Chinese (中文)

Chinese (zh, zho) is a world language. Wikidata records about 1.3B speakers. It is written in Chinese characters and simplified Chinese characters.

Choose Simplified (mainland China, Singapore) or Traditional (Taiwan, Hong Kong) characters. Text is much shorter in characters but not in reading time; no spaces between words.

Text translated from English into Chinese typically becomes 30–70% shorter.

In the United States, 3,549,780 people aged 5+ speak Chinese at home (Census ACS), and 1,815,921 of them (51%) speak English less than "very well" — a key indicator of demand for Chinese translators and interpreters.

Translation guides

• English → Chinese translation
• Chinese → English translation

Rates for Chinese translation

Chinese falls in our east asian band: roughly $0.10–$0.22 per word for general commercial work. These are indicative ranges, not quotes — specialised, certified and rush work costs more, and literary translation is usually priced per 1,000 words.

For context, the median salaried translator or interpreter in the US earned $60,170 in May 2025 (BLS). See salaries by state →

Where Chinese is spoken in the US, state by state →