A Short History of Chinese Typesetting

Chinese Translation, Typesetting, Websites, Voice-Overs and Subtitles

Adelphi Translations Ltd. have been typesetting Chinese documents in both Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese characters, for over 10 years. Most people now take it for granted that typesetting Chinese and other languages is a relatively straightforward matter of using software and computers, but this is a very recent innovation and only a couple of decades ago typesetting was a physical process. The Chinese are credited with inventing movable type centuries before Gutenberg started his press in Germany  in 1439, but how did they deal with the many thousands of characters necessary for typesetting Chinese books?

Chinese Translation and Typesetting

When typesetting Chinese documents Chinese is one of the few languages which takes up less space, rather than more, when translated from English. Both Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese typesetting therefore requires an understanding of the layout of Chinese and the ability to modify the design of the document to avoid large spaces and unsightly gaps in the translated Chinese document.

Examples of Chinese Typesetting by Adelphi Translations: (click to enlarge)

 Traditional and simplified Chinese translation and typesetting examples

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Chinese Translation and Websites

Adelphi Translations Ltd. work translating Chinese to English and English to Chinese. We also produce voice recordings and subtitles for video in Chinese as well as translation and localisation of web sites into Chinese. We are based in Sheffield, UK and handle language projects for local clients in commercial centres such as Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow and London but also have many International clients from around the world.

 To See more Website samples click here

Chinese Translation and Subtitles 

Adelphi Translations Ltd. are experts in translating and producing English and Chinese subtitles. Adelphi Translations Ltd have been producing Chinese subtitles in both Simplified and Traditional Chinese for corporate video for over ten years. Mention subtitles and most of us think of exotic foreign cinema or Hollywood blockbusters with foreign language subtitles but there is a huge need for foreign language and English subtitles on company promotional videos, e-learning video and instructional video either on the Internet or DVD.

To see more subtitle samples please click here

History

The Chinese language is not alphabetic but uses logograms, or characters, which represent words and morphemes (word particles).  Around 3,000 characters need to be recognised to read a newspaper and educated Chinese will know around double that number.  Although this already seems like a large number, there are up to 30, 000 characters required to take into account the occasional use of rare words. So, with such a complex system how did early Chinese typesetters organise their type?

Chinese typesetting: samples of metal type

Moveable types in China were made in different ways. The cheapest and most fragile were clay and glue. The durable, but much more expensive, types were made of copper. Wooden type was also used from the 14th century. One of the common methods of organising this vast number of different types was to place them on two circular bamboo tables which could rotate. One table was used for the common types and the other for the rare, lesser used characters. Each table was divided into eight sections, and in each section types were arranged in their numerical order according to their listing in the “Book of Rhymes”. This was an early attempt to organise Chinese characters based on their sound and allocated a number to each character. A proof of the Chinese document to be typeset was first marked with these numbers before the type was selected and placed in the composition frame.

Tables used in early Chinese Typesetting

If a character could not be found when using wooden or clay types it was possible to create one on the spot. The Book of Rhymes was eventually replaced around 1700 by the Imperial K’ang Hsi Dictionary which organised characters by radicals, the sub-parts of a character which classify it. For example, the radical for “water” would appear as the radical in words such as “river” and “sweat”. This is essentially the same system in operation today.

So the next time we start to complain about the complexities of typesetting the Chinese language here in the Adelphi Translations Studio we should pause and give thanks for the fact that we are not hacking out new characters from a block of wood with a chisel! Now we can provide your typeset Chinese documents as a PDF ready to print, without worrying about fonts or system incompatibilities. The early Chinese typesetters from 1300 would have been impressed, we are sure.

If you found this article interesting take a look at our article ‘A Short History of Arabic Typesetting‘.