Jianjun’s Blog

A few Twitter users reported today that they were seeing partially localized text on Twitter web interface. Currently, localized text strings are often mixed with English, and text language changes according to your browser settings.

The following picture shows Chinese with English when I used Safari Chinese version:

Here’s another screen shot showing French mixed with English when I viewed the page with my French version of FireFox:

And I have a feeling that they are still testing the pages before going on with the full-scale internationalization - anyway a nice development out there!

I18n stands for internationalization, similar terms are globalization (g11n) and localization (l10n). Web localization is a major part of i18n. According to Web Globalization News from Byte Level Research, during 2007-2008:

… the average number of languages supported by the 225 Web sites reviewed is 20. Companies that were translating into French, German, and Japanese a few years ago are now focusing on Turkish, Slovenian, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese.

And what about Chinese? It was found on nearly 8 out of every 10 sites we studied, moving up to 6th place overall.

Just 4 or 5 years ago, web i18n was simply another story. Use Archive.org to view the same sites in 2003 or 2004, you will find big difference. International businesses of today have become increasingly aware of the importance of employing multi-language web site(s) to obtain customized and dynamic branding advantage in the target market.

However, in this respect, China’s businesses are lagging behind. Among the 225 web sites reviewed by Byte Level, Lenovo is the only Chinese company that made it into the top 20. Other Chinese names among the reviewed sites include Huawei and Haier. Ironically, none of the so-called web 2.0 sites, which are supposed to be in the vanguard of the new Internet trends and technology have been included for a review! While Google was listed as number one globalized site, Baidu - it’s Chinese counterpart - doesn’t have any i18n at all!

This reminds me of the old Chinese businesses that were once influential in China until the last days of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912), but mostly went bankrupt when foreign companies came in. Those businesses died away for many reasons, one of which was because they didn’t have a road map to grow bigger, to aim at the world market. What they wanted was only to win in China, to edge out the local competitors. Once this was achieved, they never thought of becoming bigger. In the end, they shrank to nothing, even not being able to protect their eggs.

But, well…, that was 100 hundred years ago. Isn’t it interesting (or strange?) if we see the same things happening again to China’s businesses of today? Without effective i18n, they would lose out first from the web front.

Browsing through largest Chinese web sites, you’ll see most of them only have one language. Of those that do have English pages, few meet even the basic translation standards, let alone localization requirements. A few days ago, a Danwei.org article pointed out bloopers appeared in a Xinhua News report, where ‘Paifang’ or ‘Pailou’ (to learn more about Paifang, read this article) was rendered as ‘torii’ (the gateway of a Japanese shinto shrine), while ‘earth-moving equipment’ or ‘digger’ was translated into ‘rooter’.

Such mistakes could have been avoided by employing a native English speaker as the editor. However, it seems that Xinhua News web site, just as those millions of Chinese businesses big and small, doesn’t think it’s worthwhile to pay for such a service. In China, most Chinese to foreign language translations are carried out by Chinese translators.

There’s been a myth in China that anyone who learned some years of foreign language can translate into that language. As a result, shocking English translations on this page (Read the titles with English translations, below the main text. This is an academic paper database.) do appear on web sites. And it’s not difficult to imagine what would happen if such things appeared on a business web site or in a user’s manual (something like the Nigger-Brown incident).

Last November, I had a discussion with a local translation company about holding translation/localization-related seminars or workshops. Through participating in such activities, local business managers would in turn realize the importance of quality translation and i18n. It is only through such education can we expect Chinese companies change their attitude.

I18n is not a privilege reserved for big, international companies. Any business that aspires to go global and wishes to make the international market their business arena should use it to their advantage. Chinese businesses should not confine themselves to the Chinese market. It’s high time they stepped up efforts for i18n and better international business presence.