We regularly receive requests to subtitle video footage from English into Chinese. We’ve seen a marked increase in the number of requests for subtitling assignments for Traditional Chinese.
In Traditional Chinese, the character set does not contain any of the characters or substitutions created after 1946. So the characters found in Traditional Chinese are the standardized character sets of Taiwan, of Hong Kong and Macau (and also those found in the Kangxi Dictionary). The termTraditional Chinese is generally used to differentiate this form of the written language from Simplified Chinese which is a standardized character set, introduced in the 1950s and used in the People’s Republic of China.
When our clients have, for example, fashion or retail related subtitling projects that are destined for Hong Kong, or Taiwan, then we are asked to subtitle into Traditional Chinese. In contrast, if the video will be aired in China, then the client will opt for Simplified Chinese. This means that for some projects, we produce two sets of subtitles in Chinese, as they are ultimately for different territories!
The usual subtitling conventions and constraints apply, in terms of line lengths, character restrictions and so on. The difference is that the language used must be territory specific, for the correct audience. Since Fashion is big business in Hong Kong, it’s not surprising that we’re receiving more and more Traditional Chinese subtitling requests!
Need help?
Should you require our help with Chinese Subtitles & Captions or alternatively simply our Chinese Transcription Service then do please get in touch. We offer a Free Quote & File Uploads service.
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