Singapore Mandarin#
The Chinese on this site is 华文, Singapore Mandarin, and not Mainland Putonghua. GFTV is a Singapore organisation, and the copy should read as though it were written there.
That is a vocabulary matter more than a grammar one, and the differences are real.
The words that matter#
| Use | Not | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 队员 | 志愿者 | volunteer, and the most visible marker of the two |
| 华文 | 中文, 简体中文 | the written language, when naming it |
| 电邮 | 电子邮件 | |
| 营运 | 运营 | operations |
| 摄影棚 | 录影棚 | studio |
| 文件 | 文档 | document, in the paper sense |
队员 is the one to get right. Nearly every posting on this site is a voluntary role, so the word appears everywhere. Nothing else on this list marks a page as written somewhere else as clearly as 志愿者 does. 队员 says joining a team, which is what a posting here is actually offering, and it carries the unpaid sense without leaning on 义工.
The exception is the translation helpers, who stay 义工 throughout. That role is granted one language at a time and cannot publish. It is a different thing from being on the team, and the two words keep it that way.
The test, when the table does not cover it#
Would it read naturally in the Straits Times, or does it read like a Beijing newspaper?
That is the whole rule. The table is the handful of cases where people get it wrong most often.
Names#
GFTV is 国际兽视, and the portal is 国际兽视入队平台. Use those anywhere Chinese is being read, and not the English strings.
A space sits between Latin and Han characters, and never between Han and Han. So it is Telegram 账户 with a space, and 关于国际兽视入队平台 without one.
The Mandarin name is not a translation of "Careers", on purpose. That word implies a salary, and every role here is unpaid. 招聘 would carry the same wrong meaning across. 入队 says join the team, which is what is on offer.
The language names itself#
In the switcher, each language is written in its own script and is never translated. English stays English and 简体中文 stays as it is, so both read the same whichever language the interface is in.
The written language is called 华文 everywhere else.
Typography, briefly#
The document is tagged zh-Hans-SG, which is what the copy actually is.
No Chinese font is named in the stylesheet, on purpose. Your own system font is already the right one, and naming a face would override a reader who has chosen their own.
When you are writing#
Check anything new against the table above. If you are correcting somebody else's wording and the only problem is one of these words, say which one. It is the quickest kind of report to act on.