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

Japan was occupied by the United States for a few years after the end of World War 2. It was the only time it was ever occupied by a foreign power. One of the lasting effects of this occupation and the decades of trading partner relations that followed was a number of loanwords from English making their way into the Japanese language.

English is not the only language Japanese has loanwords from, though. There are a lot of Chinese loanwords in Japanese (e.g. “kanji”, “zen”) as well as from Dutch and Portuguese. The English loanwords for modern/post-WWII things are largely from the American occupation.