Globalization Insider

In this issue…

IP Protection in China: Take This Quiz • Rebecca Ray
Chinese Translation Errors Impact Users • Arle Lommel

Chinese Translation Errors Impact Users

Arle Lommel

I'm working on the analysis of data collected from Chinese speakers regarding their usage of localized business software. While we didn't have the response rate we'd hoped for, there are a few indicative results that indicate that translation quality of products bound for China is a real issue. In other words the Euro-American stereo-type of Asian Engrish cuts both ways.

In particular, consider the following two questions and their results:

1. What was the impact of the most severe translation-related problem you encountered?
您遇到的最严重的翻译相关问题的影响是什么？

	world-wide	Chinese responses
Product unusable 产品无法使用	8%	15%
Product usability restricted 产品可用性受限	44%	70%
Cosmetic problem — product usability not impacted 外观问题 — 产品可用性未受影响	48%	15%

2. On average, what was the impact of the translation-related problems you encountered?
一般情况下，所遇到的翻译相关问题的影响是什么？

	world-wide	Chinese responses
Product unusable 产品无法使用	3%	0%
Product usability restricted 产品可用性受限	32%	70%
Cosmetic problem — product usability not impacted 外观问题 — 产品可用性未受影响	65%	30%

Pretty dramatic differences, and they show that translation quality is one area where companies going into China can differentiate themselves. We see similarly large impacts of translation problems on buying decisions. In other words, as we showed with the original survey the Chinese survey was based on, translation quality has a measurable business impact. Now we know it has an even bigger impact in China that we might have guessed.