Choosing the right translation service provider for your English to Chinese Translation

Choosing the right translation service provider is as important as your product marketing strategy.

Has your company recently entered or planning to enter a new country to market your products? If so, are your documentations, manuals, marketing materials or websites translated and localised into the languages that are predominantly used in your target markets? For instance, have you translated your product documentations from English into Chinese for the China market?

While you may have plenty of literatures and information about your product in English or your local language, translating them will help consumers understand more about your products / services and also connect immediately.

With the growing importance of the China market, the demand for English to Chinese translation increases, and so does the people purporting that they can do English to Chinese translation.

You are in charge of getting the content of your company’s website, advertisements and product brochures translated from English to Chinese prior to distribution to your customers in the China market. What do you have to do to ensure that the English to Chinese translation is done properly? Who is going to the English to Chinese translation for you?

In order to not only help your potential customers understand more, but also accurately about your products and services, it is very important to get your marketing literatures professionally translated from English into Chinese.

Have you seen the results of bad English to Chinese translation? The “punishment” for the individual translators could well be some short-term career damage. But the blunder they have made might become an urban legend to the company who used the bad English to Chinese translation unwittingly. One example was KFC’s famous ‘finger lickin’ good’ tagline that was literally translated as ‘eat your fingers off’ for the Chinese market.

A bad English to Chinese translation not just burn your fingers, but can probably ‘eat your fingers off’ too.

Your English to Chinese translation partner must have well-documented qualification procedures to ensure the highest quality translations. The linguists that the English to Chinese translation partner use for your projects must be both experienced and familiar with your content and subject matter.

In order to ensure high quality, the linguistic phase of the English to Chinese translation project normally include three steps:

1. Translation,
2. Editing, and
3. Proofreading.

The translator is the “lead linguist” of your English to Chinese translation project and is responsible for converting the source content into the target language.

The copy editor then reviews, word for word, the English to Chinese translation work, verifying the accuracy of the English to Chinese translation. Finally, the proofreader examines the final version for consistency and flow of the language used in the English to Chinese translation.

Taking the time to select an English to Chinese translation partner with the skills and resources to meet your needs not only saves you time and money, but ideally, also leads to the development of a long-term partnership.

The old maxim “you can buy in your own language, but must sell in your customers’ language” is a prerequisite for both internal and external success in today’s global market. Effective communication with them is the first step towards a successful marketing strategy and it begins with understanding their linguistic and cultural differences.

Knowing that you need to do an English to Chinese translation is not enough. You must also know who are your potential customers that will be reading your English to Chinese translation? Are they Chinese in Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, Malaysia or Singapore?

Because each country expresses Mandarin in its unique way, the English to Chinese translation intended for the Singapore or Malaysia market should not be presented to the China market, even though both countries use the Simplified form of Chinese (Simplified Chinese). This principle holds true for English to Chinese translation for the Hong Kong and Taiwan market as well, which use the Traditional form of Chinese (Traditional Chinese).

Words that appear to be cognate and benign in an English to Chinese translation for one country can be misleading and offensive in another. Furthermore, sentence structure in an English to Chinese translation differs between countries even though these countries speak the same language.

While all English to Chinese translation projects follow largely similar translation workflow, each individual English to Chinese translation project presents an opportunity to adapt the English to Chinese translation process to precisely match desired outcomes. Each English to Chinese translation project is unique, so a “cookie-cutter” approach to English to Chinese translation does not work.

It is important to source and engage an English to Chinese translation vendor that takes your English to Chinese translation needs seriously. The right English to Chinese translation vendor will have at your disposal, a team of linguist and dedicated project managers that you can rely on to offer you the professional advice you need for your English to Chinese translation project.

The better your English to Chinese translation partner understands you and your product line, the more smoothly the English to Chinese translation can progress, and project management and communication protocols can be fine-tuned.