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Have you ever needed Cantonese transcription? Were you confused by all the options?
We’ll take you through the different ways Cantonese is written, so you can figure out what works best for your purposes.
What is Cantonese?
Cantonese is a language spoken throughout Southern China and Hong Kong.
It is also the preferred language of nearly 62 million consumers, who are increasingly expecting to find technology, media, and communications in their mother tongue.
But ordering a Cantonese transcription is not as simple as ordering one in say, Korean or Japanese.
This is mostly due to the fact that Cantonese is very rarely written. And when it is written, it is often written using…Mandarin!
We’re not talking about the difference between Simplified and Traditional characters.
These are just writing systems, not languages.
Mandarin and Cantonese are different languages – they sound different, they have different grammar, they’re not mutually intelligible, and they are written differently.
When you write them down, you can choose to write (either of them!) in either Simplified, Traditional, or Cantonese characters.
Confused yet?
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Where and How is Cantonese Used?
Cantonese is a Chinese language spoken mostly in the South of China, Hong Kong, and as heritage languages throughout Malaysia and Singapore.
Yet even in majority Cantonese-speaking regions of the Sinosphere, Mandarin is exclusively used as the language of academia and government.
That means that when Cantonese speakers go to school, they are usually reading books in Mandarin, and writing their essays in Mandarin. Most business and legal documents are written in Mandarin, using Mandarin vocabulary and Mandarin syntax (word order is not always the same between the two languages).
There are a few exceptions: blogs, subtitles for television shows, newspaper columns, and transcripts of legal depositions are often written in Cantonese.
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How Is Cantonese Written?
You might already be aware that Cantonese is written using meaning-based characters instead of a sound-based alphabet. Since characters do not represent sound, they can easily be used for several different languages (in fact, Vietnamese and Korean both used to use Chinese characters as well!)
Therefore, many of the characters used to represent Cantonese are the same ones used for Mandarin.
For example, the word for “you” in Mandarin is pronounced “ni” and Cantonese is pronounced “lei” but they are written using the same character (你) because they share the same common ancestor:
However, Cantonese has a few extra characters and words that don’t exist in Mandarin, for example:
The word “what in Mandarin is “shen me” (什麼) but in Cantonese is “mat yeh”. These two words come from a completely different ancestor, and are written with very different characters (The Cantonese is “乜嘢”).
If you choose to write (or transcribe) in Cantonese (instead of Mandarin), you will be using a writing system that includes these unique Cantonese characters, and you’ll be using the word order and grammar of Cantonese.
This way, it can easily be read by a Cantonese speaker in Cantonese.
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How Do You Know What Kind of Cantonese Transcription to Order?
Cantonese transcriptions can be written with:
Mandarin Simplified Characters
If you transcribe Cantonese audio into Mandarin Simplified characters, you are essentially translating the original Cantonese audio into a new language (Mandarin). This way, the text is easily readable by Chinese speakers in China and Singapore.
However this is not the right solution if you want to have a more direct representation of the original Cantonese.
- Recommended for international Chinese audiences
Mandarin Traditional Characters
This version is also essentially a translation of the original Cantonese audio, but is more recognizable to Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong and Taiwan. It is also not a very direct representation of the original Cantonese audio.
- Recommended for Chinese audiences in Taiwan and Hong Kong
Cantonese Traditional Characters
These are a one-to-one transliteration of the Cantonese audio, making it much easier to understand the original Cantonese. However this text is not usually recognizable to Mandarin speakers, and not commonly used for official documents, academic communication, or governmental purposes.
- Recommended for very informal communication with literate Cantonese speakers, for transcription of legal depositions given in Cantonese, or the development of machine learning/AI/voice technology. TV shows often use Cantonese subtitles to better express cultural messages, and many newspapers have opinion columns written in Cantonese
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Still Need Help?
Are you having trouble deciding whether your Cantonese transcription should be Simplified or Traditional? Are you still confused as to whether it should be written with Mandarin or Cantonese characters? We’re happy to hear your situation and help you figure out what you need.
And of course, if you need your Cantonese audio to be translated into another language (such as Mandarin or English) we can do that too. We use native Cantonese speakers to transcribe the audio, and native speakers of the target language to translate into a natural and accurate final product.
Feel free to reach out to us here.