Re: THEORY: Expanding in translation?

T. A. McLeay wrote:
> MorphemeAddict@WMCONNECT.COM wrote:
>> I've gotten two answers from Cucumis about the difference in average length
>> of translations to traditional Chinese vs. simplified Chinese.
>>
>> The first was that people are more careful and formal when writing in
>> traditional characters, less so in simplified characters.
>>
>> I don't see how that can be true.
>>
>> The second was that there just isn't very much traditional Chinese text to
>> compare the simplified text to, so the averages are different because of a
>> paucity of data (small sample size).
>>
>> I'm going with the second reason.
>
> Isn't Traditional Chinese still preferred in Hong Kong, Singapore,
> Taiwan etc.? Of course there would be less writing due to a lower
> population, but surely it's not so small an amount that results begin to
> be wrong? There'd still be millions of users in Hong Kong alone...
Hmm, isn't Hong Kong Cantonese-speaking? That could explain the
difference, if the Traditional Chinese text is mainly Cantonese,
Taiwanese, etc. and the Simplified Chinese text is mostly Mandarin.

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