How to properly space Chinese with English and numbers in between?

Question

I'm translating an application with help of an "informal" translator - a Chinese-American staff which seems unsure about some rules I'm trying to understand.

I understand that Chinese uses no spaces, and that Chinese punctuation (except for quotes and dashes?) is full-width (which visually creates spaces after them). However, I'm not sure how to review sentences with numbers or English words. I found this article on the topic, but it seems biased towards SEO or "old rules".

Some examples that I'm unsure of (writing them with monospace font so the space is easier to notice):

• 输入至少3 个字符以完成搜索。
• 正在发送到 2 台打印机。
• 7:07 PM 自动开启
• 我们建议您改用本地 app。
• 客人Igor的订单#123 (the # is not optional)
• 此平台不支持 Apple 打印机。

Should any of those cases include spaces? If so, would it be before, after, both? What about the size - should I use a special space character (half-width?), or just "standard English space" would do? Is there any difference between common nouns ("app") and proper nouns?

I understand these are "readable" and "good enough", but since it's a wide range of users we'll be targeting, I want to understand what is, if any, the "gold standard" when mixing in foreign characters.

Semi-related questions that do not answer this fully:

• this was replied with "personal opinion", in a comment
• this is only about pure Chinese text
• this just mentions half-width space between English words

Answer 1

There are no hard rules imposed by the government or any authoritative bodies.

Some people don't care. People who do care tend to be on the "include spaces" side. (The other answers are good examples.)

If you decide to include spaces, make sure there is space on both sides. A normal English space would do. If your system supports it, you can use a more subtle space which is 1/4 of a full-width character. (That is the default setting of Adobe InDesign.)

There is no difference between common nouns and proper nouns.

Answer 2

It may be a matter of style, but I have found that having no spaces between the number or English word can make the sentence look crammed.

输入至少12个字符以完成搜索。
此平台不支持Apple打印机。

versus

输入至少 12 个字符以完成搜索。
此平台不支持 Apple 打印机。

I think the reasoning can be, when numbers and English words are used, they always have spaces between them. There are no spaces between Chinese words in a sentence, but with numbers and English words, it'd be more clear if the spaces are added so it is not as crammed visually. And I think one reason is, when the readers see 此平台不支持Apple打印机, they have to spend effort to separate the word Apple from the other characters. This would make the eyes "more busy". So it may be preferable to let the readers read with ease, rather than busy separating words in a sentence.

Answer 3

I work in localization industry for more than two decades, and I can share that the use of space is not consistent amongst linguists, especially the linguists who come from different countries/regions, with different technology background (say, who only use Word, and never used translation CAT the entire life)

However, it is advised to use a single-byte space between alphanumeric letters and Chinese characters, because it can save a lot of trouble when you deal with tokenized content.

There are some exceptions though, when we have shortcut keys in menu UI, that we will be clear by using ampersand, such as "&Save" will be "儲存(&S)", which in this case, no space is needed between alphanumeric letters and Chinese characters.

You can skip spaces when it is all Chinese, by all Chinese, I mean there will be only double-byte characters even with punctuations, for themselves already have enough spaces in the characters themselves, such as （），。；：「」『』.

So in your case:

输入至少3 个字符以完成搜索。=> 输入至少 3 个字符以完成搜索。
正在发送到 2 台打印机。=> correct as is.
7:07 PM 自动开启 => correct as is
我们建议您改用本地 app。=> correct as is
客人Igor的订单#123 => 客人 Igor 的订单 #123
此平台不支持 Apple 打印机。=> correct as is.

Another exception is that some softwares or platforms have limitations on the length of the displayed characters, such as subtitle, UI, etc., spaces can be omitted as long as they do not impact the meaning.

So, depending on the feedbacks from your clients or testers, you can create a rule about spacing, as long as it is consistent.

Cheers, Mario

Answer 4

如果你的排版系统有强大的混排能力，那么在拉丁字符和CJK字符之间插入视觉上的间隙是常见的行为，类似的表现可以在Office Word中体验到。

如果你的排版系统不受你控制，比如在浏览器这样的环境下显示混排内容，或者排版引擎本身的功能不足以支持上述机制，那么一般会插入空格来获得良好的阅读体验。一些中文社区比如Ruby China和V2EX甚至会将用户输入的文本进行处理，自动插入空格。

如果是在终端这样显示等宽字符这样较为特殊的环境下，由于空格的宽度较大，此时若使用空格则会显得较为稀疏，因此一般不做处理。

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If your layout system has powerful typesetting capabilities, then displaying visual gaps between Latin and CJK characters is a common behavior. This can be experienced in Office Word.

If your layout system is not under your control, such as displaying mixed content in an environment like a browser, or the typesetting engine itself is not powerful enough to support the above mechanism, then spaces are usually inserted to get a good reading experience between Latin and CJK characters. Some Chinese communities like Ruby China and V2EX will even process the text entered by the user to insert spaces automatically.

If it is in a special environment such as terminal and other systems that display equal-width characters within grids, since the width of spaces is large, the use of spaces will appear quite sparse. Thus, leaving as IT IS is a good choice.