How to say "AI" in Mandarin
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An eminent Chinese historian just sent these two sentences to me:
Yǒurén shuō AI zhǐ néng jìsuàn, ér rénlèi néng suànjì. Yīncǐ AI yīdìng bùshì rénlèi duìshǒ
有人說AI只能計算，而人類能算計。因此AI一定不是人類對手。
"Some people say that AI can only calculate, while humans can compute. Therefore, AI must not be a match for humans".
Google Translate, Baidu Fanyi, and Bing Translate all render both jìsuàn 計算 and suànjì 算計 as "calculate". Only DeepL differentiates the two by translating the latter as "do math".
DeepL is on the right track that jìsuàn 計算 and suànjì 算計 need to be distinguished in the sentences under consideration, but I think that suànjì 算計 might better be rendered as "compute" — in this pair of sentences.
Be that as it may, how do you say "AI" in Mandarin (which is the point of this post)? AI.
Of course, you can also translate "AI" into "réngōng zhìhuì 人工智慧" (more popular in Taiwan and the Sinophone world outside mainland China) or "réngōng zhìnéng 人工智能" (preferred on the mainland), but from observation and asking around, it appears that most Chinese who have even a passing acquaintance with what AI / artificial intelligence is prefer to refer to it as "AI" in daily discourse — even those who do not know English. In other words, not only has the Latin alphabet become part of the Chinese writing system, as we have shown numerous times on Language Log, countless English terms, even those written in the Latin alphabet, have become part of the Mandarin and other Sinitic topolect lexicons.
As a savvy M.A. student from the PRC explains:
People wouldn’t think “Oh damn this is a person who wants to brag that they know English” when we use certain English words like AI, offer, deadline, or American terms like NBC, but they would if we use other English words that are not often directly used in English, like if you use “ROI” (return on investment, a very popular term among bankers) in a Chinese conversation (e.g., zhè bǐ jiāoyì de ROI shì shénme 这笔交易的ROI是什么 ["What is the ROI of this transaction?"]), people might think you’re showing off your ability to speak English, etc.
We are already in the early stages of China Babel.
Selected readings
- "Pinyin vs. English" (10/20/23)
- "The Englishization of Chinese enters a new phase" (8/8/24)
- "China Babel" (3/26/24)
- Mark Hansell, "The Sino-Alphabet: The Assimilation of Roman Letters into the Chinese Writing System," Sino-Platonic Papers, 45 (May, 1994), 1-28 (pdf)
[Thanks to Zhaofei Chen, Xinyi Ye, Jing Hu, and Chenfeng Wang]
Jonathan Smith said,
September 17, 2024 @ 9:43 am
Re: the quote, I would read it as meaning suànji 算计 'to scheme' which is often applied transitively (算计人 etc.). The claim is untrue/facile however as people are of course eagerly using "AI" to 算计人…
Dan said,
September 17, 2024 @ 5:15 pm
人工智能, or 机器人 （not referring to robot)。But a lot of native speakers simply say AI as a loan term from English. We also have a lot of bilingual speakers of Chinese origin who prefer to say AI.