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CHINESE CANTONESE

 

When you are assigning your Chinese translators to handle an “Cantonese Translation” project, do you know what exactly is the “CANTONESE” language? What is the difference between “Cantonese” and “Chinese language”? Is it the “Simplified Chinese” or “Traditional Chinese”? For which market does this “language” best fit? Let me brief explain to you as below:

 

ABOUT THE CANTONESE LANGUAGE

The Cantonese language appeared in writing since the 17th century. It was used mainly in personal correspondence, diaries, advertising, popular newspapers, comics, poetry, magazines and to some extent in literature. There are two standard ways of written Cantonese: a colloquial version and a formal version. The colloquial version is much closer to spoken Cantonese and largely unintelligible to Mandarin speakers. The formal version is quite different from spoken Cantonese but very similiar to Standard Chinese and can be understood by Mandarin speakers without too much difficulty. As your cantonese translators we usually translate your materials into the formal version for a safer and wider acceptance.

While the term Cantonese refers narrowly to the prestige variety, it is often used in a broader sense for the entire Yue subdivision of Chinese, including related but largely mutually unintelligible languages such as Taishanese. When Cantonese and the closely related Yuehai dialects are classified together, there are about 749,800,000 million total speakers (in comparison, about 65% of the total population in Mainland China - 1,382,710,000 people by the statistic of year 2016 - are using this "standard dialect"). Cantonese is viewed as vital part of the cultural identity for its native speakers across large swathes of southeastern China, Hong Kong and Macau.

 

 

LANGUAGE KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE CANTONESE

What People Speak in Hong Kong & Macau

Cantonese is the official language of Hong Kong and Macao. In these two cities, from the daily communication of their citizens, to the business and school education, from governmental bodies, to the legislative council elections; from scientific research activities to the news media to public entertainment, Cantonese is dominant on almost all aspects (PS. English is also popular). In recent decades, the prosperity of the public media and entertainment in Hong Kong, especially the Hong Kong movies for example, also has made Cantonese very influential for Chinese-speaking communities - even among Mandarin speakers.

To some degree, we can say that the Cantonese is the backbone for the Hong Kong culture and the Cantonese culture concentrating in the south Guangdong region.

Cantonese Spoken in Overseas Chinese Communities

If you live in a place where there is an established Chinese community near around, you may have already discovered that, many Chinese people are speaking Cantonese there, despite that we had claimed that Mandarin is the official and most dominant Chinese language.

Many Chinese immigrants living in Chinatowns in Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand (New Zealand), southeast Asia and other countries or regions use Cantonese as their daily-communication language (here comes the language translation needs). San Francisco, with its large Chinese population stemming from Guangdong and nearby areas (such as Guangxi), has included Cantonese as one of the languages in the mass broadcasting system for its public transport system, and becomes one of the a few municipal governments offering Chinese broadcasting service in the United States.

Yes, it's not a hidden secret that Cantonese is the most popular language in many overseas Chinese communities, and this is because over 95% of these Chinese immigrants, especially the grandma / grandpa generations, actually came from Cantonese speaking areas instead Mandarin regions. This is a long story back to 19th and 20th century, which we will try to discuss on another separate page.

However, due to the significant increase of immigrants from Mainland China in past 2 decades and in recent years, the proportion of Cantonese speakers is seeing some decrease, with more Mandarin voices are heard around all cornors. Nevertheless, it's still safe to say that the Cantonese remains the daily language for a majority of overseas Chinese.

Colloquial Speeches vs. Written Scripts

The Cantonese assumes different forms when in spoken and in written. People speak it in a colloquial speech, but write in some formal vernacular text.

Colloquial speech used by citizens in Guangdong province in their daily verbal communications presents some remarkable divergences from the vocabulary, grammar, lexicon and syntax of what will in a written form. However, people seemed to have got used to this kind of divergences without feeling much inconvenience from it. When they use Cantonese colloquialism to read some printed scripts, they won't read verbatim by following each of the characters, but will rather "re-phrase" them by actively adjusting the written text in their minds according the Cantonese lexicon, grammar and local customs of speech. So don't get surprised if you found a Cantonese speaker is actually doing some "translation" over the original material when he/she reads on a written paragraph.

In many of the formal occasions, such as public media, including newspapers, radio, television, entertainment (songs) and so on, Modern Cantonese generally adopts the modern Chinese vernacular writing system which was developed in the early 20th century. Most of the newspapers and publications tend to use only standard written language which is completely consistent with the syntax & grammar of that of Mandarin except for some understandable special lexicons specific to Cantonese. As translators, what style do we write in when we are doing the translations? I believe you've got the answer yourself.

Everything in Mandarin style of writing? Of course this is not always the case. Differences exist between the written scripts themselves. In Hong Kong, there is still a large presence of written scripts in strict (or mixed up) verbatim Cantonese Colloquial style. We can spot a lot of exact colloquial scripts in the online chats between friends in the Pearl River Delta Region, comments on local forums, TVB serials and some of the HK movie shot before the new century. With a special Cantonese text input app, you could even type out some very special characters that you won't find in most Mandarin occasions.

What are the differences between Cantonese & Mandarin?

These are two SPOKEN styles/dialects of the Chinese language. As an official spoken “dialect”, Mandarin (or "Standard Chinese") is widely used in Mainland China, Taiwan area and Singapore. Cantonese is specifically targeted to HK and Macau audience only (from the point of view of the our translation industry ONLY - of course there are people in other places also speak and read Cantonese).

Can Cantonese be considered an "Independent" language? No it's not an "Independent" language, it's just a dialect spoken in some regional places within China. So why didn't other Chinese dialects gain the same or similar significance in the western world? Why don't we hear much of "Shanghainese", "Shandongnese" or "Sichuanese" (A.C.T. is headquartered in Sichuan, so you may say our daily language is “Sichuanese”.)? This is because the Grangdong (Canton) province was the earliest in China to start its communication and economic exchange with the western world more than one hundred years ago (when Hong Kong was still a small village lying on the south coast of Guangdong). Many Chinese people nowadays living in the United States are of Canton (Guangdong) origin, and their accent/dialect (Cantonese) is much more heard by western people than any other Chinese dialect was.

So should you translate your materials into Mandarin or Cantonese? A simple and summarized answer would be "Cantonese for Hong Kong & Macau market, and Mandarin for the rest of the world". It's not 100% precise, but can basically help you pick the right language when you are trying to find the translators.

Read this complete comparison between the Chinese Cantonese and Chinese Mandarin.

Is it the Simplified or Traditional?

There is not a certain correct answer if you want to be ACADEMICALLY precise. But we are not scholars studying histories and written text forms - we are translators. Let me give you a straight and easy answer – in term of Chinese translation business, “translation into Cantonese” usually means translation into “Traditional Chinese for Hong Kong Readers”.

Further reading about the Differences between Simplified & Traditional Chinese.

Is Cantonese an "Independent" language?

No it's not an "Independent" language, it's just a dialect spoken in China's Guangdong (or you may say "Canton") province and in Hong Kong.

So why didn't other Chinese dialects gain the same or similar importance in western world? Why don't we hear much of "Shanghainese", "Shandongnese" or "Sichuanese" (Bibytes is located in Sichuan, so you may say our daily language is “Sichuanese”.)? This is because the Grangdong (Canton) province was the earliest in China to start its communication and economic exchange with the western world more than one hundred years ago (Hong Kong was then a small village lying on the south coast of Guangdong). Many Chinese people nowadays living in the United States are of Canton (Guangdong) origin, and their accent (Cantonese) is much more heard by western people than any other Chinese dialect was.



Confidence in handling your Cantonese projects

Some of our team members live in Canton (Guangdong) province, and Cantonese is their daily spoken dialect. We also have strategic partners operating in Hong Kong. This means “Cantonese” is one of the two “mother tongues” (the other one is Mandarin) for which A.C.T. is totally confident of being able deliver perfect results.

Based in China (Chengdu, Sichuan) and with Cantonese being one of our two mother tongues (the other one is Chinese Mandarin), A.C.Translation is the choice provider for your English to Cantonese Translation projects.

Yes we are top English to Cantonese translators. At A.C.T., we are skilled to translate English to Cantonese. We have good quality English Cantonese Dictionary. Of course, as we are a group of experienced professional human translators, what you will get is definitely more than an English Cantonese Dictionary can offer!

Now, contact us and see how we will satisfy your English to Cantonese translation needs.

 

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