[eru]

Ascii does not include Chinese characters. It doesn't even include European alphabets. You might be talking about unicode?

> I'm no expert but doesn't chinese have single symbols/words that when translated turn into multiple words.

Often more like one Chinese character per Chinese word. But you also have compound words of multiple characters, I believe. And then, translation to English isn't word for word, either.

[seanmcdirmid]

Usually one or two characters per Chinese word, two characters being much more common for anything other than simple words. More than two characters is not unheard of for less commonly used words.