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As asked,
Is the traditional form of 复 always used in “翻天復地" and why?
I assume it’s because the simplified form is one of those odd ones that isn’t a one to one mapping, so the traditional form is used for clarity?
If so, is there a rule about when the traditional character is preferred?
@johan is correct. 翻 and 覆 are the same in traditional and simplified.
What I was seeing is 飜, which is a variant that looks more complicated, so I assumed it was the traditional.
And I was also looking at the wrong entry for 覆, here, which shows that 覆 is only used as a variant of 复 or 復 when it means “to reply to a letter” and not as used in the idiom.
Just a noob making noob mistakes, which I apologize for. Thanks for taking the time to answer my question :)
The form is 翻天覆地。
Other form is using simplified Chinese . Applicable to communications but when it comes to traditional form, only 翻天覆地
Just a small correction, it should be written as "翻天覆地"
覆 has two meanings:
覆 is a variant of 复 (standard simplified)/復 (standard traditional) which means "to reply to a letter."
覆, in a more standard way, means "to overturn" "to cover" "to capsize." In this definition, it retains the same look in both Traditional and Simplified.
The idiom uses the latter usage.
