Recently updated on January 12th, 2024 at 10:43 am
Are you preparing for global expansion into the Chinese market but aren’t sure about Chinese website translation? If your business wants to succeed in China, you need to make sure that your site is localized into Mandarin but also optimized to appear on Baidu for the keywords used by your target audience when searching for your product or service. Here are the top questions regarding Chinese website translation plus tips on how to take your digital presence in China to the next level.
In this article, we’ll review:
Table of Contents
- 7 Most Asked Questions about Chinese Website Translation
- 1. Should I translate the entire website into Chinese?
- 2. Should I use machine translation?
- 3. Who should be in charge of the Chinese website translation?
- 4. How much does it cost to translate a travel website from English to Chinese?
- 5. Should English and Chinese be on the same website or two separate websites?
- 6. Should the Chinese website design be different than the English one?
- 7. What happens if I receive new inquiries in Chinese?
7 Most Asked Questions about Chinese Website Translation
1. Should I translate the entire website into Chinese?
Before you start making any inquiries you need to decide exactly what you want to translate. Ask yourself the following: Do the Chinese audience I’m targeting need to have access to all the same information as my regular customers? If the answer is yes, then you most likely do need to think about having your whole website translated.
However, if you don’t have the budget to translate your entire website there are other options. You could opt for targeted landing pages with a translated summary of your company, products, and contact information. This is a popular alternative and can be used as a trial to see how many inquiries you would get. We recommend that you translate all the content that is essential for helping Chinese readers understand your business and then take the next step. That next step may be a purchase on-site, contacting you via a lead form, following your WeChat account, etc.
2. Should I use machine translation?
Never use an automated translation tool to create text for your website! The resulting translation will be awkward at best. If you don’t have a generous budget to hire a professional website translator for the entire website, at least make sure the key information of a company should always be translated by a qualified human translator.
Benefits of human translation
- Having your website translated by a professional Chinese translator guarantees precise language translation, usage of localized language, and inclusion of cultural context.
- Your content will be interpreted correctly with no meanings lost in translation. MT tools can’t interpret slogans, metaphors, idioms, and other language nuances, resulting in nonsensical literal translations.
- Quality control is enforced, ensuring content is free from errors.
- Finally, transcreation is part of the translation process meaning the intent, context, and tone of translated content are all reflected accurately and reflect the culture of your target audience.
- An optimized Chinese website by a professional website translator has better user experience and is easier to rank on Baidu.
3. Who should be in charge of the Chinese website translation?
Human translations are leaps and bounds above machine translation, but you still need to decide on the final quality level you need, and who can deliver that.
The first option is the Chinese-speaking staff within your company. This is a good choice for small and simple sites. However, if they don’t have experience with translation or Baidu SEO, it might take them a relatively long time to create each page, and the quality is likely to be so-so. A professional Chinese translator specializing in website localization would be a perfect match. A professional Chinese website translator is not only a wordsmith but is also well-versed in website localization and Baidu SEO.
4. How much does it cost to translate a travel website from English to Chinese?
Costs for Chinese website translation and localization vary depending on the complexity of the project and requirements. Translation agencies often charge between $0.08 to $0.15 per source word for English/Chinese translation. However, for website translation and localization it costs more considering the localization part. Usually, we charge $0.15 per Chinese character for basic website content creation and $300 – $1,000 for key pages like the landing page, About Us page translation as well as localization.
5. Should English and Chinese be on the same website or two separate websites?
A website hosted in mainland China is more reliable for users in mainland China. However – the benefit may not be worth the hassles.
Hassles of getting a China-hosted website
- Fees for hosting, ICP license and domain name.
- Website development and maintenance costs.
- Extra hassle of maintaining the content on two separate websites.
Depending on usage, the most common way of hosting Chinese content is by setting up a .cn domain (mywebsite.cn) or a .cn subdomain/directory (cn.mywebsite.com, mywebsite.com/cn).
6. Should the Chinese website design be different than the English one?
Website design in China is quite different from the west. If you have an eCommerce website targeting Chinese customers, it’s suggested to gear to the taste of your Chinese audience. However, there might be difficult to keep the design consistent across English and Chinese versions of a website since the Chinese website is usually quite complicated.
We are here to tell you that we recommend simple, useful websites. All our prior experience shows that that type of design creates a better experience for users and a higher conversion rate.
7. What happens if I receive new inquiries in Chinese?
You’ve had your website professionally translated and now you’ve received an inquiry in Chinese. What do you do? We understand the need for quick turnaround times to ensure you can respond quickly and secure their business, so we organize regular Chinese translators to be available to translate any correspondence at short notice.
Translation Manager
Eva has 6 years of experience working as a News Editor and 5 years as a freelance copywriter. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies and a master’s degree in applied Linguistics from the University of Melbourne.