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”)
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Japanese has three types of writing and two of those have something similar to an alphabet. Chinese uses only characters with no alphabet.
It makes more sense to use the characters that actually explain what a camera is. Chinese doesn’t use an alphabet so using characters that mean something totally different to sound like words is not a concept and makes things more confusing. Some characters are used phonetically but for foreign words and brands. Think of Chinese characters as individual meanings and less like letters.
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