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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For the Chinese writing system, all the letters are tied to certain meanings. So even if you just need to mimic the sounds of a foreign word, the result is bound to have some meaning on it, intentional or not. So how do you approach this? It’s preferable to try to translate the concept entirely (camera -> 照相机). However, there are bound to be times when this won’t work because there’s no proper equivalent. In that case you would try to mimic the sounds (Coca-Cola -> 可口可乐).
The situation is different for the adjacent countries like Japan and Korea. Their writing system has the phonetic letters available (Japanese: hiragana/katakana, Korean: hangul) in addition to the Chinese-based letters (Japanese: kanji, Korean: hanja). Like the Latin alphabet, the phonetic letters don’t carry any meaning, but just the sound.
So if you want to bring in a new word from another country, you have much more flexibility – you can either translate the concept with the Chinese letters and display it as is or with the phonetic letters, or you can just forgo the concept and transliterate with the phonetic letters directly.
In the case of the former, the Japanese word for camera is しゃしんき (写真機 *shashinki*) and Korean, 사진기(寫眞機 *sajingi*). In the case of the latter, the same word in Japanese is カメラ *kamera* and in Korean, 카메라 *kamera*.
So why does it feel like the latter is happening a lot more? That’s more of the “style of the times” thing. In the old days (from around 19th to mid-20th century) the general populace were very unfamiliar with English. Thus it was better to translate the concept to get the meaning across. But as English made inroads, more and more people didn’t mind just importing the words into the vocabulary wholesale. The camera existed long enough to see the preference shift from one way to another.
In addition to the kanji characters borrowed from China which tell you nothing about how it should be pronounced, Japanese also has two phonetic syllabaries that can easily be used to represent the sound of a word so it can be pronounced at sight. There is a specific one, katakana, which tends to be used for foreign words. That’s why ka-me-ra (from English), ra-me-n (from Chinese) and ku-ra-n-ke (from German) are written that way.
Chinese characters work differently, and don’t tell you how they are pronounced just by looking, although there is a convention so that they can be used phonetically. It just results in a fairly nonsensical “meaning” when you do. The country name “Canada” can be rendered as 加拿大 (Jiānádà) which is pretty close phonetically, but means roughly “add take big”.
So instead, in Chinese a new word is often created that’s evocative of the item or product. Again, using a country name, the United States of America is rendered as 美国 (Meiguo), which means “beautiful country”.
I am doubtful of the answers being put forth in this thread focusing on the linguistic differences between Japanese and Chinese. (Fwiw I’m a native Chinese speaker and have learnt Japanese in university, but I’m by no means a linguist) While Chinese is a tonal language, I don’t see it as a limiting factor to borrowing words from foreign sources. Chinese has plenty of loanwords from various sources (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_loanwords_in_Chinese). It being tonal, and each word having a separate existing meaning, does not hinder transliteration. Chinese speakers know where a word is being transliterated and won’t look at each character in its individual form, and end up confused by the meaning.
Conversely, it’s not always the case that Japanese transliterates all their loanwards. For example, 飛行機 (hikouki) means aeroplane,
冷蔵庫 (Reizōko) means fridge, 自転車 (Jitensha) means bicycle. And these are loanwards which would have been introduced around the same time as the camera.
I suspect the answer is more cultural and historical. A lot of the loanwards in Japanese we see are relatively modern imports which would have been brought in during either the Meiji period where they were opening up to the West, or post WW2 where they were under American management and exposed to a lot of American culture. This would have led to an influx of foreign words and concepts that (perhaps against their will) would have been incorporated wholesale into the Japanese language. It perhaps also helps that Japanese has the katakana script, which iirc post WW2 was formally utilised solely for foreign loanwords. So in a sense, there is a formal categorisation to dump all the fancy new words being introduced from other countries, rather than having to put thought into translating it by into existing Japanese vocabulary.
Conversely, China in its various forms has always been more insular compared to Japan. And in its history within Asia, it has more often been the major cultural exporter rather than importer. When you look at more recent interactions between China and the West (like 1800s onwards) it has been much less open and enthusiastic than Japan’s approach. So (and a historian can correct me here) my impression is that they would rather stamp their own identity on these words by converting them into legible Chinese characters, rather than just transliterating it. There is also an added benefit that translating it into existing terms allows the loanword to be more understandable to a layperson reading it. I’ll just copy an example from wiki here:
> For instance, while the loanword for ‘penicillin’ is 盘尼西林 (pánníxīlín), a neologism that ‘translates’ the word was later coined, 青霉素 (qīngméisù), which means ‘blue/green mold extract/essence’.
In this case, the neologism helps make it more understandable at face value than a pure transliteration.
But of course, there has been a change in more recent times in Chinese, and you do see a lot more loanwards directly imported and transliterated (or sometimes just used in English letters) as the newer generations are increasingly exposed to the rest of the world and their ideas. In fact with the rapid speed of digital and internet advancements these days, I’d say aint nobody got time in China to develop a new combination of characters for every new online term that pops up. Like there’s a proper Chinese word for app (on your phone) but these days they just say app in China like the rest of the world.
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.
Japanese has a phonetic alphabet which allows them to just directly lift foreign pronunciations of words without having to dedicate a character to it. Chinese does not, so if you try to use characters you end up creating a double meaning, so might as well just stick to describing the meaning of the word
I’m inclined to agree with the other commenters who are saying that it’s more about the trends of the era when those loanwords came into use more than anything else. There are awkward phonetic transliterations like [德謨克拉西 (démókèlāxī)](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%BE%B7%E8%AC%A8%E5%85%8B%E6%8B%89%E8%A5%BF) that get dropped for more convenient words, and there are others that stick around. Other Chinese languages pick up phonetic English loanwords too, I’ve heard that Shanghainese is supposed to have a lot of them. Loanwords can be picked up from languages other than English too, for example, Taiwanese Hokkien has several from Japanese.
During the Meiji restoration and through WWII, the Japanese seemed to prefer coining new words using kanji rather than doing phonetic translations, which is called [和製漢語 (wasei-kango)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasei-kango). A bunch of these have made their way back into Chinese too, so it’s possible that some of the conceptually translated Chinese words you’re describing were actually coined in Japanese first.
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)
I don’t agree with the answers that claim tones are a reason for the difference. Tones don’t make any difference.
There are plenty of Chinese words that are translated phonetically, like people’s names.
Many Chinese words tend to be meaningful. Like “happy” consists of the characters “open heart”.
Why not use a meaningful word to describe something instead of random characters?
I think it boils down to philosophy. Chinese language likes to have meaningful words whenever possible. If not possible, then use phonetic translation.
As an aside, the origin of the word camera is not English but Latin, and used in many other languages, so we’re all borrowing it.
BTW, Japanese can be tonal for some words as well, it is just not a main part of the language.
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