MultiLing recently completed its corporate office move into the new Wells Fargo Bank building in downtown Provo. MultiLing’s significant growth in the past few years required the expansion into a new facility that could provide more immediate office space and sustain further growth.

“This is very exciting for us,” said MultiLing President, Michael Sneddon. “The combination of our highly-skilled translation teams and our efficient processes have allowed us to grow much faster than we expected. We have grown over thirty percent in each of the last five years. This move into the new office will increase our efficiency and enable us to better serve our clients.”

The move into the new facility allowed MultiLing to design and build the office from scratch for increased productivity in operations and process optimization. The new office features a state of the art conference room with worldwide teleconferencing for communication with global translation teams, clients, and vendors. The office space represents a significant increase from current facilities with the option for future expansion, which will make MultiLing the largest tenant in the building other than the anchor tenant, Wells Fargo Bank.

For more information, please visit http://www.multiling.com/pr/3.2.05.htm.

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The People’s Republic of China represents one of the largest potential markets in the world, and many companies are jockeying for position in China so that when the Chinese economy grows, their businesses will grow with China. China is a long-term strategic investment for many companies: they may not expect to see significant revenue for a number of years after entering the Chinese market, but they also feel that they can enter it now for a much smaller investment than will be required when the market has more direct revenue potential.

Entering the Chinese market, however, is not easy. Chinese business practices differ considerably from those in U.S. and European markets, and legal requirements and regulations often seem quite murky to outsiders. In addition, localization for China can still be quite challenging, even though it is considerably simpler than it was even five years ago.

The following overview will help you understand the challenges of entering the Chinese market and how to overcome them in order to cost-effectively gain market share.

1. Language

Although people often speak of “Chinese,” Chinese actually consists of a number of mutually incomprehensible dialects. Were it not for the fact that they share a common writing system (actually, two writing systems, about which we’ll have more to say in a moment), they would almost certainly be considered separate languages. The primary language of 70% of China’s population is Guanhua (Mandarin), which has the most native speakers of any language in the world. Another economically important dialect is Yue (Cantonese), which is spoken by approximately 50,000,000 people, primarily in Guangdong Province and Hong Kong. In addition to these two primary dialects, there are a number of other regional dialects whose speakers number in the tens of millions. Just because someone speaks “Chinese” there is no guarantee that he or she will be able to speak to or understand another Chinese speaker, although they will generally be able to communicate in writing.

For most companies, Guanhua (Mandarin) should be the first localization target you work with, unless you are primarily interested in the Hong Kong market, in which case Yue (Cantonese) should be considered instead. In general, unless you are localizing audio-visual materials for specific regions of China, other dialects are not generally targets for localization.

In addition to Chinese dialects, a number of other languages are spoken in China, including Tibetan (written with the Tibetan writing system, or script), Uighur (written with Arabic script), and Mongolian (written with the traditional Mongolian script). These languages normally do not factor in most localization plans, but you need to be aware of them if you are localizing computer software since Chinese government regulations require a certain amount of support for these languages in computer systems.

2. Writing

The roots of Chinese writing go back at least 3000 years. At present there are two different written forms of Chinese: Simplified and Traditional. Simplified Chinese was developed by the Communist government in China to improve literacy and has about 2000 characters that differ from those in the previous “traditional” writing system. The Simplified system is used in most of Mainland China and in many other areas, but the Traditional writing system is used in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, and among ethnic Chinese in Malaysia. This means that in localization you must make a choice as to which writing system you will use. If your goal is to reach a mainland Mandarin-speaking audience, then Simplified Chinese should be your choice, but if you are localizing for Hong Kong or Taiwan, you should use Traditional Chinese. Note that Cantonese as used in Hong Kong requires a number of special characters used only in that region and that these characters are not available in most fonts.

3. Localization issues

Outside of Hong Kong, very few Chinese know English well enough to communicate. As a result, leaving software in English is not an option for the Chinese market, and localization in the appropriate form of Chinese is mandatory to enter the market. While it is possible to release English-language software in some non-English markets (e.g., in Scandinavia), this will not work in China.

Computing in Chinese still remains difficult in some instances, even though it has improved in recent years. Many software packages on the market do not support Chinese writing systems, including the basic forms of a number of common desktop publishing (DTP) packages. In some instances you must either purchase separate copies that are enabled specifically for Chinese, or you may have to use other software. Increasing implementation of Unicode has simplified support for Chinese, but many software packages do not support Unicode. In addition, the most common encoding for Simplified Chinese is known as GB and if you are localizing software for China you must support this encoding as well as Unicode.

Because of the difficulties in using Chinese software, count on Chinese localization to take longer and have more issues than you would encounter in localizing into European languages. Be aware that in some cases, it might make more sense to have a Chinese subsidiary or partner produce documents or content specifically for the Chinese market rather than localizing existing English-language documents, particularly if the materials have to do with marketing or sales.

4. Legal issues

A frequent complaint from non-Chinese businesspeople is that the Chinese legal system is impossible to navigate and is unclear. Whether a Chinese businessperson would agree is another matter, but Chinese legal requirements are unusually complex for foreigners. Because of this, if you are entering into a legal contract or setting up a Chinese office, it is best to hire a Chinese lawyer with experience in dealing with foreign clients. Hong Kong is a common location to find such legal expertise because it has long served as a gateway for foreign investment in China.

Another issue that must be considered in China is the status of Taiwan and Tibet. The official position of both the current Mainland Chinese and Taiwanese governments is that there is only one China, but they disagree concerning which government is the legitimate government of China. In the case of Tibet, many outsiders consider Tibet a separate country occupied by the Chinese government, but most Chinese (including those in Taiwan) consider Tibet to be an integral part of China. Because these issues are so politically sensitive, it is best to avoid dealing with them. If you must deal with them, the mainland Chinese government has been known to remove products from market that do not support official government positions. If you have Chinese legal counsel and you must deal with these topics (for instance, if you are localizing an atlas or encyclopedia), check with your legal counsel before addressing these issues for the Chinese market.

Finally, be aware that the Chinese government still exercises considerable powers to censor content in China, and that political, religious and cultural content is subject to government review and control. If you are going to be localizing content that touches on any of these topics, make sure that you will meet Chinese censorship guidelines before you release your products. While censorship will not affect many (or even most) products, do not assume that your product will not have any problems until you have verified this with Chinese legal experts.

5. Conclusion

There are many other issues that can be considered when entering China, such as issues of color and the cultural value of numbers: your qualified localization service provider should be able to advise you on these issues and can help guide you through the issues involved in appropriately localizing materials for China. Localization companies with experience in China will be able to help you prepare your materials for effective localization and can suggest strategies to reduce costs and improve quality.

While entering the Chinese market may seem (and often is) quite complex, the potential rewards in one of the world’s fastest growing economies can be quite compelling. By taking time to make sure you are localizing for China in the right way, you can reduce costs in the long run and build market share effectively.

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Question

We have a network in our office, and three of our translators need to work on the same Spanish Semantis dictionary simultaneously. When both of them try to open the dictionary in Semantis, they receive an error. Is it possible for multiple users to view or update the dictionary simultaneously?

Answer

Semantis does allow multiple users to update a dictionary located on a network simultaneously. In fact, when a dictionary is being shared, all users will get almost immediate access to new information entered by other users. The following steps will allow you to share dictionaries over a network:

1. Create a shortcut to Fortis on your Windows desktop. To do this, drag the "Fortis.exe" file from the "c:\Fortis\bin" directory to your Windows desktop.

2. Using the mouse, right-click on the shortcut, and choose the "Properties" option. A window entitled "Fortis Properties" will open.

3. If not already selected, choose the "Shortcut" tab.

4. In the "Target:" box, you will see a path similar to the following: "c:\Fortis\bin\Fortis.exe".

5. In this path, add the following parameter: "-musers\lock". In this case, the "-m" tells Fortis that multiple users will be using the same resources simultaneously. The remaining parameter indicates a path where Semantis will temporarily store certain files required for sharing.

6. The new "Target:" parameter will appear similar to the following: "c:\Fortis.win\bin\Fortis.exe -mj:\users\lock". In this case, the temporary directory is mapped to the "j" volume located on the network, and to the directory "users\lock".

7. On the network and volume specified, create a directory called "users", and inside of this directory, create a directory called "lock" as shown above.

8. Specify the same parameters for the shortcut on all workstation computers that will be sharing resources. Also, from this point on, be sure that all Fortis users use the shortcut to start Fortis rather than starting it from the Windows "Start" menu.

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Different languages have different quotation marks that are commonly used. For example, in U.S. English double quote, “ and ” are used to mark quoted speech, while in various European languages symbols such as «, » and „ are used to mark quotes. Unfortunately, many computer users are in the habit of using so-called straight quotes (' and ") to mark quotes, regardless of the language (other types of quotes are often difficult to type). When text with straight quotes is used in printed documentation, it often looks amateurish and “foreign.”

Most DTP packages will convert straight quotes to “curly quotes” automatically when text is imported from other applications, but these conversions often assume U.S.-style punctuation. Adobe InDesign, however, can convert straight quotes to the appropriate quotes for the any language that it supports, if the application can determine what language to use. The key to making sure this works properly is by setting the language of text in Word (this process assumes your text is in either Word or RTF format, or can be converted to it prior to importing it into InDesign).

To set the language in Word, select the text you wish to have quotes converted in and then select Language… from the Tools menu. In the resulting dialog box, select the language the text is in. Then, when you import the text into InDesign, make sure that the Show Import Options checkbox is marked in the Place dialog box. This will bring up another dialog box with various options. In the Formatting section, make sure that “Use Typographer's Quotes" is checked, and click OK.

The following examples show how quotes are automatically converted through this process:

The following text in Word:

becomes the following in InDesign:

(language set to German)

(language set to French)

Properly setting the language in Word and importing it into InDesign with appropriate conversion of quotation marks can save considerable time and eliminate the error-prone task of manually converting quotes later on.

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