• homicidalrobot@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      Because the way they write numbers is generally misunderstood in the west. Wan, the ten thousand character, and Yi, the hundred million character, are typically the crux of translating big numbers like this.

      万 (wàn) comes up the most often and is the largest stumbling block for most people learning Mandarin numbers. In English, numbers are usually broken up into chunks of three digits. Because of 万 (wàn), it’s easier to break numbers up into groups of four in Mandarin. In English, we split “twelve thousand” numerically into “12,000” (chunks of three digits). Split it the Chinese way, “1,2000,” and the Chinese reading “一万两千” (one wan and two “thousand” = yīwàn liǎngqiān) makes more sense.

      Not saying the figure isn’t exaggerated, but holy shit it’s obvious why it’s translated this way in articles if you look even slightly beyond the surface.

      • 小莱卡@lemmygrad.ml
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        15 hours ago

        you’re asking americans to see things beyond themselves, there are only a handful of more difficult things.

      • sik0fewl@lemmy.ca
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        15 hours ago

        What does this have to do with Tech Radar not using Gbps in the title like they do in the article?

        • homicidalrobot@lemm.ee
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          6 hours ago

          Did you even read my comment? It’s a 5 digit figure because they translated lazily and that’s how it was written in Chinese.