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No, "Chinese Traditional" refers to the character set used to write each character[1], but the actual text is still written according with the vocabulary and grammar of Standard Written Chinese, which is based on spoken Mandarin.

As an example, this is the sentence "Please give me his book" written in Standard Written Chinese using "Chinese Traditional" characters: 請你給我他的書。

If you use "Chinese Simplified" characters[2] instead, it would still be the same words, but some of the characters have simpler forms: 请你给我他的书。

However, both of those renderings still follow Mandarin vocabulary and grammar. Even though Cantonese speakers generally read and write Standard Written Chinese (in either Traditional or Simplified characters), if they were to actually convey that sentence in spoken Cantonese, it would actually be quite different. Written Cantonese[3] is generally only used in informal contexts, but a rendering of the sentence in Cantonese would instead be: 唔該你畀佢本書我。 (Traditional) 唔该你畀佢本书我。 (Simplified)

The written Cantonese version uses vocabulary and grammatical constructions that are not part of Standard Written Chinese, and Google Translate is currently not able to translate to written Cantonese. I've found that over time though, Google Translate has been getting better at translating from written Cantonese to English (however, for the example I just gave, it appears it still completely botches the translation; it currently thinks it translates to "You shouldn't have let her book me").

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Chinese_characters [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Written_Cantonese



I just tried Bing Translate, and even though it nominally supports "Cantonese (Traditional)", their translations don't seem to be much better for the example sentence I gave.

"Please give me his book" is translated to: 請把他的書畀我。 While it does use the usual Cantonese word for "give" (畀), the rest of the sentence still mostly uses Mandarin vocabulary and grammar, notably the 把 construction, the third-person pronoun 他, and the use of the 的 genitive particle, which aren't typically used in spoken Cantonese.

Conversely, 唔該你畀佢本書我 is translated to: "Please give him this book me." This seems to indicate that it doesn't understand Cantonese's ability to use measure words (such as 本) as genitive particles, nor does it understand that the word order of the direct and indirect objects in the sentence are switched compared to the usual order in Standard Written Chinese.


ChatGPT seems to fare much better:

> Translate "please give me his book" to Cantonese.

> > "請俾我佢嘅書" is the Cantonese translation for "please give me his book".

This appears generally fine though stylistically not as colloquial. Using 請 for "please" is considered more formal since it's usually more written than spoken. In addition, it uses the Cantonese genitive particle 嘅, though I think most speakers would prefer to use the measure word 本 in this context, but this is still perfectly grammatical. Lastly, it still retains the same word order for direct and indirect objects as Standard Written Chinese, which while not completely colloquial, is still considered acceptable when spoken.

BTW, since written Cantonese isn't standardized, 畀 can often be seen written as 俾, but they refer to the same word.

> Translate "唔該你畀佢本書我" to English.

> > The Cantonese phrase "唔該你畀佢本書我" translates to "Please give me his book" in English.

Exactly correct.


Google translate Cantonese: 唔該你畀佢本書我

Real life Cantonese: 拎佢本書黎thx


Being a native hk Cantonese speaker this is a surprise you really cannot maintain the word sequence …




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