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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I dont know what the answer is but I would to add to some answers here that its unlikely purely a function of the properties of the language, because in South East Asia / Hong Kong there are mandarin words that are translated from English or Bahasa phonetically which are not translated as such in China (for example, bus would be usually translated as 巴士 phoneticially in Singapore but as 公共汽车 (lit. Public vehicle) in China)
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