Global Talk

by Francis Bao   

I found an interesting blog post by Hui Zhu on “Top 7 Tips for Effective Chinese copywriting.”  The author describes the structure of sentences, how to communicate with implied meaning, how idioms can affect content of the language, legal issues, trade name translation for foreign products, and current trends in Chinese language.    

Chinese idioms and proverbs have existed for at least 2,000 years, and they play a very significant role in both Chinese culture and language. Idiomatic expressions have been used in all kinds of communications, such as daily life, marketing campaigns, and political activities. They significantly enhance the meaning of the language.  

When translating into Chinese from English, we have to rewrite English idiomatic expressions. For example, the English idiom, “win-win situation” in Chinese might be translated as “parties are winning” or “all choices are good”. “Thinking outside of box” could be translated as ”thinking in a creative way”, and “Give 110% might be “making extra effort”, “tie for both parties”, “making your own invention”, and “working diligently beyond the limit”.   

When writing for translation, keep in mind that if we translate idiomatic expressions in a word-for-word manner, they will not make any sense in either language.

Francis Bao is a senior member of the STC and the STC Chicago Chapter, as well as the STC-ITC. He is an award-winning technical writer and translator.

ITC SIG News Chinese, Localization, Marketing, Translation

The Localization Institute is presenting The MarCom Translation Process — Challenges and Solutions on March 21. 2013 from 10:00-11:00am US Central Time

The program is intended for marketing and marketing communications professionals and localization project managers. The following topics are covered:

• Why do translations of marketing communications fail?
• Culture challenges
• Integration of marketing communication and translation processes
• Three major translation risks to mitigate during the development phase of marketing communications strategy: product brand names, product features, and in-country review
• Best practices

Related organizations Education, Event, Marketing, Translation

If your organization does business in more than one part of the world, your web team faces the challenge of internationalization and localization of the website.

Internationalization refers to making a product ready for use throughout the world, and localization refers to making a product ready for use in a particular geographic area. For a website, internationalization requires making the code work worldwide, especially to support presenting the site in multiple languages, and developing a design and content for audiences with different cultural expectations.

Several articles are available to help meet these challenges. Four are presented here.

Several basic tips for internationalizing code are presented in Implementing Websites For Internationalization.

If you are providing a website in multiple languages, it’s desirable to avoid creating and maintaining multiple versions of the site. Internationalize JSP-based Websites presents one method.

A design blog addresses the challenge of providing a way for users to change to their preferred language. The author notes there is no standard interface for this. For details, visit Design Examples of Website Internationalization and Localization.

Creating content for readers worldwide is the focus of 7 Easy Tips to Internationalize Your Website. This is part of a larger guide with many resources, Culture Customized Content.

Features Communication, Cross-cultural communication, Design, Internationalization, Localization, Marketing, Resource

17 November 2009
London

Monitoring Social Media 09 is a conference planned for discussion of issues in social media monitoring, including reputation management, influence, sentiment, free vs paid tools and ROI. Speakers and panelists include Neville Hobson, Antony Mayfield (iCrossing), Philip Sheldrake, Mark Rogers (Market Sentinel)), Marshall Manson (Edelman) and lots more.

This is a full day event with lunch and attendance is expected to be about 200 people.

For details and insights into the social media community in the UK and Europe, visit the conference website.

Tech Comm News Event, Marketing, Social media