Each year, the UN seeks to promote multilingualism and cultural diversity by promoting its official languages through designated celebration days. Chinese was established as an official UN language in 1946. However, it wasn’t until 1973 that Chinese was included as an official working language at the UN. Read on to learn more about the Chinese language and the importance of Chinese translation services.
Cangje and Chinese Translation Services
The traditional Chinese lunisolar calendar is divided into 24 “solar terms“. Some of them have cultural traditions and history, such as Lunar New Year, Moon Festival and Qingming Festival. The sixth solar term is called 谷雨 (gǔ yǔ) which, with the help of Chinese translation, means “Rain of Millet“ and usually falls on April 20 on the Gregorian calendar, a day honoring Cangje, an important figure in ancient China. Cangje is believed to have had four eyes and four pupils, served as an official historian of the Yellow Emperor, and been the inventor of Chinese characters. Legend has it that upon seeing the characters, the deities and ghosts cried and it started to rain millet from the skies.
The History of the Chinese Language
Chinese is one of the world’s oldest languages. Its origins date back 4,500 years and has evolved through various centuries and dynasties. Before China’s unification under the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty, every kingdom had their own writing system. The writing style, however, went through many iterations during his ruling and ended the ancient way of writing scripts.
Today, there are more than 100,000 Chinese characters, but only 10,000 are in use and most Chinese graduate students only know about 3,000-4,000 characters. To pass the Chinese proficiency exam, professional Chinese translators must know about 2,663 Chinese characters.
The Importance of the Chinese Translation Today
Chinese has over a billion native speakers, which makes it the most spoken language in the world. It is known for its complexity and beauty thanks to its tens of thousands of characters, each of them with their own order, pronunciation, and meaning.
But its importance goes beyond the sheer number of its speakers and complexity. Over the years, China has become a global powerhouse, making Chinese an important language of business, diplomacy, and cultural exchange and highlighting the important role played by translation and localization services.
Whether you want to expand your business abroad, enter the Chinese market, need your content localized, or require interpreting services, working with skilled professional language service providers becomes vital. Happy Chinese Language Day!
About Language Connections:
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