Chinese Translation Services

Mandarin and Cantonese

In some cases, people are confused by two pairs of terms: Mandarin (普通话) versus Cantonese (广东话), and Chinese Simplified (中文简体) versus Chinese Traditional (中文繁体).

Mandarin and Cantonese are two of the many Chinese spoken dialects. Unlike Cantonese, Mandarin is an ‘artificial’ dialect. In the past, although there was just one writing system in the Chinese language, people spoke their own dialects which were so different that verbal communication was not always accurate and effective. A so-called standard spoken Chinese (普通话), or Mandarin, was derived from the Beijing (Peking) dialect (北京话) and other dialects in the northeast region of China. This was then promoted by the authorities to improve verbal communication. The last 80 years have shown that this effort is successful. Mandarin is now spoken by most Chinese in Mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore. A lot of people in Canton Province of China speak both Cantonese and Mandarin. A growing number of people in Hong Kong and Macau speak Mandarin.

Chinese Simplified and Chinese Traditional refer to two forms of the written language. None of them can be called ‘standard’ Chinese. Before 1949 there was only one set of the characters, i.e. Chinese Traditional. The government in Mainland China then thought that the written language was too complicated and a lot of people had difficulties using it. The government therefore simplified the written characters to some extent and this new version has been working well in Mainland China and Singapore. However, people in Hong Kong and Taiwan still prefer using the Traditional characters.