Into Chinese?

Photograph by Gavin Hellier/Getty Images
Published at: http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/places/photos/photo_china_china.html

It is true that starting a translation into Asian languages could have big  implications, but working with the correct resources you should be able to get a Chinese site.

There are several things to consider:

Want to reach China.  But what Chinese should you localize into?

-         Mandarin is really the main “Chinese” language, other languages like Cantonese, although widely used colloquially in areas like Hong-Kong, are hardly used in written language. There are also many characters from Cantonese that are not even considered in Html encoding.  

-          For Chinese, the main difference resides, normally, not so much in the choice between Mandarin and other dialects (Cantonese (and many many other dialects in China), but in the choice of the standard set of Chinese Characters: Simplified versus Traditional Chinese. Simplified Chinese is the encoding for Republic of China characters and Traditional Chinese is commonly used in areas like Hong-Kong and communities outside China, also in Taiwan (with further complications because written Taiwanese differs from the one in Hong-Kong).
 In my experience the most common request is to translate into Simplified Chinese, but the best thing is to let the client define which target markets they want to reach and decide based on that.  

Implications of double-byte localization. Let’s assume a 3 component website: html content, SQL database content, and finally Flash content.

-          HTML Content: This is the easier one, there should not be major problems with it. Some issues in html encodings should be considered however, like for instance differences between browsers in reading the encoding and things like problems with UTF8 BOM which are not uncommon.

-          Flash content: Carefully check the implications of Flash and the use of Asian languages. Although the latest Flash versions can work in double-byte languages, it is important to consider things like:  * Fonts: Be careful with the conversion process. The correct font should be available during the whole process, including .fla to .swf convertion. If the localization job is outsourced to a China based vendor it would probably make sense to look for a partner that can handle the complete process, including fla conversions.

-          SQL with Chinese characters: Same question as for Flash here. Would your client actual setup work? Of course SQL supports double-byte, but it could happen that the server or systems in place are not able to generate and display correctly the Asian language characters. Always check with native speakers if everything displays properly. It will not be the first time that characters look Chinese, but order or display is completely messed up but not appealing to a non speaker of the language.