国外QA问答：除了传统因素以外，还有什么原因使中国和日本继续使用“不实用”的汉字，而不使用更好的拉丁文字或阿拉伯文字？
Except from tradition, is there any reason to keep using impractical alphabets like those of Japan and China? Why not use better ones like Arabic or Latin?
译文简介
除了传统因素以外，还有什么原因使中国和日本继续使用不实用的汉字，而不使用更好的拉丁文字或阿拉伯文字？
正文翻译
除了传统因素以外，还有什么原因使中国和日本继续使用不实用的汉字，而不使用更好的拉丁文字或阿拉伯文字？
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Have you ever stopped to think about how English vocabulary seems to have no logical reason behind how words are formed? (And let's not even get into the strange spelling rules.)
Take, for instance, the English word “half.” This comes from the Saxon word “healf,” meaning part or side. If you explain this to an English language learner (or a child who's preparing for a vocabulary quiz), are they more likely to remember the word “half” now?
你有没有想过，英语单词的形成似乎没有任何逻辑上的原因？更不用说那些奇怪的拼写规则。
以英语单词“half”为例。这个词来源于撒克逊语的 "healf"，意为部分或一边的意思。如果你向英语学习者解释这个，他们现在是否更有可能记住 "half "这个词？
English vocabulary makes no sense. You simply need to memorize H-A-L-F. Asking “why” won't help. English, along with many languages that use an alphabet, produce words by stringing letters together in a manner which makes no sense to anyone except linguists. Every child (and language learner) must invest countless hours learning vocabulary… and there's no way to master the language other than rote memorization.
But let's look at the Chinese character for half:
不会
英语词汇没有任何意义。你只需要记住H-A-L-F就可以了。追根究底也没有用。和很多字母语言一样，英语就是把字母按照某种方式组合在一起产生一个新的单词，除了对语言学家以外，这个词根本就毫无意义。每个孩子要投入无数的时间来学习词汇，除了死记硬背之外，没有其他办法学会这门语言。
让我们看看中文里面“一半”是怎么写的
How many times will an English language learner need to review the word “H-A-L-F” before the word sticks? A lot more than once.
Also, here's the Chinese word for turtle:
你要复习多少次才能记住这个字？一次就够了
要复习多少次才能记住HALF这个英语单词？不止一次
我们在看看中文里面乌龟的写法：
The more I study Chinese, the more I feel like English (my native language) doesn't make sense.
Of course, not all Chinese characters are this easy to remember. Let's take a look at a more difficult example, the character meaning “happy”:
你要复习多少次才能记住这个词？
我越学中文，我越觉得英语（我的母语）没有任何意义
当然，不是所有的汉字都这么容易记。让我们来看一个更难得字，这个字得意思是“快乐”
How do you remember this one? A long time ago, the character used to look like this:
你是怎么记住这个字得？很久以前，这个字是长这个样子得：
You can clearly see a person holding two musical instruments—one in each hand. Incidentally, this character that means “happy” can also mean “music.”
Let's take a look at another character, meaning “medicine”:
你可以看到这个字里面一个人每只手里面都拿着乐器
顺便说一下，这个字除了代表快乐以外，还有音乐得意思。
让我们看另外一个字“药”
This looks almost identical to the character for “happy,” but there's an extra 艹 at the top. 艹 means “grass.” So, 艹 + 樂 = 藥 （grass + happy = medicine).
But that's not all. Suppose you're reading and come across a word you don't recognize. Suppose you see the word “pharmacy.” Unless you had previously memorized this word, there's absolutely no way you'd know what this means.
But the Chinese for “pharmacy” is 藥局
藥 = medicine
局 = office
这个字看上去和“乐”字一样，就是多了一个草字头。而这个草字头就代表了植物。所以草+乐=药
如果你正在学一门语言，你觉得记草+乐=药容易，还是记“M-E-D-I-C-I-N-E”容易？
中文得便利性还不止如此。假设你遇到了一个不认识得单词，比如“pharmacy“这个词，除非你之前记过这个词，否则你绝对不可能会知道这是什么意思。
但“pharmacy“得中文就是药局得意思
药= medicine
局= office
樂 - happy/music
爍 - sparkle (火+樂=爍… fire + happy = sparkle)
藥 - medicine
藥局 - pharmacy
藥方 – prescxtion
藥力 - efficacy (of a drug)
为了阅读英文，你必须记忆像“M-E-D-I-C-I-N-E”和“P-H-A-R-M-A-C-Y”这样很难记得词，而这两个词得意味着同一个事物。但在阅读中文得时候，你只需要记住“乐”这个字：樂- happy/music，爍 – sparkle（火花，火+樂=爍），藥- medicine，药局 – pharmacy，药方 – prescxtion，药力 - efficacy (of a drug)
And the best part about characters (at least from a language learner's perspective) is that they don't change form. I can't think of any alphabet-based language where the words don't change form. Yes, memorizing 是 (the word for “is”) is hard. But memorizing “is, am, are, was, were, be, being, been” is also hard. In Chinese, 是 is always 是.
有一段时间，我在读中文时，看到一个字，虽然从未学过，但直觉上我就是知道这是什么意思。虽然英语是我的母语，但我很少能从词根上理解一个陌生英语单词的意思。汉字最大的优点就是不用转换字形。但我想不出有什么以字母为基础得语言是不用转换字形得。是的，要记住“是”这个字（英语is ）很难，但要记住“is, am, are, was, were, be, being, been”一样也很难。在中文中，是这个字的字形是不会发生变化的。
藥 is much more compact than “medicine.”
Even 藥局 takes up less space than “pharmacy.”
China is the most populated country in the world, with approximately 1.398 billion people. It is also a multi-ethnic country, with a total of 56 identified ethnic groups; the Han ethnicity accounts for 91.51% of the total population.
汉字的另一个优点就是书写占用空间少
药比单词“medicine“简介得多
甚至药局占用的空间也比“pharmacy“少
让我们看看从中文维基百科中随机抓取的有关中国的文本
翻译过来就是
中国是世界上人口最多的国家，约有13.98亿人，同时也是一个多民族国家，共有已确认的民族56个，其中汉族人口占91.51%。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处
Chinese characters have a lot of advantages!
If you're used to an alphabet, characters can be very intimidating at first. But as you get used to them, you'll start to love them.
看到没有，中文文本要比英语的简洁很多。相较于英语，我实际上阅读中文的速度还要更快一些，尽管英语是我的母语。在休息阅读的时候的确如此，但一看科技类文章，我用中文阅读的速度就慢了下来，但这是我自己的问题，不是这门语言的问题
汉字有很多的优点
如果你已经习惯了字母，刚开始看到汉字的时候或许会感到很吓人。但一旦你习惯了以后，你就会爱上汉字
Many people who live and work in a western country feel that the whole world should use the Latin alphabet which is indeed a clever invention.
But many people who live in non-western countries such as China and Japan do not feel the same way.
If a country like China were to switch to the Latin alphabet, it would mean that most Chinese would lose the connection with the past. This is why they do not want to make the switch.
在西方国家生活工作的很多人认为全世界都应该使用拉丁文字，因为这确实是一项聪明的发明
但生活在非西方国家的很多人，如中国人和日本人，就不这样认为了
如果像中国这样的国家改用拉丁文字，这将意味着大部分中国人将失去与过去历史的联系。这就是为什么他们不愿意改用拉丁文字的原因。
Do you not think that tradition is a valuable motive?
There are miscellaneous pros and cons for using hanzis versus the latin alphabet. Yet, culture is an extremely important aspect of our lives. Chinese culture has evolved with these characters over thousands of years.
难道你不认为传统是一个非常重要的动机吗？
与拉丁文字相比，汉字有各种优缺点。但文化是我们生活中非常重要的方面。数千年来，中国文化就是随着这些汉字发展起来的。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处
Actually, the writing systems in East Asia are useful.
There are many more homonyms in Chinese and languages that have been influenced by Chinese (Korean and Japanese) than in Western languages. As a result, reading them in the Latin alphabet could get confusing. Not in Chinese characters, however, since each homonym has its separate character (based on meaning) and the gist can be easily understood.
In my opinion, much of the richness of the language would be lost if the characters were abandoned.
实际上，东亚的书写系统是很有用的
在中文和受中文(韩语和日语)影响的语言中，同音异义词比在西方语言中多得多。因此，用拉丁文字进行阅读容易让人产生困惑。但汉字就不会造成这种效果，因为每一个同音异义词的字形都是不一样的，而且很容易就能读懂。
我认为，如果汉字的话，语言的多样性就会消失。
Any educated Chinese can read Chinese books wrote 2000 years ago, I doubt any "better language " you mentioned can do this because pronunciation changes fast and evolve into dialects, and when the writing system is based on pronunciation, it also changes.
Most Modern Koreans can't read their books written in few hundred years ago because books were written in Chinese, and they abandoned characters decades ago.
And any Chinese who doesn't speak Japanese can communicate with a Japanese who doesn't speak Chinese through Chinese characters, though may with difficulty.
It is a writing system can suit multiple languages.
And, do you know how long Art of War is in written Chinese?
About 5 thousand characters.
任何受过教育的中国人都能读懂2000年前的中文书籍，我对你提到的那些所谓比汉语更加优秀的语言能否做到这一点表示怀疑，因为一门语言中，发音变化是很快的，由此就会产生不同的方言，如果书写系统根据发音系统而定的话，那么书写系统最后也会发生变化。
大多数现代韩国人读不懂几百年前写的韩国书籍，因为那些书都是用汉字写的，而他们几十年前放弃了汉字。
任何不会说日语的中国人都可以通过汉字与不会说中文的日本人进行交流，尽管可能会有些困难。
这套书写系统可以适应多种不同的语言
你知道《孙子兵法》的中文版篇幅有多长吗？只有五千字。
All languages are limited in some way. The advantage of Chinese scxt is that is a lot more compact than Latin scxt. You can say a lot in a very short space. With the Latin scxt you still have to memorize a lot of root words and to someone new to the language it could all look the same.
Of course Chinese scxt takes longer to learn so that is a serious disadvantage no doubt.
所有的语言都有自己的局限性。汉字的优点是比拉丁文字更加的简洁。在有限的空间内，你可以表达很多的内容。对于拉丁文字，你必须记住很多词根，对于刚刚接触这门语言的人来说，每个拉丁文字看起来都一样。
当然，汉字要花很长的时间才能学会，毫无疑问，这成为了它的一大缺陷。
Impractical? That must have been the most ignorant and arrogant view on human languages.
Describe to me then, how is Arabic or Latin “better” than the rest? Being easier to read and write is a benefit, sure. But that hardly makes the system better. Only children would insist on making everything “easy”.
I propose we all learn to speak binary. Look at the simplicity and beauty of 0s and 1s!
不实用？这一定是对人类语言最无知最傲慢的观点
那么请告诉我，阿拉伯语或拉丁语为什么比其他语言“更好”? 当然，更容易阅读和书写是一个好处。但这不足以说明他们整套书写系统就比中国好。只有孩子才会要求让一切变得更加简单
我建议大家以后都去学说二进制，欣赏一下二进制下0与1的简单和美丽
They have traditions way older and longer than does English.
中文的历史要比英语悠久的多。
Wow. What a linguistically chauvinist way of looking at other cultures. What you might consider impractical is not for another, so it would benefit for you to get your head out of your ethnocentric ass.
这是一种以语言沙文主义的方式来看待其他文化。你认为不实用的东西或许别人不这样觉得，摆脱种族优越感对你来说有好处。
Zihao 陈
人类的语言，换句话说，就是一种编译信息的方法。使用的时间越久，使用的聪明人越多，那么就越有效。我认为英语在前沿科研领域是一门很有效的语言，但同时，随着词汇量越来越多，英语正变得越来越复杂。