Eli5: Why does it seem like Japanese often translates from English phonetically (camera = カメラ ‘kamera’) while Chinese seems to translate conceptually (照相机 ‘zhao xiang ji’ is literally “photo taking machine”)

Question

Eli5: Why does it seem like Japanese often translates from English phonetically (camera = カメラ ‘kamera’) while Chinese seems to translate conceptually (照相机 ‘zhao xiang ji’ is literally “photo taking machine”)

In: Other

Answer 1

One reason I can think of is that Japanese has a phonetic writing system (similar to an alphabet) so it is often easier to just “spell out” the foreign word using the Japanese alphabet. It is similar how to how in English, we will just use English letters to spell out Japanese words (e.g. karaoke, sushi) as opposed to making up a new English word.

However, Chinese does not have a phonetic writing system so it is often easier to just use Chinese characters to make up a new word. The new word may or may not be similar to the foreign word.

Example

Japanese: sashimi (刺身 or さしみ）

English: sashimi

Chinese: sheng yu pian (生鱼片)