How are new words added to the Chinese language?

Question

I'm always curious to know, as the world develops and new words come into existence, how are they adopted by the Chinese language?

Is there some sort of government body that decides these sort of things, or is it just based on popular usage?

One example would be 'internet' - did someone just decide that 网 would just be related to anything connected by a network, or is there someone somewhere who makes decisions about this?

What happens when more new terms/ideas are developed, and they need a name in Chinese?

I hope this question isn't too open ended, I'm just really curious to know how new words are added.

Answer 1

For English technical term that does not yet have a translation in Chinese, maybe the first translation that got popular would be accepted.

The translation is done by the person who need to use the translation. Sometimes the original English term or explanation with be also noted before the term is generally accepted. Terms are usually translated by the meaning of the word if possible.

For Internet, in the translation process, the "net" part is translated into "网", and the "inter" part into "因特" (by sound). There is also another translation "互联网" in which no part is translated by sound.

There may be various translations for one term. So there is an official department (China National Committee for Terms in Sciences and Technologies) that will pick one (or make up one) as the official translation. But even the official translation may vary depending on the research area. Take "Internet" as an example, the committee gives the following translation in different areas:

术语        中/英文名     学科            子学科
Internet    因特网      计算机科学技术   网络与数据通信
internet    互联网      通信科技       通信网络
Internet    因特网      通信科技       通信网络
Internet    因特网      资源科技       资源信息学
internet    互联网[络]  计算机科学技术  计算机总论 

And I think this kind of official translation is only recommended, but not mandatory.

Answer 2

I think this question is about linguistic in general.

In English the same is seen in phones:

• Smartphone
• Mobile phone
• Cell phone
• Mobile
• Cell
• Hand phone

If you are familiar with cameras, following are all a bunch of new names, and many of them can refer to the same thing:

• EVIL camera
• Mirroless camera
• Interchangable lens camera
• Micro 4/3
• point and shoot
• compact camera
• digital camera
• digital compact etc

Whichever you choose to call your phone/camera can, of course, never be controlled by government ;)

So its generally adopted by how popular is the usage of the new noun is.

Answer 3

Chinese language/dialect can easily come up with words for new things, events, phenomenon, etc. because the words are actually definitions of those new things or events that are taking place. A cellphone for example is called "shou3 ji1" (手机), which means hand (shou3手) machine (ji1机); email is "dian4 you2" (电邮), which means electricity (dian4电) mail/post (you2邮), etc.