Here’s another question I received via LRB’s contact form. If you’re interested in asking me a question; go ahead and shoot it over; I’ll post it up on LRB and we can discuss online to your benefit, and the benefit of other readers. Feel free to ask me anything; I’m pretty open with my advice; and while I don’t guarantee I’ll be right; I can guarantee that I’ll be “sort-of” right.
Q: “As an architectural office working in China we want to extend our online presence to the Chinese community, we are researching the importance of having a Chinese website parallel to our English website. Could you indicate the importance of communicating both in Chinese and English?”
My answer and subsequent conversation is in the comment section at the end of this post.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Hey there; this really depends on who you’re talking to. If your aiming at high level management folk who are responsible for hiring architects, then my guess is they’re all quite educated, and likely have a good grasp of English. That means it’s not as important to have a Chinese version of the site; though it certainly couldn’t hurt. If you’re going for the B2B angle, then there are other strategies you could do using your website and content; let me know if this is the case and I’ll get into it.
Notice that LRB, bloodyamazing.com and zerosocialmedia.com (all of my business sites) are not localized. This is because we’re targeting a higher well educated market locally, or foreigner managers in general. Missniuniu.com (which is currently down due to hosting issues, but should be back up within a day or so), the site we created for the chinese mass market, is of course all in Chinese with very little english sprinkled about.
So if you’re targeting the general populace; then yes you should definitely have a Chinese site. From looking at your current site you’ve got a blog with some good content there; if you feel your target audience would like to read that info; then translating it and letting have the value add of the info you provide could likely push you in the right direction.
The downside of all this is translating all that content; cause to do it right, you’ll not only need a straight translation, but likely a localization/copyediting to make the text fun and interesting to read. That’s some serious costs right there, in both time to find the right writer and the extra salary involved to churn out interesting to read relevant content.
In the end though, whatever comes from this conversation, it always makes a good impression if you shoot to go bilingual. It just shows you put in the effort for your market. Balancing this against the time and costs however makes this a business/economics issue; the answer of which comes from this question: “who are you targeting?”
I would always use a Chinese-language website to target Chinese people even if they do understand English.
For example, on our own site http://www.synotrip.com, we target only Chinese tour guides with great English. However, we’ve improved sign-up rates tremendously by also providing a Chinese version of the site.
This is because, even though they can read English, fluent and persuasive Chinese will go a lot further in convincing them to spend their time signing up – or even just convincing them to read the page they are already looking at!
Having a site translated usually doesn’t cost a whole lot – especially if it is just a typical small-business type website.
Very true; if you’re looking to convert via your website then best to have Chinese on your site. However, if you do a lot of your selling face to face, then the importance is lessened – though there still is value in creating the translated version.
It not really about if its important or not to have a translated website; its more the level of value received based on your business objectives and selling process. If the website is a key component of the sales funnel, then go for the translation and localization; but if it only plays a support role to business people going in, presenting and pitching, then the need is lessened, but not removed.
It’s true translation doesn’t cost a lot; but effective communication requires localization, which is a bit more expensive. When you throw in SEO, SEM, as well as localizing a blog (with multiple recurring entries) then costs get pretty high. I agree though that if you have a brochure business website, then costs are not high in comparison.
hmmmm.
In my opinion. If it is a company brand website, then it must have more language as he could provide(if the biz is all over the world.but now,seems English and Chinese are the biggest ).
But,for blogging or forum. It is useless..
{ 4 trackbacks }
Ask Rand; “Is a bilingual website necessary?” http://bit.ly/7VhfWy
January 21, 2010Ask Rand; “Is a bilingual website necessary?” http://bit.ly/7VhfWy #LRB
January 21, 2010Ask Rand; “Is a bilingual website necessary?” http://bit.ly/7VhfWy #LRB
January 21, 2010> @littleredbook Ask Rand; “Is a bilingual website necessary?” http://bit.ly/7VhfWy - agree that localisation is more than just translation.
January 21, 2010