Language desk
< June 24	<< May \| June \| Jul >>	June 26 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

June 25

Word count in Chinese

Does anyone have the character count of the Chinese translations of Harry Potter novels or something similar where the word count in English or other European languages is widely known? Considering that written Chinese doesn't separate words, I'm instead trying to figure out how the character count relates to word count in Latin script-using languages. 31.217.40.73 (talk) 18:10, 25 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Traditionally in Chinese, most morphemes were exactly one syllable, and so were written with one character. That's less true in modern Mandarin, which has a much lower number of distinct syllables than in ancient Chinese, and correspondingly has more two-syllable words (written with two characters) than ancient Chinese did. (Vietnamese is an example of a modern language which is more strictly monosyllabic than modern Mandarin.) It would require a somewhat sophisticated linguistic analysis to group together polysyllabic words in a lengthy Chinese written text. I can't help you with character counts of Harry Potter books, but at one point in my life I pondered deeply over the very different word-count of the original Hebrew (and a little bit of Aramaic) of the Hebrew Bible, vs. the word-counts of English translations of the same books... AnonMoos (talk) 19:35, 25 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

What you say about the Bible is extra intriguing, I've compared word counts of various texts in several European languages I speak, and not only are the word counts very close (<5-10%), but the character counts too! And that's considering how languages like German use huge compound words, Slavonic have a ton of inflections, and English both has articles and needs prepositions and pronouns everywhere. 31.217.9.63 (talk) 15:54, 26 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Vietnamese is not all that monosyllabic. It's just that syllables are written separately, so that the spelling isn't confused, when they are run together in Pinyin. Compare Ha Noi and Henei, Bac Kinh and Beijing for two capital cities (sorry no diacritics). Itsmejudith (talk) 19:23, 27 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

ItsMeJudith -- Place names and loanwords don't really count. "Transparent" compound forms, where both the elements of the compound still exist independently in the language with more or less the same meaning that they have in the compound, also don't count. (It's notable that many of the polysyllabic words in modern spoken Mandarin Chinese are not transparent.) Vietnamese is certainly more monosyllabic than modern Mandarin Chinese, and possibly the most monosyllabic non-minor language (i.e. spoken by at least tens of millions of speakers) which exists today... AnonMoos (talk) 13:48, 28 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Hogwarts school song in Chinese has 1.86 as many characters as words in the English version (or the other way round, 0.54 words:character). That's for the first one, simplified, not traditional. There is unfortunately not a complete free Chinese Harry Potter book on that site, but there are a lot of extracts. Like AnonMoos says, this isn't a comparison of word counts. Card Zero (talk) 20:52, 25 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

These three sites all claim that the Traditional Chinese translation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone contains 228000 characters. That number likely derive from the same source.

1. "字数 228000"[1]

2. "字数:228千字" [2]

3. "字数 228千" [3]

Daniel T Wolters (talk) 22:09, 25 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting, considering the English version has 76900 words, that's almost exactly 3:1 ratio characters per word or 1:2 Chinese characters per Western character! 31.217.9.63 (talk) 15:54, 26 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It may not be safe to assume that a translation covers all the text of the original, unless a bilingual reader confirms it. Notoriously, as the novels in John Norman's Gor series began to contain increasingly extended scenes of bondage sex, the publishers of the German translations began to shorten or omit them without telling him.

J. K. Rowling's HP series didn't feature comparable, 'removable' material – some objected to the 'magical' content as anti-Christian, but it would have been impossible to excise it – but the books did become increasingly long as the series progressed, so some publishers of translations might have wanted to edit them down somewhat (something which the originals would have benefited from, in my doubtless unpopular view). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.201.73.76 (talk) 13:28, 27 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with you. The fourth book was so big and flabby, and so obviously suffered from "author-has-got-too-big-to-edit" syndrome, that I gave up after it and never read the rest of them. ColinFine (talk) 11:07, 29 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Bear in mind that transliteration from English to Chinese frequently increases the character count to match the syllable count. Washington -> Hua Sheng Dun. An exception is California -> Jia Zhou. My point is that the characters’ names would boost the character count by quite a bit. DOR (HK) (talk) 03:47, 2 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

How to best communicate X number of solar days in written English

In written English business communication, "call me in 8 days" is slightly ambiguous. If the writer is communicating from a business source, they could mean:

Meaning A. "call me in 8 business days"

Meaning B. "call me in 8 solar days"

So to be perfectly clear and precise, and to avoid any possibility of misunderstandings, if the writer meant to convey Meaning A, they should write "call me in 8 business days" instead.

What is a clear and concise way to convey Meaning B in written English business communication?

I can think of several candidates, but they are not natural sounding enough of me:

1. "call me in 8 solar days" (too scientific sounding; sounds unnatural since no one actually says this)

2. "call me in 8 natural days" (ironically sounds unnatural since no one actually says this)

3. "call me in 192 hours" (involves math, also changes the meaning. Meaning B technically means: "call me any time within the 8th solar day from today") Daniel T Wolters (talk) 22:25, 25 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Calendar days. Iapetus (talk) 23:00, 25 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

English has the word Nychthemeron, but it's very rarely used. By the way "8 business days" doesn't mean the same as "8 calendar days", since "business days" usually includes only Monday through Friday. "Solar days" might suggest a contrast with "sidereal days" (some Hindu calendars are actually based on sidereal days), while "natural days" might suggest a preoccupation with times of sunrise and sunset... AnonMoos (talk) 00:06, 26 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you both. Calendar days is perfect. Daniel T Wolters (talk) 00:39, 26 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe this is a case of British English being different from American English, but I can't imagine anyone in the UK saying "call me in eight days". They would say either "call me on the 13th" or "call me Friday week" both of which are unambiguous. In any case, "days" over here always means calendar days unless qualified as "working days" or "business days", although since some businesses these days operate six or seven days a week, such expressions can also be ambiguous. Shantavira|^{feed me} 08:54, 26 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

As an American, I would interpret "Call me in eight days" as being 8 calendar days, not 8 business days, even in a business setting. But I would definitely think it odd that they had phrased it that way and would probably confirm by saying "On July 4th?" (or whatever it was). To "be perfectly clear and precise, and to avoid any possibility of misunderstandings", the writer should specify the precise date, e.g. "Call me on July 4th", in the first place. Quite apart from the issue of business versus calendar days, if I send an e-mail to someone in my company at 5:30 or 6:00 pm, there's a good chance they won't see it till the next day. So would the 8-day countdown start on the day the e-mail was sent or the day it was read? For this reason, I try to avoid terms like "today" and "tomorrow" in my professional e-mails. —Mahāgaja · talk 22:19, 26 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You could also say, "Call me by the end of the day on July 5, 2022." Matt Deres (talk) 15:44, 28 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]