China

To which language should you translate to localize in China?

“There are a variety of languages being spoken in Mainland China, and mandarin was considered as
the national language by the early 20th century. As a way to encourage literacy, simplified Chinese
characters have been brought to use since the 1950s. Along with traditional Chinese characters
(which are still used in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan), they are two standard character sets of the
contemporary Chinese written language.
Not like many other languages, in Chinese, the writing system and the spoken language aren’t
interlinked. Furthermore, Chinese has no verb tenses, no distinction between singular and plural, and
no alphabet. There are several dialect groups in Chinese, the differences between these dialects can
be so huge which make some of them almost indistinguishable from each other. However, as the
language is not phonetic, the Chinese characters can be used to write both Mandarin and the
dialects.

Chinese speakers represent an exciting market opportunity, thus localizing to Chinese is very
important. Yet it can be very tricky without a good understanding of the culture and the market.”

Official language

Chinese (92%)

Actual languages

Chinese (92%), Zhuang (1.4%), Hui (0.8%), Yi (0.6%), Uighur (0.6%), Tujia (0.5%), Tibetan (0.4%), Mongolian (0.2%), Korean (0.1%), other (3.4%)

What the top 150 best localized websites in the world do in China

(Top 150 websites listed in the Global by Design ranking – published annually by Byte Level Research, this report provides a list of globally localized websites, showcasing best practices and emerging trends in their globalization)

• 106/150 localize by translating into Simplified Chinese
• 8/150 localize by translating into Chinese
• 5/150 localize by translating into Traditional Chinese
• 7/150 localize by translating into both Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese
• 1/150 localizes by translating into both Simplified Chinese and French
• 1/150 localizes by translating into both Simplified Chinese and Hmong language
• 1/150 localizes by translating into Korean, Chinese (Fuzhounese), Chinese (Hainanese), Chinese (Shanghainese), Chinese (Sichuanese), Chinese (Wenzhounese), Chinese (Yunnanese), Chinese Cantonese (Simplified), Chinese Cantonese (Traditional), Chinese Mandarin (Simplified), Chinese Mandarin (Traditional) and Chinese Sign Language
• 1/150 localizes by translating into Simplified Chinese, Portuguese, German, Korean and Japanese
• 1/150 localizes by translating into Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Portuguese, German, French, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, Bahasa Indonesia, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Turkish, Russian, Thai and Ukrainian