Could a translation error lead to squares to not be considered as rectangles? (Mandarin)

Question

I'm reading a certain set of kindergarten/lower primary maths textbooks that is written by North American authors for an Asian company.

Whenever students are asked to identify the number of rectangles in a given picture, the answer booklet gives the number of oblongs instead of the number of rectangles.

While the topic may be too advanced for kindergarten students, the maths textbooks indeed explicitly say at the bottom of the first page of a textbook at the very first level to tell students that squares are special types of rectangles, where levels 1-4 are for kindergarten students.

Additionally, the accompany guide for teachers devotes a whole page of discussion as to how to teach that squares are special types of rectangles. There's even a paragraph about teaching to kindergarten students. The authors/some of the co-authors of the teacher guides are also authors/co-authors of the textbooks. They have also said that if students are taught that squares are not rectangles, then they will have misconceptions later.

Perhaps, the ones who wrote the answer booklets were not fluent in English while the ones who wrote the textbooks were.

For example

[picture with 4 circles, 2 triangles, 3 square rectangles, 2 oblong rectangles for a total of 5 rectangles]

Circle ___

Triangle ___

Square ___

Rectangle ___

The answer key would give only the numbers:

4

2

3

2

So, the last line is wrong since it should be 5.

Could this happen in Chinese? Or a Chinese dialect? I mean, is there something specific about the translations of any of the following words 'rectangle, square, oblong, quadrilateral, quadrangle, parallelogram, trapezoid/trapezium, rhombus' that would cause such confusion? I guess the translator/s thought that when English speakers say 'rectangle', it means 'oblong in their language/dialect, but I don't see that as specifically a problem for this particular language.

By the way, are squares considered rectangles in China? Apparently, these things can vary by state, curricula, culture, time, etc. Please provide a document from the education department of your government or something.

Related:

In Korea, are squares considered rectangles?

Are kindergartners supposed to be steered from squares being rectangles?

In what curricula are “rectangles” defined so as to exclude squares?

Why do we have circles for ellipses, squares for rectangles but nothing for triangles?

What are/should kids (be) taught about the colour of the sun?

Answer 1

My guess is it depends if rectangle is translated as:

1. Oblong
2. Quadrilateral

Could be the case that the teaching is for young children, where the word / concept of rectangle vs Oblong vs Quadrilateral might be difficult to understand, but it is essential for them to differentiate between square and Oblong

Others (parallelogram, trapezoid/trapezium, rhombus) does have a specific name and are not confused with rectangle.

Answer 2

Your question does not make it very clear, but since you are posing this question on the Chinese Language site, I am assuming the kindergarten books you are referring to are in Chinese, by American writers.

When you say "square rectangle", I assume you are referring to a shape with 4 equal sides and 4 right angles? And "oblong rectangle" is one with 2 pairs of equal sides and 4 right angles? To many people, the first shape is called a "square" and the second a "rectangle". Note that I am not trying to correct the usage of your English words. I am simply wanting to make sure we are talking about the same things.

In Chinese, a square is 正方形, rectangle is 長方形, and a shape that has four right angles without specifying the lengths of the sides is simply 方形. I am guessing the writers are trying to teach young children basic shapes with 3 angles 三角形 versus 4 angles 方形 versus no angle 圓形.

If they are asking for the number of 方形, then 5 is the correct answer, as both squares and rectangles fall under the more general shape 方形.

Answer 3

I think I've found the confusion.

ABC English to Chinese's definition of oblong is

长方形(的)

but then their Chinese to English definition of 长方形 is

Rectangle

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Back to what you said:

Whenever students are asked to identify the number of rectangles in a given picture, the answer booklet gives the number of oblongs instead of the number of rectangles.

It seems that oblong rectangles and rectangles are not specifically distinct in many Chinese dictionaries.

Answer 4

i think the question is not good enough. a principle of multiple choices question is: the choices are mutually exclusive, that they do not overlap.

though the question is asked about the number of each choice, there's strong tendency that answerer would think choices are mutually exclusive in the question.

that's why they said 3 square & 2 rectangle.

a better approach would be asking the number of e.g.: square, circle, triangle and pentagon. in which all are mutually exclusive here.