Over 1.3 Billion people speak and write Chinese. It’s the most used language in the world. That means there are lots of import and export opportunities with China and other Asian countries. In order to work with these countries, your documents will need to be translated into Chinese. But with that comes a question. Do you need your documents translated into “Simplified Chinese” or “Traditional Chinese”?

Here is a listing of countries and which version of Chinese they use:

• Mainland China - Simplified Chinese
• Singapore - Simplified Chinese
• Taiwan - Traditional Chinese
• Hong Kong - Traditional Chinese
• Malaysia (Chinese population) - Traditional Chinese
• United States - Traditional Chinese (generally)

It sounds like both options would be about the same. But unfortunately, there is a significant difference between Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. The Simplified Chinese characters have fewer strokes. It's enough of a difference, that it’s difficult for those who learned Traditional Chinese to read the Simplified Chinese and vice-versa.

This all started in 1949 by The People’s Republic of China to improve literacy. Even today, the Chinese characters continue to be modified as the new language is still evolving. In 2009, the Chinese government released an updated list of 8,300 Simplified Chinese characters after making a few more changes.

Primarily, all of this only relates to written Chinese. As for speaking, Chinese people can understand each other without any problems. But some of the word choices are a little different between the two. It's kind of like how people from America and people from England have different ways of expressing themselves, even though both use English.

Let's look at some examples between Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese:

English Word	Traditional Chinese	Simplified Chinese
CD	光碟	光盘
activate	啟動	激活
Police	警察	公安
horse	馬	马
happy	高興	高兴

If your document or website is going to be used in several Asian countries which speak Chinese, you may need to have both Simplified and Traditional Chinese.

If you have any questions regarding the Chinese languages, please contact us and we would be glad to help select the correct Chinese translation for your particular needs.