Comment by Terr_

2 years ago

> information density of writing

I feel like a proper comparison would not be number of characters, but a kind of pixel-budget, assuming both meet a certain reading speed and accuracy rate.

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Terr_

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user982  2 years ago

I was reading a Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Metal_Colossi) and was struck by the difference in length of the Chinese quotes and translations. E.g.:

  收天下兵, 聚之咸陽, 銷以為鍾鐻金人十二, 重各千石, 置廷宮中. 一法度衡石丈尺. 車同軌. 書同文字.

was translated into

  He collected the weapons of All-Under-Heaven in Xianyang, and cast them into twelve bronze figures of the type of bell stands, each 1000 dan [about 30 tons] in weight, and displayed them in the palace. He unified the law, weights and measurements, standardized the axle width of carriages, and standardized the writing system.

  • yongjik  2 years ago

    I don't speak Chinese, but my understanding is that it's not a totally fair comparison: classical Chinese text was often highly abbreviated, to such a degree that you have to be an expert historian to interpret it correctly.

    For example, the characters comprising your example text starts like:

    collect (收) [from] [all] soldiers (兵) under the sky (天下), gather (聚) at(?) (之) Xianyang (咸陽), melt (銷) and (以) become(?) (為) bell-stand (鍾鐻) metal (金) person (人) twelve (十二) ...

    As you can see, the English "translation" is more like an annotated translation. E.g., the original doesn't say who did it, or what he collected from soldiers: we just inferred "weapon" because what else could be melted into statues?

    Similarly, "standardized the axle width of carriages" is just: cart (車) same (同) axle width (軌). We're supposed to infer "standardized" because we are talking about the Emperor's deeds.

  • inkyoto  2 years ago

    Classical Chinese (Ancient or Old Chinese – multiple terms are used), the language the quote was written in that predates Middle Chinese and, by extension all modern Chinese languages, had a very different grammar with many features of it having all but disappeared from all Chinese languages. Classical Chinese texts are incomprehensible to a modern Chinese person who has not invested sufficient amounts of time and effort into completing Classical Chinese studies first.

    There is a book, «Classical Chinese for everyone: a guide for absolute beginners» by Bryan W. van Norden that is easy to read and gives a gentle introduction into Classical Chinese.

    The old grammar and vocabulary coupled with the Chinese style of writing metaphorically with an abundant application of allusions and with the same Chinese characters having multiple unrelated meanings, makes Ancient Chinese texts very terse and notoriously difficult to understand even for the educated Chinese people.

  • cwilby  2 years ago

    I just started learning Chinese about 2 months ago, to me it seems they stuff whole concepts into characters.

    For example,

    "去" (pronounced "Qú") is "going to the". "超市" (prounced "Chao Shi") is "supermarket" "去超市" (pronounced "Qú Chao Shi") is "going to the supermarket".

    3 syllables vs 7 syllables.

    To me, it seems that instead of composing letters into words to convey meaning, they have more letters that are mini-words unto themselves.

    • mook  2 years ago

      Don't forget all the abbreviation. "超市", supermarket, is abbreviated from "超級", super, and "市場", market. The equivalent in English would be "sup-mark" or something along those lines. (Or in Japanese, just "super".)

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