汉字有成千上万个，尽管其中的大多数差别很细微，且只在历史文献中出现过。研究表明，日常使用的汉字大概有三至四千个。大多数早期汉字是象形字(pictographs),用简单的图画来代表字，但现代汉字中象形文字已经很少了。许多现代汉字是两个或两个以上简单文字的组合。汉字也可以因为其线条和点的排列组合方式被看成是一门抽象艺术(abstract art)。
There are tens of thousands of Chinesecharacters,though most of them are only slightlydifferent from each other and only seen in historicaldocuments.Studies show that normally three to fourthousand characters are used on a daily basis.Most ofearlier Chinese characters were pictographs-simple pictures used to mean words, but fewmodern Chinese characters are pictographs.Many modern Chinese characters are acombination of two or more simple characters.Chinese characters may also be considered to bean abstract art because of how the characters are made up of lines an
1.汉字有成千上万个，尽管其中的大多数差别很细微，且只在历史文献中出现过："成千上万"可译为tens of thousandsof; "差别很细微"即"细微区别于"可译为slightly differentfrom;"出现过"的意思也就是"被人们看见"，因此可以译为seen,用过去分词形式表示被动。
2.许多现代汉字是两个或两个以上简单文字的组合："…的组合"可译为combination of...。
3.汉字也可以因为其线条和点的排列组合方式被看成是一门抽象艺术：该句中 "因为其线条和点的排列组合方式"可译为由how引导的名词性从句，即because of how the characters...;"被看成是"可译为beconsidered to be, consider常构成以下词组：consider as(认为)、repeatedly consider(再三考虑)。
