Everyone is talking about how much the internet has prolonged business potential. There will be over 2 billion users on the internet by the end of 2009 and according to Google, there were 8 billion websites in 2005; a number that is still increasing. China makes up one third of the world population and is the largest single language market in the world now. Since China has opened its doors to international business and the internet, it is successfully then the largest market in the world. The Chinese government’s promise to ensure everyone in China has access to the internet by 2012 means this market is primed to explode in the next two years. If your intention is to expand your business into China via the internet then you need to make sure that your website copy contains certified Chinese translation.
90% of the Chinese population is educated, but only in native Chinese. While the government has started to encourage English as a second language, to effectively vie in this market your product literature needs to undergo an English Chinese translation. This is no small task actually. While the grammar is in many ways similar to English, Chinese is a character based verbal communication. The roman letters of English can be handled with a 16 bit character code system but because there are over 10,000 “characters” in the Chinese language, it needs a 32 bit character code system in reality.
Many software packages already hold up a Chinese language capability, but just because your word processor may be able to create Chinese characters, doesn’t mean it can offer English Chinese translation or effectively handle the job of creating Chinese copy. Chinese Translation, as with any translation, needs to read obviously to your target market. There are four main dialects of the Chinese language basically. If you’re marketing to Taiwan, the dialect you will want your Chinese translation in will be dissimilar than if you are marketing to Beijing. Just running your documents through an electronic translator is not enough so you
