Keys to successfully hiring Chinese<>English translation services
Advertising and communication agencies have very specific needs when requesting translations from Chinese or into Chinese. Whether press releases or advertising texts, this type of translation requires not only an extensive linguistic knowledge, but also a good cultural background of each country or region (China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, in this case) and how words are used.
A good advertising translation is paramount to expanding your target audience of Chinese-speaking users. Here are a few tips to keep in mind.
Remember these tips when translating your marketing content from or into Chinese:
Know your audience
Before you start translating, decide who your target audience will be. Who do you think will be most responsive to your services or products?
Find out and limit who your target audience is going to be. In this case, if you intend translating into Chinese, think about which markets you want to reach. Only China, Hong Kong, Taiwan…? Or maybe into other territories with large Chinese-speaking communitites? Always consider the local and dialectal variations of Chinese and how this may impact the recipient.
Also consider the age of your audience, as this will determine the style in the translation.Ā The more you narrow your focus by directly targeting a niche market, the more likely it is that your translation from Chinese or into Chinese will attract potential buyers.
Consider all types of publications
There are many ways to enter local Chinese markets. Expand the type of advertising and informational content to cover all of your company’s social channels.
Press releases and printed advertising material are a classic, but translating your website content into Chinese and startĀ publishing articles about products or services can be a great way to reach thousands of readers in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan.
One option is to start a profile on a social network such as Twitter or Instagram, and specifically target Chinese. You can also start an email marketing campaign targeted at Chinese!}-speaking countries. Remember to always include these new communication formats in your English-Chinese strategies.
Translate and localize (i.e. culturally adapt intoĀ Chinese)
In the marketing world, localization refers to the adaptation of all elements (from design to cultural references) for a specific audience. A small change in an audience type will increase the response rate and the number of sales.
Even if two groups speak the same language, such as Chinese, we may need different translations for each region or country (China, Hong Kong, Taiwan).
A good localization in Chinese helps us solve these problems: from everyday expression to date formats, weight units or forms of address used in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, etc.
Take every aspect into account
In an advertising translation into Chinese, not everything is text. Remember that there are also graphics, presentations and drawings that can be important to attract the attention of your Chinese-speaking users.
Changes in graphics and pictures not only affect the content, but are sometimes necessary for the readability of the translation. Sometimes we will need to make changes to accommodate the reading direction of a language (left to right or right to left), the spacing of a particular alphabet, or any features such as those specific to the Chinese language.
Always keep in mind that the space taken up by a translation may increase or decrease with respect to the original text when translating from English into Chinese or vice versa.
Do not limit your imagination
When looking for translations in Chinese for your advertising content, your initial idea in English may not work when translated into Chinese.
It is important to maintain consistency throughout the campaign: it is what will identify your brand, company or product in countries like China, Hong Kong, Taiwan… Remember that a literal translation of an English witty expression will most probably not work in Chinese.
Throughout the translation project, always think about which types of Chinese-speaking users your campaign is targeting. Be open to new ideas so your message does not get lost in translation.
How do you say āChineseā in Chinese?
Chinese: (in traditional Chinese, ę¼¢čŖ; in simplified Chinese, ę±čÆ; pinyin, HĆ nyĒ) More than a billion people speak Chinese as their mother tongue, 85% of them Mandarin, 7% Wu and 6% Yue. The Chinese region is the economy with the highest growth rates. More than 30% of the population has access to the Internet. In Hong Kong, this percentage is over 65%.
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A quick overview of the Chinese language
Based on the traditional written Wen-li and Northern Mandarin, the Beijing dialect became the new standard language Kuo-yĆ¼, which reflects a literary language that is far away from the colloquial variant.
The Chinese alphabet is a word alphabet with about 50,000 characters, of which between 3,000 and 4,000 are of general use. Characters with the same sound are distinguished by differences in tones, which gives it that special sound.
In 1956, an alphabetical reform was carried out in the People's Republic of China, in which the more complicated characters were replaced by 500 simplified characters. In Taiwan, the traditional alphabet is still used, so two alphabetic systems are used at the same time, the simplified and the traditional.