"Yao gan", Remote Sensing in Chinese
China is known well as a country having the long history said to have continued for 4000 years or 5000 years.
Japan received variouse influences of Chinese culture since ancient times. One of the representative is kanji (Chinese character). In Japan, remote sensing is often translated by the Japanese kanji word "en kaku tan sa(=remotely controlled exploration)", but now it became to be common to say "remote sensing".
In China, "yao gan(=sensing from the distance)" is the translation of remote sensing.
Recently, a new Chinese word of "kuai niao"can be found frequently when we browse a Chinese satellite-related site in the internet. It is a translation of the American high resolution satellite "QuickBird".
Chinese uses a kanji of an ideograph. Therefore, they translate a forign language into a word of their own language in this way when it is difficult to translate it into a kanji literaly, and it seems that they often use it as a Chinese translation.
Shown right are some remote sensing-related terms in Chinese.
Introduction of Tokai University Rseach & Information Center（Chinese）:
