[gaur]

> there are only pictographic characters.

Only a small percentage of Chinese characters are pictographs. Over 95% are compounds, with the first part suggesting the broad category of meaning and the second part suggesting the pronunciation.

> Each single character translates to an English word or phrase

Each single character represents one Mandarin syllable (with a very small number of exceptions, like 儿), which may or may not be its own word. Hence each character may or may not translate into an English word or phrase.