Any time a news story features comments from social media users in China, I'm always struck by how formally they express themselves on socials (example below). Is this to do with how the comments are translated, or just a feature of how Chinese language works?
Comments
I did a Mandarin course years back and the language was an odd jigsaw of a thing, based on banging concepts together.
人 (ren) = person
大 (da) = big
小 (xiao) = small
学 (xue) = study
大人 （da ren) = adult
小人 (xiao ren) = child
大学 （da xue) = university
中國人 （zhong guo ren) = Chinese person
Obviously I didn’t learn it all too well, but maybe maybe that level of concept versus a variety of words for the same thing leads to the formality in translation.
Certainly if you get the words in the wrong order when making a statement it will come off as nonsense.
Though some Chinese-American authors writing in English (Ha Jin comes to mind) also have this formality of style.