Μπραντ (bugtilaheh) wrote in linguaphiles,
Μπραντ
bugtilaheh
linguaphiles

Chinese Help

At work I've been doing a few localization projects for our website. One of my assignments was to get our Chinese site edited. None of us knows Chinese, so I had an English-Chinese editor edit the Chinese for us. I then sent the HTML files to our developer (who also does not know Chinese) to make the changes to the Chinese. The Chinese editor made documents with track changes, so it's pretty simple to figure out what was changed. However, I'm worried about the line breaks changing the meaning.

For instance, on my computer, two lines look like this:
Photobucket
I'm using http://www.chinese-tools.com and http://www.pin1yin1.com/ to figure out what the pinyin is, so please excuse me for my ignorance.
The pinyin:
zài nín de zhuān yè lǐng yù jìn xíng yǒu xiào gōu tōng, zhè shì jī xiè fān yì wú fǎ shí xiàn de; zhè xū yào dà liàng de zhī shi jī lěi hé gāo shuǐ píng de lǐ jiě. yǐ rèn hé yǔ zhǒng yòng nín zhuān yè de yǔ yán lái zhǔn què de chuán dì xìn xī.
The original English:
"Communicating in your field requires more than rote translation; it demands an informed, high level of comprehension. The result is a precise and relevant message that speaks your business language – in any language."

So, the first line cuts off at the hànzì for . If I decrease the font size, it cuts off at yòng.

On my work computer, the first line cuts off at the hànzì for the second after rèn.

In the document from our editor, he cut it off at the hànzì for the first after lěi.

So should I have our developer make the line breaks in the same areas that the editor has or leave it alone? I'm just wondering if this would change the meaning, or would the readers be aware that they have to continue on the next line for it to make sense, or would this break their concentration, etc. I don't know where each "word boundary" is, but I understand Chinese may not have "word boundaries" as we have in English...

So do you see my dilemma? Any help appreciated!
Tags: chinese
Subscribe

  • A very strange Etruscan inscription

    Chiusi is a small town in Italy (province of Siena, Tuscany). And once it was one of the most powerful centers of the Etruscan League of 12 cities.…

  • RAINBOW IN A PUDDLE

    Rainbow spots appear on wet pavement after rain. This thin layer of gasoline, being unable to dissolve in water, "plays" in the sunlight with our…

  • Learning basic Latin while reading Horace

    Salvete! A bit of shameless self-promotion by academic precariat, hope it's fine with you guys. We invite you to our Slow Horace Mondays. Supposedly,…

  • Post a new comment

    Error

    Anonymous comments are disabled in this journal

    default userpic

    Your reply will be screened

    Your IP address will be recorded 

  • 6 comments