Implement native Simp/Trad Chinese conversion for BETTER translation

If anyone would like to translate a non-Chinese WordPress theme/plugin into Chinese, s/he may do the job twice. The first time to translate it into either Simplified Chinese or Traditional Chinese, and the second time the other.

S/he may retype all the scripts with the two different sets of characters, of which many are actually identical. Or s/he may use some software of application to converse the content into either simplified Chinese or the traditional, then copy and paste. (BTW, translation API may not be free, and one still need to translate twice.)

From my Chinese localisation experience, it’s just arduous, making many Chinese translation projects not able to be done by one translator, and thus being a pity for Chinese WordPress users.

For all different Chinese users, 1042 lines of Chinese script are the same 1042 lines of Chinese script expressing the same meaning, only in two sets of characters. But for WordPress, it will be 2084 lines of Chinese script. See bbPress translation project.

Another example. a Taiwanese blogger set the language of his WordPress site as Traditional Chinese(Taiwan), aka zh_TW. Then he uses a plugin with Chinese(China) — aka zh_CN — locale. Now, although he can understand Simplified Chinese, under current WordPress system, the plugin won’t display in zh_CN, and the poor Taiwanese can only either read the English he may not understand well, or translate — sorry, “converse” one Chinese script that he understands to another Chinese script that he also understands. If you want a live example, just try Advanced Custom Fields.

The difference between Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese, or regional Chinese such as those of Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Singapore, are really not that much more than the difference between different regional English (Asides: correct me if “regional” is a wrong word here):

• Many characters are identical.
• Though many characters are different, in most cases they are commonly recognised and understood. (Because Chinese is officially simplified in 20th century under certain rules.)
• Most expressions are identical and commonly understood.
• Though some expressions are different, the difference is trivial and commonly understandable.

In short, only those characters and expressions that are too different, too rare to see and not easy to be commonly understood are needed to be set into TWO different Chinese. Yet such user-unfriendly usage can totally avoided by Chinese netizens. After all, unlike the complicated political fact, it is the fact Chinese is one language with two character sets. In terms of encoding, Chinese is only one character set under UTF-8 or GBK.

Currently, the awesome plugin WP Chinese Conversion can converse Simp./Trad. Chinese on front-end smoothly. Alas, such magic cannot be cast on WordPress back-end. Besides, it cannot solve the problem I mentioned in the detailed example above.

Therefore, WordPress should learn, or “copy” what Wikipedia has perfectly done: one Chinese language, but option of conversion between Simp. or Trad. Chinese or different regional Chinese.

If such native conversion could be implemented in WordPress, translating themes/plugins into Chinese would be a lot more easier and efficient. Chinese users will have better back-end experience as well.

By the way, people should remember that, with current technology, Traditional Chinese script can be correctly and precisely conversed to Simplified Chinese. NOT VICE VERSA. Therefore, developers/translators should be allowed to compose exceptional rules for some really tricky characters and regional usage. (E.g. 裏, 裡, and 里 . )

Though I don’t know much about coding, I believe the conversion can take place only once, that is, the (first) time a users apply a new language setting. Then, different Chinese scripts will be stored and utilised as the current static .mo files. In this way such lore Chinese conversion won’t use too much server resource.

Concluding the post, ONE Chinese language with conversion option will make localisation easier and more efficient, providing better user experience and thus contribute to WordPress and the community. And I really wish my suggestion will be adopted. Many thanks.

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P.S. The real different Chinese are, for example, Mandarin, Cantonese, Southern Min (incl. Taiwanese Hokkien, Toechew Dialect), Hakka, etc. In most cases it is not mutually understandable using the different Chinese listed above.