What are some pitfalls specific to Chinese to avoid that a client should be aware of when translating into this language?
The most common pitfall of the Chinese language is whether to use Simplified or Traditional Chinese or both. This is the first thing the client needs to specify when requesting a Chinese translation. There are two different categories of written Chinese. While Traditional Chinese is for people in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the Chinese population residing in the United States, Simplified Chinese is for mainland China—Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, etc. The difference lies not only in the characters, but also in the manner of expression. Sometimes a client may ask for a translation into “Mandarin” Chinese. Actually this does not make sense at all because Mandarin only refers to spoken Chinese and to the official Chinese used everywhere versus Cantonese which is a dialect in the southern province Guangdong, Hong Kong, and some “old” Chinese communities in the States, especially in the San Francisco area. So, when it comes to written Chinese, we always translate into either Traditional or Simpl
