Showing posts with label english to chinese translation. Show all posts

Saturday, 1 February 2014
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Celebrating the Chinese New Year

For the Chinese, New Year celebrations are amongst the most important events of the year and festivities take place all over the world.  The Chinese New Year is a significant tradition with history dating back over 4000 years.  To put it in perspective, the year that began on January 31st of 2014 marked the beginning of the 4712th Chinese year.

The celebrations span a fairly long time period, beginning on the last day of the last month of the year as per the Chinese calendar and running until the 15th day of the first month of the New Year.  It should be noted that the Chinese calendar is the lunar calendar, meaning that dates do not align with the traditionally recognized calendar months of a year.  As a result, the festivities will typically begin on different calendar days from one year to the next.  There is an animal associated with every upcoming New Year and it is believed that all individuals born within that year will possess certain characteristics relevant to that animal.  There are a total of 12 different animals that are cycled over the years in a rotation.

To prepare for the Chinese New Year celebrations, the Chinese participate in activities that represent bringing about a new life and new beginnings in the New Year.  They spend significant amounts of time freshening up their homes, organizing their lives, ridding themselves of problems, tackling nagging tasks and changing up their personal style.  They take these actions with the intention of turning over a new leaf and setting themselves up for success in the year to come.

Some common themes throughout the celebrations are dragons and the colours gold and red.  To begin, the colour red is a positive symbol in Chinese culture associated with power, happiness and scaring away the bad spirits.  Gold is associated with good fortune.  Gold and red are the typical colours used when decorating homes and venues for Chinese New Year festivities due to their positive symbolism in the culture.  Dragons are also commonly seen as they are recognized symbols of positive things including strength and luck.

The Chinese New Year celebrations begin with a late night feast on New Year’s Eve and a large and extravagant fireworks show when the clock strikes midnight.  From there, the events for the duration of the festivities are focused on enjoying food with close friends and family, exchanging gifts and wishing loved ones well in the new year.  To culminate the celebrations, there is a Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the first month of the new year.  For this event, people carefully hang and carry beautiful glowing lanterns all over the city.  The lanterns are often painted with care, boasting beautiful designs such as zodiac signs or flowers.  There is also a large parade and a traditional dragon dance.  The entire Lantern Festival is elaborate and rich in traditional culture, making it a highlight for the Chinese who celebrate it and for others who have the opportunity to experience it.

 Translations2u is a UK based specialist in English to Chinese translation and other language translation services.
Monday, 27 January 2014
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Not just in English

Here are some terms that are exactly the same in English as they are in a few other languages.

First of all, to describe something as banal is to express the sentiment that the object of your conversation is to some extent trivial, rather mundane or indeed commonplace or lacking any form of originality. Banal is written exactly the same way but with minor pronunciation differences in Spanish, Portuguese, German and French, and it is the latter language that not only gave us this word in the first place but also its definition of commonplace. In French, the term referred to military service which was mandatory throughout France and thus applied to every citizen. Hence its use to describe something as commonplace.

Another term common to more than just English, and also derived from French, more specifically Middle French, is suave. It is used to refer to someone, typically a male, who has a smooth and sophisticated manner about him, and generally has the meaning of agreeable or polite. When it originally entered the language from Middle French, which itself derived from the Latin suavis, it meant gracious or kindly. This word is exactly the same in Spanish, Portuguese and modern French, with only Spanish pronouncing the final “e” to create a second syllable.

Our third term is verbal and this too is exactly the same not only in French, Spanish and Portuguese but also in German. Verbal refers to something consisting of, expressed in, or pertaining to words. Furthermore, in grammar, verbal is used to denote that something is derived from or pertains to a verb. The word also has another sense, as in word for word or verbatim.


Finally, a cheque, albeit “check” in US English, is the same word in Spanish, French and Portuguese and each of these languages equally use it to refer to that piece of paper you complete and sign to draw funds from a back account or to place money into an account. Interestingly, in Australia and New Zealand, a cheque can be a worker’s wages or the total payment for contracted labour. 

Translations2u is a specialist provider of French translation, German translation, Portuguese to English and English to Portuguese, as well as Spanish to English and English to Spanish translation in addition to numerous other language pairs.
Monday, 11 November 2013
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Knowing your Chinese

Have you ever watched a film and heard someone who's supposed to be British speaking in a British accent unlike any you've ever heard before? Like the character playing the Yorkshire miner who sounds more Welsh-come-Irish or the London Air Force officer who sounds more South African-come-French? And that's the lighthearted end of the scale.

So many of us have bought a product, read the instructions only to scratch our heads and exclaim how it could be in Chinese for all the sense it makes. Well, that's often because the instruction manual has been translated from Chinese by an inexperienced individual, probably working for peanuts, or, far worse than that, translated using an automated translation tool.

Well, I've never been to China but I can only imagine poor Chinese people in the same position as myself now and again, wondering what nonsense they're reading when trying to work out how to set up the electronic gizmo they just bought for their home. Far worse it must be for the Chinese person watching a film or TV show with someone allegedly from Guandong speaking in their native Mandarin. (Picked up on that?)


These casual examples highlight the importance of hiring a serious translation professional whatever your line of work and whatever you produce. An English to Chinese translation must be carried out by a native speaker of the relevant Chinese dialect, that is Mandarin or Cantonese, only the latter being spoken in Guangdong.

Don't take the chance of looking amateurish by hiring the cheapest possible provider. Take a look at the English to Chinese translation page of our website for a brief overview of what to consider when you require Chinese language work.