Why do people around the world keep asking the Chinese and Japanese to abandon their logographic system for an alphabet?
本文是翻译Quora中一个外国友人的回答，等孩子下课的时候在车内随手翻译，可能存在诸多不准确的地方，请见谅。（并不代表我同意或者反对原作者观点） 标题意译，因为知乎对字数有限制
Kazuho Umie (海江一帆), Non-Japanese| Live in Japan| Major in Economics| UTokyo
I would say it’s a kind of ignorance, maybe with a bit arrogance.
我会说这是一种无知，可能有点傲慢。
About a century ago, there were even Japanese and Chinese people thought they should abandon Kanji mainly for two reasons. First, for Japanese people that times, Kanji was a foreign elements from an old undeveloped country, it was a shame for them. For Chinese people that times, similar with Japanese, a part of Chinese intellectuals showed negative attitude toward traditional culture. They blamed Kanji for preventing ordinary people from knowledge. I conclude this reason as “historical reason”.
大概一个世纪以前，甚至有日本人和中国人认为他们应该放弃汉字，主要因为两个原因：首先，对于那个时代的日本人来说，汉字是一种来自于古老的没有开发的外国（中国）的元素，对他们来说这是一种耻辱。对于那个时代的中国人来说，类似于日本人，一部分中国知识分子对传统文化表现出消极的态度。他们指责汉字阻碍了普通人学习知识。我将这个理由归结为“历史原因”。
Then Kanji was indeed difficult to learn and write. However Kanji had made a compromise with it. Both Japan and China simplified their Kanji. I will show you some examples.
國家→国家、改竄→改ざん、舊字體→旧字体
然后汉字确实是难于书写和学习，然而，汉字已经为了解决这个问题而改进。包括日本和中国都简化了他们的汉字。我将展示给你一些例子
國家→国家、改竄→改ざん、舊字體→旧字体
Also, with the help of modern technology, writing speed and printing issues are not problems anymore. So, nowadays there are almost no such voices in mainstream anymore in Japan and China.
此外，借助现代技术，写作速度和打印问题都不再是问题了。所以现在日本和中国的主流都没有这样的声音。
On the other hand, there are always western people ask or even forced us to abandon Kanji.
另一方面，总有西方的人要求甚至强迫我们放弃汉字。
After WWII, GHQ wanted to force Japan abandon Kanji. They claimed that 85% of Japanese will not be able to read newspaper which was delaying the democratization of Japan. Under the order of GHQ, reading and writing tests were held around the whole nation in 1948. The result of survey showed that the literacy rate was 98% which far higher than GHQ’s expectation. In the end, they couldn’t help giving up this plan.
第二次世界大战后，GHQ想强迫日本放弃汉字。他们声称85%的日本人不能读报纸，这拖延了日本的民主化。在GHQ的命令下，1948年在全国进行了读写测试。调查结果显示，识字率是98%，远远高于GHQ的评估。最后，他们放弃了这个计划。
Nowadays, we still can find a small part of people keep asking for abandoning Kanji. They said “Don’t write Kanji, the kids can’t read them!” or “If you abandon Kanji, there will be more people want to move to Japan. ” .etc To be honest, these words sound so ridiculous to local people and totally nonsense. I wonder if they can speak Japanese which I guess not. However, one thing for sure, their attitude will not be welcomed by Japanese people. Japanese people welcome tourists and try their best to satisfy them, but they hate foreign people interfere their own business. Not to mention average Japanese people have a negative attitude towards so called “immigrants”.
如今，我们仍然可以发现很少的一部分人不断要求放弃汉字。他们说“不要写汉字，孩子们不能阅读它们”或者“如果你放弃汉字，会有更多人想来到日本”等等。老实说，这些话听起来对当地人而言十分荒谬，完全是胡说八道。我想知道是否他们能说日语。我猜他们不能。但是有一点可以肯定的是，他们的态度不会受到日本人的欢迎。日本人欢迎游客，并且尽力满足他们，但是他们不喜欢外国人干涉自己的事情。更不用说大多数日本人对被称为“移民”的人态度是消极的。
Michael J Findley, BA Bible 1979, MA Church History 1981 from Bob Jones University (1981)
The real issue is communicating with computers. Any nonASCI language is a problem. That includes Hebrew, Dravidian, Arabic, and even cuneiform based languuages. Just remember that the computer should be the tool which adapts. It should not be be the master.
真正的问题是与计算机之间的通讯，任何非ASCII 语言有问题。这包括希伯来语、德拉威语、阿拉伯语甚至基于楔形文字的语言。请记住，计算机应该是工具去适应语言，不应该以满足它为主。
Frank Zako, Mental traveler
No need to worry, there will a lot people learning Chinese in next 50 years.
There is another sacred layer of Chinese language regarding the science and technology of Daoism (nothing to do with religion) that will take another 30 years for the world to start to understand. Most Chinese don’t even know about this. All key elements of Chinese culture are unintentional low quality reprints of it.
不用担心，未来50年会有很多人学中文。
中文还有另外一个受到尊崇的语言文化是关于道家（这无关于宗教）的科学和技术。这将需要30年的时间才能让世界去理解。大多数中国人甚至不知道这个。所有关键的中国元素是非刻意的低质量的重新印刷（这段翻译的感觉不大对啊。。。）。
Jamie Oglethorpe, I like to improve my word power
I don’t think anybody is asking any such thing. Well, maybe software designers who have to deal with those languages. Their parochial needs can safely be ignored.
我认为没有人要求这种事情，好吧，也许软件设计者必须处理这些语言，他们的狭隘要求可以被安全地忽视。
The fact is that the telegraph and computers were invented by societies with alphabetic writing. It is impossible to send telegrams if all you had was Kanji. With 30 symbols at most it is obvious. Similarly, early computers were only possible with a very limited number of symbols.
事实上电报和计算机是被使用字母书写系统的社会所发明的，这很明显，如果你用电报发送30个汉字符号是不可能的。与之相似的是早期的计算机只能使用非常有限的符号。
The availability of computers made Chinese and Japanese symbolic processing possible. Naturally recording the symbols as a series of brush strokes, makes such text almost as linear as Western text.
计算机的可用性让中文和日语符号处理成为可能，将符号自然的记录成一系列的笔画的集合，使得这些文本像西方文字一样的线性化（这里地方翻译的似乎有问题）。
So the answer is that nobody else cares. We have catered for their needs with Unicode, so they can get on with it.
所以答案是没有人关心这个，我们已经用Unicode满足了他们的需求，所以他们可以继续使用它。
