Chinese

There are three main variants of Chinese: Simplified Mandarin (Mainland China & Singapore), Traditional Mandarin (Taiwan), Traditional Cantonese (Hong Kong and Overseas Chinese). All can be universally understood, but for best effect a separate version should be produced for each market.

Translation vs transliteration: It is almost always advisable to translate company names using characters which convey a positive and relevant meaning, rather than prioritising transliteration. Names of individuals may be translated or transliterated, although the former produces a more authentic Chinese name and will provide a point of interest if done well.

The most commonly used encoding systems are a) Simplified: GB b) Traditional: Big 5. Cantonese uses a small number of characters which are not used in Mandarin and missing from many Big 5 fonts.

Different versions of Quark are needed for each of these. It is possible but very unwise to typeset simplified Chinese in traditional Chinese Quark and vice versa. Chinese versions of Quark are still very buggy, and it is essential that a Chinese speaker proofs final artwork character by character before printing.

Most common fonts are Hei (sans serif) and Song (serif). Almost all font houses produce one or more of their own versions of these. All are similar but there is no standard Hei or Song face.

Chinese is generally written left to right, top to bottom (LTR). It was traditionally written top to bottom, right to left, (TTB) and many books and magazines in Taiwan and HK are still set in this way. It is not advisable, however, for a non-Chinese company to produce materials set in this way.

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