A majority of western business people who have business in China or with Chinese companies have worked with an interpreter. Most often, the interpreter will be a native of China. This can be helpful or problematic depending on how you handle your communications. There are a few things you can do to avoid problems and help your interpreter.

Regional usage, grammar, and pronunciation vary…

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By Shizeng Guo

China has 234 million Internet users, many people may want to know how they can advertise their website on Chinese Internet so that they can benefit from this huge market. Well, if you already have a website, let me tell you the how-to’s.

1. You need to make a Chinese website. Yep, you will need a Chinese website. The reason is that Chinese language is the dominant language in China. Even though there is a small portion of population in China who has good command of English, most people in China speak, read and communicate in Chinese language. There are quite several Chinese dilates including Gan, Guan (Mandarin or Beifang), Kejia (Hakka), Min (including the Hokkien and Taiwanese variants), Wu, Yue (Cantonese) and etc. But in writing, there are only two types of Chinese characters: traditional Chinese and simplified Chinese. If you are targeting Chinese speakers in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, you need to have your website translated into traditional Chinese. Read the rest of “How to Advertise Your Website in China” or post a comment

By Terri Morgan

Problems that may result from cultural differences in business are compounded by the fact that even though a native speaker of one language has learned the other person’s language, he or she may not have been sufficiently exposed to actual usage of the target language. Mistakes in usage can occur even when grammar and pronunciation are correct.

Until recently, few Americans had been directly exposed to Chinese language and even fewer had learned how to speak Chinese. This is changing. Beginning in the 21st century, more and more people outside China have begun learning the language.

It is important to distinguish ethnicity, nationality, and language. This is done naturally by most western people since western nations have many generations of immigrants from varied ethnic backgrounds. An American whose grandparents immigrated to the US from China may not speak Chinese at all or could be learning it as a second language. It is not as common for Chinese people to make these distinctions. Read the rest of “Language and Communication in China” or post a comment

Have you heard about L10N, G11N and i18n? L10N is abbreviation of “Localization” (or spell as Localisation); there are 10 characters between first L and the last N. In similar, G11N refers to Globalization – 11 characters between G and N, and i18n for internationalization.

It is said these slangs firstly appear among software engineers. Internationalization (i18n) is the process…

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China is much bigger than Europe. Most people are well aware of that. Also the country is not around the corner, this as well is common knowledge. Although we have quite some general knowledge about China, a lot of important business-related knowledge is not known. For instance the banking sector is still highly regulated, foreign currency exchange from RMB to any other currency is not so easy and business licenses are determined by business scope.

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