Which of these two should be preferred: "sinification" or "sinicization"?
This seems to point directly to Google Ngrams on those words to see what the rest of the (English speaking) world actually does:
I added in the British English spelling, too.
Note that 'sinification' has the longer history, but recently 'sinici[z/s]ation' has become more popular.
To extract a data of word creation from these graphs is a bit iffy; you'd really need to check all the occurrences in the links from that site.
The veribifiers '-ize/-ise' and '-ify' are both productive. I can't seem to tell a pattern in the contexts where one is favored over the other, except that if you're starting with an adjective ending in '-ic', the '-ize/-ise' sounds way better.
Well most of these words seem to use the ise/ize form, e.g.:
- Anglicisation/Anglicization
- Germanisation/Germanization
- Arabisation/Arabization
There's Russification of course, but I think this is irregular simply because the word Russicisation is rather clumsy.
So, I would go with Sinicisation/Sinicization by default.
Looking at these, both suffixes are very similar. I looked into the meaning of each which are also rather similar. That said, it seems that '-ization'leans more toward changing from one to another where as '-cation' can more often be in an originating process such as fabrication.
Definition of -FICATION from Your Dictionary.com
- Production; making.
Origin: Latin -ficātiō, -ficātiōn-, from -ficātus, past participle of -ficāre, to make, from -ficus, -fic.
Definition of -IZE from Merriam-Webster
: cause to be or conform to or resemble : cause to be formed into (2) : subject to a (specified) action (3) : impregnate or treat or combine with b : treat like c : treat according to the method of
: become : become like b : be productive in or of : engage in a (specified) activity c : adopt or spread the manner of activity or the teaching of