Simplified Chinese character

Simplified Chinese characters (Simplified Chinese: 简体字; Traditional Chinese: 簡體字; pinyin: jiǎntǐzì; also called 简化字/簡化字, jiǎnhuàzì) are one of two standard character sets of printed contemporary Chinese written language. The other set is Traditional Chinese characters. Simplified Chinese characters are the Chinese characters officially simplified by the government of the People's Republic of China in an attempt to promote literacy. This character set is used for most printing in Mainland China, Malaysia and Singapore whereas traditional characters are used in Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan.

Pros, Cons, and Problems

The effect of Simplified Characters on the language remains controversial decades after their introduction:

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Pro

• Proponents praise the simplification because they believe it allows lesser-educated people to read. Literacy rates since simplification have risen steadily in the rural and urban areas. Opponents argue that the literacy rates of Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan compare favorably, so simplification seems not to correlate with the improvement. Some have suggested that the greater etymological coherence of the traditional set might possibly even pose an advantage when learning how to write.
• Smaller number of strokes creates a less cluttered appearance and prevents an overflow of useless information and thus makes reading easier and faster. Opponents claim that the simplifications make distinct characters more similar to each other in appearance, giving the "shape recognition" mechanism of the human brain less unique clues, and thus make reading harder and slower.

Con

• Opponents complain that by merging many characters into one and hence offering new meanings to a traditional character, simplified characters jeopardise the study of ancient literature by creating a discontinuity between modern texts and literary texts. However, proponents argue that the amount of spoken and written deviation from Classical Chinese and the modern vernacular is a greater factor, and has already brought about incompatibility with ancient texts. They also claim that the discontinuity brought about by the sporadic merger of characters is minimal.
• Some opponents have complained about the sheer difficulties posed by having two concurrent writing systems. Translating an entire document written using simplified characters to traditional characters, or vice versa, is not a trivial task. For human translators, simplified Chinese characters can look vastly different from their traditional counterparts to the extent that the two have no signs of simplification and instead appear completely irrelevant to each other. Proponents claim that this poses no problem to anyone who has had some reading experience with both systems. For computer automated translation, one simplified character may equate to many traditional characters, and vice versa. Some knowledge of the context of the word usage is required for correct mapping; but it has been difficult for computers to work with word usage perfectly. As a result, direct computer mapping from simplified to traditional is not trivial and require sophisticated programming. (This line of reasoning is used both by traditional Chinese advocates opposed to simplification, and simplified Chinese advocates opposed to the continued use of traditional characters.)
• As computers are increasingly used to write text, the speed advantage of writing fewer strokes becomes less relevant.

Problems

• Since the simplification by pronunciation depends on Mandarin pronunciation, there are a few simplified Chinese characters that are incompatible with some other Chinese spoken variants, as well as with other Asian languages that use Chinese characters, such as Japanese and Korean. For instance, the character 鬆(loose) was simplified as 松(pines), with the semantic element taken away (the upper part of the character). 鬆 and 松 have different pronunciations, for example, in Cantonese.
• The Chinese characters used in modern Japanese have also undergone simplification, but generally to a lesser extent than with Simplified Chinese. Reconciling these different character sets in Unicode became part of the controversial process of Han unification. Not surprisingly, some of the Chinese characters used in Japan are neither 'traditional' nor 'simplified'. In this case, these characters cannot be found in Traditional/Simplified Chinese dictionaries.
• In Hong Kong, a majority of secondary school students are fond of writing in simplified Chinese characters, particularly in examinations, for the sake of the 'quickness' of writing. However, this is generally frowned upon, as there are teachers who believe that Simplified Chinese is an "inferior" system of writing, designed for uneducated people (which bears some truth). Also, some teachers admit that quite a few simplified Chinese characters were derived illogically.
• In addition to those practical considerations, many minds link simplified characters with the idea of communism and traditional characters with anticommunism. This often hampers rational debate about the relative merits of the two systems.
• Teachers of international students often recommend learning both systems. Their experience is that students who start with Traditional characters understand Simplified forms without much difficulty, while students who begin with Simplified characters tend to have more trouble when they encounter Traditional forms.