Going into China

Lloyd International, one of Europe’s leading specialist technical translation companies, has experienced China’s rapid expansion at first hand. While there was little demand from Western clients for Chinese translation years ago, Lloyd International Translations now translates more than 1,000,000 words per year into Chinese, for a wide range of industries.

Going to China presents unique technical and linguistic challenges. It is essential to understand how the language is written and spoken. The Chinese language has more than 20 spoken dialects (including the most commonly used ‘business languages’ Mandarin and Cantonese, which are as different as English and Spanish), and two distinct written forms – Simplified and Traditional. Mandarin may be written in either Simplified or Traditional forms.

The Traditional form of Chinese comprises some 50,000 intricate characters. Simplified Chinese, as the name suggests, is based on Traditional, but has fewer character strokes. It was created by the Chinese Government in the early 1950s to improve literacy levels. As a general rule, Simplified Chinese is used in Mainland China (PRC), whereas Traditional Chinese is used in Taiwan and throughout the rest of the Chinese-speaking world. So, for example, people in Taiwan and in Mainland China may both be able to speak Mandarin, but they write very differently, using two different character sets.

There are also grammatical and stylistic differences in the written language across the major cities and latitudes, especially in Beijing, Shanghai and the Southern Economic Zone. For Chinese translation and localization, therefore, it is essential to specify whether you need Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, or both. And to know which area of China is your target market.

Lloyd International is highly experienced in translating from English (and other languages) into Simplified and Traditional Chinese, using mother-tongue professional translators in China and Taiwan. As well as being fully conversant with the target language and cultural conventions, Lloyd International’s translators are selected for their specialist knowledge in the subject area being translated. We have experience of translating a wide range of technical and commercial material into Simplified and Traditional Chinese, from installation and operating procedures, web and software localization, to sales and marketing literature. We can also put our local translators directly in touch with your local representatives to speed up the process of working across time zones.

When localizing software for Chinese there are issues to be considered such as re-engineering the software to use multibyte characters or Unicode encoding. Lloyd International is well versed in these technicalities and our engineers can work together with your software development teams, to ensure that the finished product works correctly.

Lloyd International can provide all the language solutions needed to translate technical documents and localize software or websites into Chinese quickly and cost-effectively.