Software Internationalization Guide

Software Characteristics That Vary by Locale
Software Internationalization Guide—526225-002
2-3
East Asian
Each ideographic writing system has a name. Hanzi identifies the Chinese ideographic
writing systems (Traditional and Simplified Chinese); Kanji is the Japanese ideographic
writing system; Hanja is the Korean ideographic writing system. Together, the Chinese,
Japanese, and Korean ideographs are referred to as the Han, shown in Figure 2-4.
Chinese
Chinese text consists exclusively of ideographs called Hanzi. Two versions of Hanzi
exist—Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese.
Taiwan, the Republic of China, uses the complex Hanzi set known as Traditional
Chinese. In the People’s Republic of China, the government has simplified some of the
ideographs and eliminated others. The result is the smaller, simpler set of ideographs
known as Simplified Chinese.
Figure 2-3. Chinese Ideograph of a Horse
Figure 2-4. The Han Ideographic System
Han
Hanzi Kanji Hanja
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