presumenothing: (tv)
presume ([personal profile] presumenothing) wrote in [community profile] guardian_learning 2022-05-16 03:34 am (UTC)

Speaking of traditional, a rabbithole I accidentally went down today thanks to a Discord discussion – the Wikipedia page on character conversion and related:

字词转换包括繁简处理和地区词处理。繁简处理指的是逐字地把原始文本转换为简体中文或繁体中文,而地区词处理则会处理各地区词汇的差异。例如,直接的繁简转换可能会把“義大利”转换为“义大利”,而地区词处理则可以将其转换为“意大利”。

aka, roughly:

Character swapping involves traditional/simplified handling and regional terms handling. Traditional/simplified handling refers to word-by-word changing of the original text to simplified or traditional Chinese, while regional terms handling will handle differences in terminology per region. For example, a direct traditional/simplified change might replace 義大利 with 义大利, while regional terms handling can change this to 意大利.

At which point translator's note that keikaku means plan given that Italy is 義大利 in trad, the first character 義 would usually simplify to 义, but the Correct™️ simplified for is actually 意大利 instead. Which isn't even a problem I had thought about before, before even getting into the actual vocabulary differences per-region usage.

(For the record, Wikipedia currently offers 6 options: Mainland Simplified, Hong Kong Traditional, Macau Traditional, Malaysia Simplified, Singapore Simplified, and Taiwan Traditional. I say "currently" because these have been split out over the years – HK/Macau and Malaysia/Singapore used to each be combined at some point.)

Anyway, on a completely unrelated note, I have 我問天 on the mind for some reason??


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