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Sort of a meta-textual question here. How would I explain to someone who’s unfamiliar with Stack Exchange what an upvote is?

The English term is probably a neologism as well, although it can be used anywhere is in place a Q&A style content rating system (this includes Reddit too).

Literally “vote up”, whereas voting refers to a collective crowd-sourced appraisal of some content; and the upward direction refers to the direction of the arrow button, which is semantically related to positive score, opposed to a downvote which gives a negative score.

点赞 obviously works, because it’s an already popular term, but it’s inaccurate. It best translates to a “like”, where there’s no potentially negative score, or where “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” do not aggregate into a single score.

How would you say “upvote” in Mandarin?

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  • Your assumption It best translates to a “like”, where there’s no potentially negative score, or where “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” do not aggregate into a single score. is not true. In China, there are a few possible words (as outlined by other answers). None of them entails that there is no negative score, or up and down scores don't aggregate. The owner of the website can choose whatever word they like. They can freely choose whether they want negative scores, whether they want the scores to aggregate, and what name they want to call the feature with.
    – Betty
    Jan 16, 2022 at 13:40

4 Answers 4

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In Chinese forum, we use the term 顶 and 踩.

顶 is like upvote and 踩 downvote.

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  • I imagine some Chinese would use FaceBook terms and say 赞 and 弹 for 顶 and 踩
    – Tang Ho ♦
    Jan 16, 2022 at 12:11
  • @TangHo I've never seen 弹 used in this way. Is it a Cantonese thing?
    – Betty
    Jan 16, 2022 at 13:42
  • @Betty see 彈 --> (2) accuse; criticize; attack in speech, and 有讚有彈 --> 有人讚賞，表示支持；也有人彈劾，表示反對
    – Tang Ho ♦
    Jan 16, 2022 at 13:53
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    But Facebook doesn't have a dislike button and has never (?) had one?
    – Olle Linge
    Jan 16, 2022 at 23:05
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    @blackgreen Or 这帖子有5个顶。
    – dan
    Jan 18, 2022 at 10:11
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Beside 贊同 (Approve) and 反對 (Oppose), in Taiwan we also use in BBS:

  • 推 (push) for upvote
  • 噓 (boo) for downvote

You can see the same words in Reddit r/Taiwan.

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To vote is 投票

A vote is 一票

I personally translate "upvote" as "加分票" and "downvote" as "減分票/ 扣分票"

我从一篇帖子中获得的最加分票数是 16 - The most upvotes I got from one post is 16

The votes people get from an election are 選票 (selection/ election vote) which is not the same as the upvote/ downvote (add point vote / deduct point vote) in SE.

An upvote is not necessary an 贊成票 (approval vote) and a downvote is not necessary a 反對票 (disapproval vote)

The classifier for an upvote is 票 or 個 as in "一票/個加分票" (an upvote)

The verb for to cast an upvote is 投, as in "被投了三票/個得分票" (was cast three upvotes)

delete vote = 删除票 close vote = 关闭票

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  • Interesting, thanks! Do you use those terms also for Reddit up/down votes?
    – blackgreen
    Jan 16, 2022 at 10:57
  • @blackgreen I never use Chinese terms for upvote in my mind. I came up with the translation just because you asked, There's no official translation for 'upvote' and literally translate it as 升票 doesn't work
    – Tang Ho ♦
    Jan 16, 2022 at 11:05
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My Personal Translation:

Upvote = 赞同(Approval)/ 有帮助(Helpful)

Downvote = 不赞同(Disapproval)/ 没有帮助(Unhelpful)

Delete vote = 删除投票，close vote=关闭投票

For your reference, Chinese Wikipedia uses 存废 to express "delete or not" similar to the delete vote here

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