Simple Chinese punctuation introduction
Hi all! Surfing the internet I found an easy to follow article that points out the main characters of Chinese punctuation so would like to share it with you :D
-------------
ORIENTATION OF PUNCTUATION
Since Chinese text can be written vertically (column written top to down, columns written right to left) or horizontally, some punctuations adapt to these changes. Each Chinese character occupies a square space, and so each punctuation mark does the same. As such, Chinese punctuation marks are called full-width, as opposed to English half-width punctuation, because of the space they take up.
Certain punctuation marks rotate 90 degrees when the text is written in a vertical form. Square quotation marks, parenthesis, and book title marks are a few of the symbols that follow this rule.
MARKS SIMILAR TO WESTERN PUNCTUATION
These symbols directly translate over from Western to Eastern languages, including their meaning, appearance, and usage.
！(惊叹号/jīng tàn hào) is an exclamation mark
？(问号/wèn hào) is a question mark
；(分号/fēn hào) is a semicolon
：(冒号/mào hào) is a colon
( ) (括号/guā hào or kuò hào ) are parentheses
，(逗号/Dòu hào) is a comma. However, it cannot be used to separate different parts of the whole list; there is a separate comma for that use.
MARKS DISTINCT TO THE CHINESE LANGUAGE
While some punctuation marks are similar or exactly the same as their Western counterparts, there also exists punctuation that are exclusive to Chinese text.
。(句号/jù hào) is a full stop, equivalent to a period in Western punctuation.
、(顿号/dùn hào) is an enumerated comma, used when listing things in sentences. For example, “I like red, blue and purple.” would be written as “我喜欢红色、蓝色和紫色。”
《... 》(书名号/shū míng hào) are used to signify book titles, song titles, movie titles, etc. In vertical text it would rotate, appearing as ︽…︾.
「...」/ “...” (引号/yǐn hào) are both used for quotation marks. In Traditional Chinese, whether the text is oriented vertically or horizontally, square quotation marks are used. If the text is horizontal, 「...」would be used, where the ellipses would be replaced with text. If the text is vertical, the quotation marks rotate 90 degrees, so it becomes ﹁...﹂. In English when text is quoted within a quote it would be represented as “… ‘…’ …”. In Chinese, however, the double brackets lay within single brackets, so it would appear as 「...『...』...」. Simplified Chinese adheres to other sets of rules; it uses Western style quotation marks for horizontal text and corner bracket quotation marks for vertical text.
Source> How To Use: Chinese Punctuation
Re: Simple Chinese punctuation introduction
That's very interesting!
I'm having some trouble fully understanding though.
Could you provide us with some day-to-day examples? (alongside their translation in English and/or Spanish)
Re: Simple Chinese punctuation introduction
Thanks Iyuanobi!!!
Your post is like the Holy Grail for DTPers. I've been fighting with Chinese and Japanese files for years and your introduction helps me a lot!
You rule buddy
Re: Simple Chinese punctuation introduction
That's me again Iyuanobi.
Just to ask you...
What are the rules for Bold and Italic usage? I guess you don't technically use them but now in the age of globalization is not that bad to add bolds and italics in chinese characters.
Re: Simple Chinese punctuation introduction
It's worth noting that the comma is the same as the English comma, except it takes the space of one full character and is positioned in the middle of the line.
Re: Simple Chinese punctuation introduction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
eidjit
That's very interesting!
I'm having some trouble fully understanding though.
Could you provide us with some day-to-day examples? (alongside their translation in English and/or Spanish)
Hi Eidji, I think you are saying that just because I said that the article is easy to follow haha.
Well in simple words, Chinese has a particularity that is the word orientation. This is because traditionally the words are written vertically from top to bottom and right to left. However, due to the i18n and adaptation of western language rules, nowadays it is acceptable also the horizontal orientation.
For example: Tom said: "I am the winner!"
Horizontal orientation: 汤姆说：「我是贏家!」
Vertical orientation would be:
http://imgur.com/a/t7O1Khttp://i.imgur.com/5nX8MRN.png
Re: Simple Chinese punctuation introduction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
santiagop
That's me again Iyuanobi.
Just to ask you...
What are the rules for Bold and Italic usage? I guess you don't technically use them but now in the age of globalization is not that bad to add bolds and italics in chinese characters.
Hi santi, far as I know, traditionally there are no bold and italic settings in Chinese as they are concepts dirived from western languages, even thougth they are broadly accepted nowadays. However, there is one issue that you have to take into account when doing the DTP tasks.
When the font used is not designed with bold option, by using the "B" (bold option in Office Word) what you do is to force the program to do it artificially with the setting and it ruins the character itself.
See exmples:
http://blogorg.justfont.com/wp-conte...false-1new.png
Also, in the case of italics, Chinese does not really have italics and this is because of the structure of the character itself. That is to say, when you write the characters in italics, they are no longer the original ones as you broke the structure for wich they were created. So, even though documents with characters in italics are common today, specially for translated documents, we should avoid it when possible. In fact, there is practically no text in Chiense (source) that uses italics.
Source: 大眾å*—åž‹å*¸ (4)： ç†æƒ³çš„排版強調法 , justfont blog
Re: Simple Chinese punctuation introduction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Maximiliano
It's worth noting that the comma is the same as the English comma, except it takes the space of one full character and is positioned in the middle of the line.
The one that is positioned in the middle of the line is the comma for traditional Chinese. For simplified Chinese the comma is also positioned at the bottom line. The only difference is the space behind it.
See example below.
http://i.imgur.com/REmLd6B.png
So they both occupies the space of a character but one is suspended in middle of line and one is placed at the left bottom similar to the western ones.
Re: Simple Chinese punctuation introduction
Thanks Iyuanobi, your posts are really helpful!
So, when you want to emphasize some words you put them between brackets (just as we use italics) or you make them bold?
Sometimes I've also seen Chinese characteres with an extra dot at the bottom. Do you know what does it mean?
Re: Simple Chinese punctuation introduction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
santiagop
Thanks Iyuanobi, your posts are really helpful!
So, when you want to emphasize some words you put them between brackets (just as we use italics) or you make them bold?
Sometimes I've also seen Chinese characteres with an extra dot at the bottom. Do you know what does it mean?
Yes, you make them bold to emphasize them. We should avoid the Chinese characters in italics when possible.
The blackets you are seeing in the example is showing that its the words of the author. It says: (There are no italics in Chinese)
About the dots below the characters, they are a very traditional way of emphazising words in the text. Nowadays, these dots are less used, but still exist, as they are mostly replaced by the boldface.
Re: Simple Chinese punctuation introduction
Thanks again iyuanobi!
Just one more question, could you please explain me a bit about the line breaking rules in Chinese?
I mean, I guess there are some characters that can´t be at the end/beginning of a line, while others must remain together in the same line, and so on.
In addition, how do you handle widows/orphans in Chinese?
;-)
Re: Simple Chinese punctuation introduction
Hey Iyuanobi, are there inverted commas in Chinese Simplified and Traditional?
Re: Simple Chinese punctuation introduction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
santiagop
Thanks again iyuanobi!
Just one more question, could you please explain me a bit about the line breaking rules in Chinese?
I mean, I guess there are some characters that can´t be at the end/beginning of a line, while others must remain together in the same line, and so on.
In addition, how do you handle widows/orphans in Chinese?
Morning Santi, well far as I know the only rule about breaking lines is to respect the meaningful unit according to the context. As you know, unlike western languages, we do not have spaces between characters in Chinese.
So when you decide to break the line you always have to respect the smallest meaningful unit/word. For example: We play at the wildlife park. The translation for this phrase would be: 我們在野生動物園玩。
For instance, the correct break between the meaningful unit that are all acceptable in the line would be: 我們 / 在 / 野生 / 動物 / 園 / 玩. (The smallest meaningful unit for this context would be > We / at / wildlife / animals / park / play.)
However, there may be other meaningful units by breaking the phrase differently such as: 我們 / 在野 / 生動 / 物 / 園 / 玩 and their meaning changes in some cases > We / to be out of office / vividly / object / park / play.
In the second example, we see that the meaning changes totally and turned out to be out of context. So it would be inappropriate to do the breaking (Highlighted in red) in these places.
And about your second question, are you referring to the operating system in Chinese?
Re: Simple Chinese punctuation introduction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Maximiliano
Hey Iyuanobi, are there inverted commas in Chinese Simplified and Traditional?
Hi Maxi, in traditional Chinese the corner brackets are used instead of inverted commas whether horizontal or vertical orientation.
For simplified Chinese, it uses the European-style marks in most places.
Re: Simple Chinese punctuation introduction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
iyuanobi
Morning Santi, well far as I know the only rule about breaking lines is to respect the meaningful unit according to the context. As you know, unlike western languages, we do not have spaces between characters in Chinese.
So when you decide to break the line you always have to respect the smallest meaningful unit/word. For example: We play at the wildlife park. The translation for this phrase would be: 我們在野生動物園玩。
For instance, the correct break between the meaningful unit that are all acceptable in the line would be: 我們 / 在 / 野生 / 動物 / 園 / 玩. (The smallest meaningful unit for this context would be > We / at / wildlife / animals / park / play.)
However, there may be other meaningful units by breaking the phrase differently such as: 我們 / 在野 / 生動 / 物 / 園 / 玩 and their meaning changes in some cases > We / to be out of office / vividly / object / park / play.
In the second example, we see that the meaning changes totally and turned out to be out of context and would be inappropriate to do the breaking (Highlighted in red) in these places.
And about your second question, are you referring to the operating system in Chinese?
So, there's absolutely no way to know how to break lines properly in order to respect meaningful unit if you are not a Chinese speaker. So I will need to send files to a Chinese proofer after DTP.
Re: Simple Chinese punctuation introduction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
santiagop
So, there's absolutely no way to know how to break lines properly in order to respect meaningful unit if you are not a Chinese speaker. So I will need to send files to a Chinese proofer after DTP.
I think all depends on the requirement and budget of the client. I mean it is not considered as an "error" if you break the line inappropriately. More accurately saying it is more like an obstacle when reading, making the comprehension a bit harder.
However anyone who has an average sense of logic would figured it out when finishing the whole sentence till the comma or period that follows. So I guess as long as the client is not complaining about it, it´s "okay" to certain point :p.
Re: Simple Chinese punctuation introduction
This thread is so interesting!
I don't know any Chinese, but it's fascinating!
http://i.imgur.com/5nX8MRN.png
It's probably silly of me, but I was surprised by the fact that the colon is placed vertically (as usual...)
I'm I just too used to reading and writing from left to right, so it looks sideways to me... haha.
I also liked the contrast between real and fake italics.
I guess this just shows how biased we can be sometimes...
Thanks for sharing iyuanobi!
Are there any other things we should consider when reading Chinese? Or if it's me, when staring dumbfounded while trying to make some sense of the structure? (￣▽￣*)ゞ
Re: Simple Chinese punctuation introduction
Well, Chinese is very interesting as it´s one kind of hieroglyphic language. So when you read it you find that each character transmits a concept related to the nature. In other words, you could try imaging each of the characters as an image and that definitely helps in some cases. :D Do you speak or read Chinese?
Re: Simple Chinese punctuation introduction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
iyuanobi
Well, Chinese is very interesting as it´s one kind of hieroglyphic language. So when you read it you find that each character transmits a concept related to the nature. In other words, you could try imaging each of the characters as an image and that definitely helps in some cases. :D Do you speak or read Chinese?
No, but I do know some Japanese. Actually, I took a short course on Kanji (am I super nerdy or what?!) (o^ ^o)
We studied how they developed from ideograms and changed over time. We also looked into their structure and how they are classified according to their radical. I think they are beautiful. That's actually what got me interested!
I know that Japanese sentence structure differs from that of Chinese, but that's it!
In my opinion, kana helps a lot when reading Japanese. As a student, I found them quite helpful in understanding sentence structure. Is there something like that in Chinese?
Re: Simple Chinese punctuation introduction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
solg
No, but I do know some Japanese. Actually, I took a short course on Kanji (am I super nerdy or what?!) (o^ ^o)
We studied how they developed from ideograms and changed over time. We also looked into their structure and how they are classified according to their radical. I think they are beautiful. That's actually what got me interested!
I know that Japanese sentence structure differs from that of Chinese, but that's it!
In my opinion, kana helps a lot when reading Japanese. As a student, I found them quite helpful in understanding sentence structure. Is there something like that in Chinese?
Wow that´s amazing, well if you know Japanese then definitely Chinese is kind of easy to you too as they have many similarities in kanji.
Unfortunately we don't have phonogram system as kana, so it´s kind of a good memory exercise as you will have to learn one by one the phonetics of each ideograms separately by heart.:rolleyes:
I am thinking that this may be a solution to Alzheimer, lol ;););)
