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.
Guy_H said,
September 18, 2024 @ 2:22 am
I think in this case the translation needs to be reversed: "AI can only compute, but humans can calculate".
計算 can refer to computing but 算計 does not have this meaning.
It's a bit of a pun. It is saying that humans are calculating in the sense they can scheme and plot.
9899 said,
September 18, 2024 @ 5:46 am
It seems to me that people from PRC say "APP" as three separate letters: A P P, not the "app" as in "application".
Wiwi Kuan said,
September 19, 2024 @ 12:35 am
I'm a Taiwanese who grew up speaking Chinese. In our language, both "calculate" and "compute" mean the same thing: "計算" (jìsuàn). This is just doing math or figuring out numbers.
But the word "算計" (suànjì) in Chinese means something very different. When we use this word, we're talking about sneaky behavior. It's like when someone is trying to trick others, or when they have a secret plan that might hurt someone. It can also mean being clever in a not-so-nice way, or setting up a trap for someone.
The original Chinese saying is saying that computers and AI are really good at doing math and solving number problems. That's what "計算" (jìsuàn) means.
But humans can do more than just math. We can "算計" (suànjì), which means we can come up with tricky plans or outsmart others.
WGJ said,
September 19, 2024 @ 1:29 pm
I'd say the student you've quoted lives in a blissfully ignorant bubble of metropolitan elites and rarely has meaningful conversation with their countryfolk who don't speak English. Words like "offer" and "deadline" are foreign – even in Chinese, let alone in English – to someone who operates a small shop and sells you bottled water and cigarettes.
I use English as much as Chinese in my daily life, if not more. When I speak Chinese, I use a few English words like "DNA" because the Chinese word for it doesn't have a (commonly known) abbreviated version and wouldn't be understood by 99% of Chinese speakers (but you bet the small shop owner has heard of "DNA" and has a very vague understanding of it), although I prefer to rephrase and replace DNA with genes (the Chinese word for which is one of those linguistic gems that combine phonetic and substantive translation) in a non-technical setting. I never use words like "AI" which do have a perfectly adequate and commonly understood equivalent in Chinese. And when I speak another language which also has a lot of English loan words (which language doesn't nowadays?) as well as Latin ones, I do my best to avoid those and stick to words of native origin, too.