Chinese

How to get natural Chinese out of Syntic models, and what to check before you ship. The general rules for every language are on Work in other languages.

At a glance

Register and form of address

Simplified and Traditional characters are not interchangeable for readers; vocabulary also differs (软件 / 軟體 for software). Always state which one you want, not just “Chinese”.

Numbers, dates and currency

Use full-width punctuation (，。：) in Chinese text. Large numbers group by 万 (10⁴) and 亿 (10⁸) in prose; say if you need Western grouping. Dates: 2026年11月5日.

Common pitfalls

• Without spaces, length limits in characters, not words, are what matter: “under 200 characters” is clearer than “under 100 words”.
• Brand names and product terms: give the official Chinese name if one exists, or tell the model to keep the Latin name.
• Polite second person: 您 is expected in customer service in mainland usage; 你 reads as casual.

A system prompt line that works

Writing the language instruction in Chinese itself is a strong signal:

请用简体中文回答，语气礼貌专业，称呼用户为“您”，回答不超过200字。

(Answer in Simplified Chinese, polite and professional, address the user as 您, no more than 200 characters.)

Keep the rest of your instructions in whichever language your team maintains best; the model follows mixed-language system prompts reliably, and the reply language follows this line.

Test before launch

1. Collect 30 or more real Chinese messages, including short, misspelt and mixed-language ones.
2. Have a fluent speaker grade replies for correctness, register and naturalness; then calibrate a rubric grader on their grades (Evaluate).
3. Check rendering in your actual UI: line breaks, truncation and fonts.
4. Re-run the set whenever you change the prompt or the model.