar and spelling mistakes. We passed these comments back to our translator who said he did not agree.

Can anyone tell me why this would be? Is there that much difference between the two?

[Hofmann]

From "bad grammar and spelling mistakes" I can only guess what he meant. As you might know Chinese has no alphabet, so there is no spelling. However, something analogous to misspelling a word in English is writing a character incorrectly. Most likely, the wrong character set was used. For a publication in Hong Kong, it is most likely to be accepted if it used the standard character set and standard glyphs, described here. (I can't find any material in English about it.) In order to do that, you must have a typeface that conforms with the standard. 華康香港標準楷書 and 華康香港標準宋體 come to mind as two (one kaishu and one Ming respectively) of many.

As for grammar, most written material in Hong Kong is still in vernacular Mandarin. I can only guess that the translator used some expressions that are too colloquial or regional.

Edited April 29, 2010 at 07:09 PM by Hofmann

[jbradfor]

Agree with everything Hoffman said on the differences. In addition, there are vocabulary differences between Mainland and Hong Kong Chinese, especially the less formal the writing.

However, something still seems suspect to be.

Besides the part about "bad spelling" seeming a bit out-of-place in Chinese, I would expect any at least half-educated Hong Konger (and Hong Kongers are a very educated bunch, in general) to be able to detect text written for a mainland audience at a glance. So to call it "bad spelling" or "bad grammar" is wrong, it would be Mainland spelling and Mainland grammar.

If this translation is, in fact, for a Hong Kong audience, then using a translation service aiming at the Mainland is in general unacceptable to a Hong Kong audience. You need to find a Hong Kong based translation service (or one that can target for Hong Kong). [similarly, for Taiwan you would need a translation targeted at Taiwan, not Mainland.]

I don't know your client's English level or what was actually said, maybe your client just meant it's not appropriate for Hong Kong.

[jimbob]

Hi

Thanks for those comments.

We were actually asked to translate into Simplified Chinese which usually means for a Mainland audience. Which we did.

The actual person checking this text was based in Hong Kong, so was checking a brochure for distribution in mainland China.

That looks like it may have been the problem.

[tooironic]

This is a professional issue, not a linguistic one. If you are disseminating information to different regions you need to ensure not only that the translation is accurate but also localised according to the expectations of the readers in that region. It would be the same, for instance, if you were translating something into English for an Australian audience - naturally you would want to tailor the translation to suit the sylistic and idiomatic imperatives of that country. Chinese, as a global language, is no different.

[skylee]

I don't know anything about professional translation. But as a consumer I have always been amused by the two versions of Chinese translation (one in simplified and the other in traditional script) of leaflets in cosmetic products. They mean the same thing but the words could be quite different. As can be expected I prefer the traditional version.

An example from something I bought yesterday.

[gato]

The tradition Chinese version of the Shiseido packaging uses a lot more classical Chinese than the mainland one. ;-)

[calibre2001]

Wow the traditional version reminds me of how chinese is written in Taiwan, so flowery and eloquent in comparison to the mainland china version.

This seems to be a good example of a clear distinction between putonghua and zhongwen.

skylee 姐姐, as a HK native may I ask why you prefer the traditional version, as in what is it in the writing style that you prefer aside it being in traditional of course?

[skylee]

I think what I prefer is really the traditional script. And somehow I find the traditional version more elegant (maybe I am biased, I don't know). But honestly while I think it is all right to have the same text printed in two different scripts, I don't think it is really necessary to have two different Chinese versions. Afterall it is just cosmetics.

But sometimes the terms / style used in the mainland could be so different from those used in HK that HKers might find them strange (and vice versa). But I can't give examples off the top of my head.

[wushijiao]

I think what I prefer is really the traditional script. And somehow I find the traditional version more elegant (maybe I am biased, I don't know).

Agree. Maybe I'm biased as well, but I think the HK prose tends to come off a bit more elegant, often because they use more singletons and Classical Chinese, and of course, traditional.

On the other hand, think Mainland Chinese prose does tend to have more complex grammatical constructions (often with clause after clause after clause) and has different vocabulary usage from HK-writings. .

[vampire]

i dont think skylee's picture is a good example if we are talking about differences between HK/mainland chinese, the traditional version is apparently much much more well written. there are differences in style and vocabulary, not mastery of this language, can that even be possible... anyway I also like how articles are written in hk, they do tend to write in a more classical way, I mean, the REAL classical way, not throw out some 文言文 words and claim it's 文言文

[xiaocai]

Maybe my Chinese is not good enough but to be honest I don't find the simplified version is so much inferior to the traditional one...

And surely it is good if you can write in a very classical way, but I think it is more of someone's preference rather than writing skills. I just can't imagine some of my favourite Chinese writers writing in 早期白话文, that would just ruin it all.