In this article, I do just that, and I render a verdict as to which Web site is better.

Search

The best way to compare search engine quality is to compare searches.

I recently input three Chinese keywords for my experiment:

• 许霆 (Xu Ting: A Chinese citizen who was recently involved in a controversial criminal case)
• 次级房贷 (Subprime mortgage)
• 看羹吃饭 (Kan-Geng-Chi-fan: A phrase used and recognized by a relatively small number of Chinese, meaning that you have to think carefully before taking action)

These keywords represent three different categories of information people search for online. Xu Ting is a hot keyword in China at the moment but it has received little international media coverage. Subprime mortgage, on the other hand, is a foreign concept and the term has been transliterated into Chinese characters from the English equivalent. Kan-Geng-Chi-fan is used within a specific dialect that is not used by the majority of Chinese citizens.

Okay, here are the results as of April 18, 2008:

“Xu Ting”

• Baidu: 2,000,000 results
• Google.com: 1,440,000 results
• Google.cn: 1,330,000 results

It would seem that Baidu knows much more about Xu Ting than Google, although I did not verify that every result referred to this particular individual.

Interestingly, in the first results page of both google.com and google.cn, one of the search results directed users to Baidu Post — Baidu’s popular user forum.

Overall, I would rate both sites equally because the top 20 results from each search engine were highly qualified and I could easily find information I wanted from there. Verdict: A tie.

“Subprime mortgage”

• Baidu: 1,050,000 results
• Google.com: 387,000 results
• Google.cn: 1,540,000 results

This time google.cn appears to do much better than Baidu. But if we look closely at the top 20 search results, we’ll find there are 7 results at google.com and 5 results at google.cn that direct us to Web sites that use traditional Chinese characters, which are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong and by the overseas Chinese community.

It can be rather challenging for the mainland Chinese to read traditional Chinese, though they can understand most of the message. Nonetheless, this mix of simplified and traditional Characters is not the most user-friendly approach. Verdict: Baidu wins.

“Kan Geng Chi Fan”

• Baidu.com 207 results
• Google.com 4,000,000 results
• Google.cn 247,000 results

At first glance, Google produced overwhelmingly more information than Baidu. However, if we examine the details, Google did not perform so well. Neither Google.com nor Google.cn produce an accurate search result within the first 10 pages respectively, while all the 207 search results from Baidu are accurate. Verdict: Baidu wins again.

Based on these three searches, Google comes across as a bit complicated and “foreign” to Chinese users. Baidu is the superior Chinese search engine.

Products

Both Google and Baidu are trying to leverage their network effects to promote other products. Google has many excellent products, but not every product has performed well in China. For example, Google Maps is widely used by American users. Unfortunately, Google Maps in China is unable to provide the same features due to unavailability of mapping data in China. Google’s satellite map currently only covers the major Chinese cities. Should Google acquire better maps, it would have a clear advantage over Baidu, which doesn’t offer the same degree of functionality and usability in its map tool.

Although music copyright is a controversial issue within China, the market reality is that millions of Chinese Internet users download free music online. Baidu understands this reality and its music search product — which presents a list of links for free music downloads when people search by song, singer, or label — is extremely popular. Google is unable to compete with Baidu in this regard due to its adherence to US copyright laws.

Another example is Baidu Post, an online forum allowing Internet user to create new topics based on search keywords and provide commentary. When people search online by keyword, they can also follow these keywords to Baidu Post, where they may find additional information — or at least find out what others think of the selected keywords.

Online forums are a very important medium in China for distributing information online. I think an important reason for this is because the Chinese, as well as many businesses, want to remain anonymous. While this may change in the years ahead as the next generation embraces social networking sites, for the time being, online forums are dominant. Baidu also offers a blog platform (Hi Baidu) while Google has localized Blogger into Chinese, very few Chinese people currently use it.

Local culture and consumer behavior are critical factors in determining whether a product will succeed in an overseas market or not. So far, Google products have not been as appealing as Baidu to Chinese users.

The Brand Name

The name of Baidu (百度) is from a beautiful Chinese ancient poem:

Thousands of times, I looked for my girl;

Suddenly, at some point, I stopped and looked back,

I found she was just over there among a bunch of lanterns.

This poem, written by Qiji Xin, who lived in the Song Dynasty nearly 1000 years ago, is still very popular in China and also taught in high schools. Baidu in Chinese means thousands of times. In Chinese culture, this poem communicates one’s desire to achieve his/her dreams. Obviously, meshes well with the services offered by Baidu, a company that claims it better understands Chinese users and Chinese culture.

Google started to use its Chinese name Guge (谷歌) in 2006. Guge (goo-ge) is transliterated from Google and it literally means “the song of grain” in Chinese. A survey conducted in 2006 shows 84.6% Chinese do not like this name. I think the most important reason is that Chinese people want to feel international and modern. This is also one reason you may see many Chinese companies using English words in their marketing materials, as it creates an international effect. The “song of grain” presents an image of the agricultural society that the Chinese people are striving to break away from.

Google has exerted a good deal of effort in localizing its name for China but it has not yet been accepted by the Chinese people. It may take some time. Some companies have chosen to simply use their English names in China, avoiding localization altogether, such as IBM.

To sum up, Baidu definitely has an edge over Google in China. But it is early yet and Google has been doing things such as redesigning its Chinese home page, which may resonate with users. The key takeaway here is that every new market is a new challenge; just because you are number one at home does not mean you will be number one in every country you enter. Should Baidu enter the US market some day, it will face many of the same challenges that Google is now facing in China.

The second annual Global Intranet Strategies Survey conducted from June through August 2007 revealed some starting facts about the true state of globalization behind the firewall.

78 organizations around the world participated, representing 45% headquartered in Europe, 43% in North America, 10% in Asia-Pacific and 2% in other parts of the world. Over half have more than 15,000 employees, including 8% with 50 to 100,000 employees and 13% with over 100,000 employees.

This article highlights some of the issues dealt with in the survey concerning globalization in intranets: languages, localization, collaboration, customization and global teams.

Single language is prevalent, translation is rudimentary
The study shows that although two thirds of the participating companies are present in many countries, they tend to have a single corporate language. Approximately 3 out of 5 say they are primarily a “single-language” organization and have “single-language” intranet.

Those who do deal in multi-language contexts struggle with translation issues. The translation process is largely a manual one, with few that using technologies such as integration of the translation process into the CMS or translation memory software solutions. The percentages below show the proportion of companies saying the tool or process either exists throughout or in some parts of their organization (figures based on the 72 out of 178 companies who translate intranet content):

Multi-lingual glossaries – 38%
Machine translation – 19%
Translation memory software – 10%
Integration of translation into the Content management system – 11%
Definition of a clear process among the people involved in translations – 31%

Localization: A 3-step process
Effective localization strategies start with a global strategy and pass through the intermediary step of internationalization as defined below before reaching the localization level. 35% of the companies in the survey population have a globalization strategy, which was defined as “defining systems, procedures based on the whole organization, such as global teams, standardizing intranet-related processes across the organization, sharing resources across the organization.”

28% say they practice internationalization, defined as “creating models for templates, guidelines, content that can easily be adapted to local needs without needing to revise the model, such as menu structures, customization, navigation, meta data.” Only 24% have localization strategies, defined as “procedures for adapting internationalized models to meet local needs, such as specific navigation, template adaptations, content strategies, language, etc.”

Collaboration: Not yet optimized globally
Intranets are not yet optimized for collaboration among employees. Globalization of companies means that people around the world who do not know each other need to work in teams together. Virtual teams become essential workplaces for global companies. However, only 20% of the companies say their employees perceive collaboration as one of the primary objectives of the intranet. However, between 30 and 40% have collaborative spaces integrated into the intranet.

The top 3 collaboration tools rated as “optimized” or “in general use” in the consolidated results of all 178 enterprises are (1) web conferencing at 31%, (2) shared calendars at 30% and (3) instant messaging at 23%. The usage of these and other collaborative tools by companies who say the intranet has become the “way of working” internally is dramatically higher than in companies where the intranet is not yet “the way of working”.

Customization: A necessity to remain relevant
All global organizations struggle to define strategies for how to offer common content to everyone, helping to build a shared culture, and proposing customized content to users, making them more efficient and satisfied. The survey shows that half or more of the content and services on intranets is “automatically delivered by the system according to the person’s profile” in 23% of the organizations. However, only 8% offer “personalizable content – explicit choices made by the person him/herself” for half or more of the content. Once again, companies where the intranet is the way of working today have intranets with a higher degree of personalization that the other companies.

Global teams and steering committees smooth the way
Global intranet teams are essential if an organization wishes to ensure that an intranet meets user and business needs around the world. However, global teams exist in only 31% of the organizations with another 12% “planned.” Steering committees with decision-making power should have representation from all parts of the organization. In fact they exist in 46% of the cases with another 10% “planned.”

The survey shows that certain major obstacles are significantly decreased in the cases where these global bodies exist. Examples are out of date information, unclear navigation and difficulties getting content producers to contribute. All these issues exist to a greater extent in companies where there are no global teams or global decision-making bodies.

Future trends

• Both customization and the availability of collaboration tools will increase. This is clear from the markedly higher usage in enterprises where the intranet is the way of working today.
• Portals will become more common, thereby requiring the ability to be customized in order to remain relevant. 38% of those who do not currently have portal solutions plan to move in that direction in terms of intranet structures.
• The number of languages in an intranet will increase over time, according to 38% of the participants. Hopefully translation will be facilitated by the use of technology, but the number of responses indicating plans in this area is very low.
• “User-centered design and usability” is the leading area of planned investment over 2008 and 2009. 60% of the respondents expressed it as their number one area. Acquisition of new tools such as content management systems, search engines, statistics tool were further down the list.

Conclusion
Intranets are slowing moving up the value chain in the mind of the average senior executive. The proportion of organizations where senior management considers the intranet to be business critical increased from 13% in 2006 to 17.5% in 2007. This is low, but at least the number is rising.

A manager in a country distant from headquarters of his organization says, “The farther you are from the center, the more you need the intranet. But the farther you are from the center, the less the intranet meets your needs.” Companies who understand this can take big steps towards making their intranet relevant to all employees, whoever and wherever they are. It requires strategy and investment in the areas mentioned in this article. In the end, the intranet will become a tool that brings value to both employees and the business as the enterprise gradually becomes truly global.

Stay tuned for the 2008 survey to see if progress is being made in this area!

About the Author
Jane McConnell is an intranet and portal strategy specialist. She founded NetStrategy/JMC in 2001 and works primarily with companies and organizations with complex intranets and challenges. McConnell writes the column International Intranets for the magazine Intranets: Enterprise Strategies and Solutions (Information Today). Her English blog is Globally Local & Locally Global and the French one is Carnet intranet. She initiated the Annual Global Intranet Strategies Survey in 2006, and published the 2007 results in the form of two reports that can be purchased: Global Intranet Trends and Global Intranet Analysis. More information is available on www.netjmc.com or by contacting Jane at jane@netjmc.com.

So here are the top 10 posts of 2007 based on traffic:

1. The Best Global Web Sites of 2007
2. Starbucks CEO on Globalization: Don’t Go Changing This quote from the Starbucks CEO speaks volumes about the company’s success around the world.
3. Which Country; Which Language? A guest article by John Greenwood of InterPro Translation Services continues to be very popular.
4. The Best Global Web Sites (and why) This entry is a nice summary of some of the best practices exhibited by the top sites in the 2007 Report Card.
5. Register.Me Montenegro is getting its own country code (.me) and one can imagine the entertaining possibilities this domain presents for creative URLs.
6. Staples: Asi de Facil Hardly a week goes by that I don’t press my “That was easy” button, translated in Spanish. They sell a lot of these here in San Diego. I’m still waiting for the Chinese version.
7. If The World Were 100 People This is a personal favorite.
8. Scaling a Great Wall: Top 5 Tips for Learning Chinese This is another guest article, by Saul Gitlin of Kang & Lee, and a very hot topic these days.
9. Just Don’t Do It: The Art of Slogan Translation
10. The Localization of iPhone

So there you have it — the top 10 entries out of the 99 entries posted in 2007. Yes, I know I’m not the most active blogger as bloggers go. But I only blog when the urge strikes and sometimes it just does not strike. Which is probably a good thing.

As Abraham Lincoln once said: Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

And on that note I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year!

Estimating the size of the German blogosphere

Intuitively, I was sure for the U.S., Japan and China, but I was not so sure about Germany. So I tried to find out the size of the German blogossphere and came with the following contradictory numbers:

• Blogcensus is an effort to count all of the active German blogs and relies on manual inspection. Their estimate is app. 115.000 active blogs (an active blog means at least a post per month). I think this is way too low.
• The German magazine Focus claims to have counted app. 1.1 million German blogs. But I think this is way too high.
• Technorati’s “State of the Blogosphere” counted 50 millions blogs in 2006 and claims that app. 1% of blog posts were in German. With the bold assumption that the blogging frequency is the same globally, this would result in app. 500.000 blogs in German. This seems to me to be a more realistic estimate (and in line with other guestimates of other sources).

Going forward with Technorati’s numbers let’s compare the relative sizes of the blogospheres in the following countries:

Although the numbers are from 2006, I believe that the relative comparison between the different blogospheres are still true, nevertheless.

With the assumption that app. 10% of the internet users are aware of blogs and potentially read them, the relationship of writers to readers is skewed in the German blogosphere: there are many more readers than bloggers.

Consequences for international Web marketing

• In absolute and relative numbers that the German blogosphere is very, very small. It is on par with Farsi, which might overtake German in the near future: there are only 72 million people who speak Farsi compared to app. 98 million German speaking people.
• Capturing a large part of the German blogosphere is easier than in other languages, because there are fewer bloggers per potential reader.
• Other blogospheres are much larger in relation to the number of their internet users. For example the Japanese, Chinese, English or Italian blogosphere are much larger (4x to 24x times!). And blogs there are likely to attract many more visitors, too. Competition for readers is likely to be fierce in these languages.

Links

• Technorati: State of the Blogosphere, October, 2006
  
• World Internet Usage Statistics Top Languages

Actually, I don’t.

But Brian Heumann does.

And that’s why I’m very pleased to welcome Brian as an ongoing contributor to Global by Design.

Brian is a usability engineering and internationalization consultant based in Germany. He has a background in software and usability engineering and has worked for a number of companies in the U.K., Switzerland, and Germany. His focus over the years has been on developing products, services, and Web sites for the international market, so I’m sure he’ll have lots of good insights for the Global by Design blog.

I thought a good place to start was with a few simple statistics to see how German companies stacked up on internationalization.

How international are German Websites?

So I decided to count the number of languages used on the Web sites of Germany’s top companies. I chose to explore the Web sites of the companies in the DAX30 index, which lists the top 30 German publicly traded companies (a sort of little brother of the U.S. Dow Jones index). At this stage I decided not to analyze the quality of localized sites.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But during my analysis I encountered several issues:

• Because of usability or design problems I had a hard time on some Websites to find the international or localized Websites. Being German I had several advantages and finally discovered the other Websites. But it was much harder than it should have been.
• If a company has a Website for the USA and Canada, does this count as one or two localized Websites? In my opinion they are actually two Websites, because localizing a Website for a country or market is much better than translating the content.
• Holdings or groups are just an umbrella for their subsidiary companies, so usually their Websites do not provide much information. But the subsidiary companies might own popular consumer brands, as is the case with the Adidas Group which owns Adidas and Reebok. For any such company I included the most prominent subsidiary in my analysis.

So this simple task turned out to be more work than anticipated. It included a lot of surfing and counting the localized Websites, the intended target markets as well as picking up some financial data from the annual reports for 2006.

Results

The diagram below shows the number of languages used on German Websites. The results showed some clustering for some values, so I decided to group the data roughly by these clusters.

All companies used at least 2 languages, mostly German and English. 9 out of the DAX 30 companies (or almost a third) used only 2 languages. Most companies in this group belonged to regulated industries where state legislation and laws restrict business operations to the German market, e.g. banking, insurance or utilities. However, most of them do expand internationally, but they cannot reuse their company name or Website.

The other groups used 2-10, 10-20 and more than 20 languages or localized Websites respectively. This means that 50% of all companies in my analysis used 10 or more languages. In most cases the languages addressed strong or emerging markets, e.g. Chinese, Russian, Spanish, Japanese, and several Eastern European languages.

Altogether, I think German company Websites are in a good shape. I am looking forward to see the numbers for other countries.

Business Reasons

If you are wondering about the number of languages used on German Websites, there are some business reasons to ponder:

• German companies depend heavily on foreign trade: the financial reports showed that most companies (in non regulated industries) made 50% of the revenues in foreign markets. Some reports even claimed as much as 80% of revenues to result from foreign trade.
• Although Germany had a recession a few years ago, foreign trade allowed most companies to prosper and become independent of the German market.
• After analyzing the government’s report on foreign trade, it became clear that company size and foreign trade correlate. Although the DAX30 companies account for less than 20% of the German economy, they get the lion’s share of foreign trade. Smaller companies depend much more on the German economy: they prosper and struggle with the German market.
• Until recently German companies preferred export marketing which meant little risk and investment in foreign markets, but also lower margins and little control. In the last 2 years German companies pushed hard for global operations (e.g. offshoring, outsourcing, local subsidiaries) which means more risk and investment but also larger profit margins and more control.

Well, so much for me proving that I can count to 30 … I am looking forward to meeting you here again soon!

Links

• Wikipedia on the DAX index (English)
• IMF Report on Germany’s rebounding export (English)
• Statistisches Bundesamt on German trade (German)

I recall as if it were yesterday something that happened on a business trip to Germany about 10 years ago.

I was at a client’s site in Wiesbaden for a series of meetings, and they had set up a conference room as my office for the duration. It was late one day and everyone had gone home, but I still had a couple of hours of work to do since the home office in Chicago was 7 hours behind me.

I was on the phone with a colleague when a maintenance man walked in the room to change a light bulb or to repair something. I completed my call after which I mustered the courage to say “Guten Abend” in my best German accent (and hoping he would respond in kind and leave it at that since German is not one of the languages I speak). The man answered me with a pronounced German accent, but in perfectly understandable English: “Good evening and please excuse my intrusion. Someone reported that there was a problem with this room and I came to see what needed to be repaired”.

OK, I didn’t know this person at all. He could very well have had a college degree in linguistics, but I highly doubt it. He was dressed in coveralls, toting a toolbox and a ladder, and was clearly working in a maintenance or custodial capacity. What I kept thinking about over and over again and still think about to this day were 3 things:

1. In Germany, someone who had what I assumed to be no more than a high school education would be capable of saying what he said to me in English;
2. The chances of this scene taking place in the U.S. would be very slim to none;
3. And knowing that I was American, the man assumed that I didn’t speak German and that if he wanted me to understand him, that he would need to speak to me in English.

This experience simply left me awestruck and still fosters hope for what we could achieve here in the U.S. if we realize how important languages are to us and we take action to do something about it.

Stories about “ugly Americans” are legion, and justifiably so. We have historically made little to no effort to understand foreign countries, foreign cultures, and foreign languages. Visions of an American woman in Paris yelling (in English, of course) at a department store clerk for refusing to accept American currency come to mind. The stereotype of the arrogant, ignorant American tourist flourished in the 1950s when a strong economy and a strong dollar made a trip to post-World War II Europe a “bargain” to countless Americans. Over 50 years later do we still deserve this ugly reputation?

(Just so the reader knows where I stand on the issue: I was raised in a home where both English and Italian were spoken, thanks to my grandfather and his brother who lived with us while I grew up. So when I become President, everyone who hopes to graduate from a U.S. high school will need to prove basic proficiency in 1) English and 2) at least one language other than English.)

Despite my pro-language stance, let me concede that there have been reasons why, historically, we have been a one-language nation with an aversion to learning additional languages. Part of the answer can be found in examining what makes the average European look like the antithesis of the monolingual American.

Due to the general size, number, and proximity of European countries to one another, added to which almost each country has its own distinct language, there has always been a need –and out of this need grew — the tradition of learning foreign languages in Europe that simply did not exist in the U.S. Let’s take an example: according to Mapquest, you can drive the 178 miles from Dutch-speaking Amsterdam, Holland to German-speaking Bonn, Germany in 2 hours and 45 minutes. Driving from English-speaking Seattle, Washington, to French-speaking Montreal, Canada, however, would involve a trip of 2,949 miles, or almost 44 hours of driving. To get something roughly similar in terms of distance and driving time in Europe, you would have to travel from the north of Sweden to the southern coast of Spain. On this trip, you would go through Sweden, Denmark, Germany, France and Spain — 5 countries with 5 distinct languages.

In The Netherlands, approximately 85% of the total population has basic knowledge of English, 55%-60% of German, and 25% of French. Statistics for the entire European Union (EU) reinforce the multilinguistic tendencies to be Europe-wide:

• 45% of EU citizens can take part in a conversation in a language other than their mother tongue.
• In Luxembourg, nearly everyone can do this.
• In the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden more than 8 in 10 can do this.
• The proportion of EU citizens who can speak English well enough to hold a conversation continues to rise.

The statistics in the U.S. look much different, albeit with an encouraging trend from the past 27 years. In 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau collected data about languages other than English spoken in the U.S. Of the 262.4 million people over the age of five, 47 million (18 percent) reported speaking a language other than English at home. Although a large percentage of this increase must be attributed to the rise in immigration to the U.S., it is encouraging that this represents an increase over the 31.8 million (14 percent) who reported speaking another language at home in the 1990 census, and a further increase over the 23.1 million (11 percent) reported in the 1980 census. Figures from 2000 show that the absolute number of people speaking other languages in the home has doubled since that time.

What’s more, since English has become the world’s undisputed lingua franca as well as the universal language of the business world, there is less of a perceived need for American businessmen to learn a foreign language. Just maybe there was need for the dominance of one language in order to navigate the globalized economy in which we now live, and English became that medium due to a combination of the strength of the U.S. economy, our lone superpower status (militarily), the endurance of our political system, etc… the list can continue.

Despite this, the fact that our language is the foreign language most spoken by non-native speakers of English should not diminish the absolute need for us to learn foreign tongues nor its importance to our standing as a world leader. It is insulting to me personally that the world just assumes we are either too lazy, too arrogant, or intellectually incapable of understanding a foreign language, of not being able to name a country’s head of government, or of knowing the basic geographical layout of their country. (Maybe I’m being too hard on us as far as geography is concerned: my partner who lives in California has told me horror stories of how most of the high school students that he has interacted with couldn’t point out San Diego on a map of the state).

Reasons abound and excuses can always be found to explain our English-only mindset, but Americans need to realize that in order to be competitive and respected in our global economy, we need to shed this single-language baggage we have been carrying around far too long. The point must be driven home with those who influence elementary and secondary level education, because this is where it will need to take root. In Spain, the study of a foreign language is compulsory from age 8, or what would be the third grade level in the U.S. By the time a student finishes high school, he/she would have invested approximately ten years toward the study of a different language (and with it, different cultures — a side benefit). A similarly structured curriculum here would go a long way toward helping us achieve our goal.

Because of my cultural heritage, I have always admired and respected those who could understand, speak, read and write in a foreign language. As an American, I want to see my country prosper economically, and to be respected and admired for making valuable contributions to the world we live in. I firmly believe that making a serious effort toward speaking the language of those we need to communicate with will go a long way toward achieving this.

About the Author
Ralph Strozza is Co-Founder, President and CEO of InterPro Translation Solutions, which provides world-class web and software localization, help and documentation translation, multilingual desktop publishing, and project management solutions enabling clients to deliver their products and message to global audiences. Ralph can be reached at 630.873.3041 or rstrozza@interproinc.com.

There are choices you must consider when translating for some countries with multiple languages and into some languages that are used in multiple countries.

English is English, Spanish is Spanish, Portuguese is Portuguese, Belgian is Belgian, Swiss is Swiss and Chinese is Chinese — true? Well not quite. For starters, two of the six are not languages (but describe great chocolates!).

This article explains some of the choices you must consider when translating for some countries with multiple languages and into some languages that are used in multiple countries.

I will make some generalizations, but especially if you are taking products into different countries, do seek advice from your local subsidiary or distributor — a consumer-oriented environment is likely to be more sensitive to language variants than business to business.

Most countries have multiple languages and some languages are spoken in many countries. My native United Kingdom counts as native languages English, Welsh, Gaelic (Scottish and Irish), Cornish (in part of the southwest), Manx (on the Isle of Man between England, Scotland and Ireland) and others. However, English is the dominant language understood by just about the entire population and although the Welsh and Scots may disagree, there is little practical need to translate into other UK languages.

The same is not true for some other countries.

Belgium is a relatively “new” country formed in 1830. Dutch (Flemish) is spoken in the north, and French in the south. Although I have worked for a company that translated Belgian French and Dutch separately from the standard French and Dutch varieties, generally, Belgians understand their neighbors’ languages. Belgian Dutch tends to retain traditional Dutch words whereas the more liberal Netherlands Dutch more readily adopts English words. Belgian French and “standard” French are very similar to each other and standard French (for France) generally serves both.

Switzerland has four languages: German (spoken by the majority), then French, then Italian, and about 1% Romansh. Although the spoken Swiss-German is quite different from that spoken in Germany and Austria, it has no written equivalent and the variants of all languages for Germany, France, and Italy work fine in Switzerland; there is no need to generate separate Swiss variants.

Some languages are common to many countries, especially English, Spanish, Portuguese and French.

To be culturally sensitive, especially at a consumer level, British and American English should be treated as separate locales. However, if you are going to pick just one, American English would be the variant of choice as Brits are more used to American English spelling and terminology and generally accept it (sometimes through grated teeth!), but the same is not true vice-versa. Canada probably has a preference for British English, but is more used to American than their transatlantic counterparts. Other English-speaking countries such as Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa also probably have a preference for British English, but American English will be understood and generally accepted.

European French differs from Canadian French in terms of some terminological and stylistic preferences, however the more technical the subject matter, the fewer the differences. European French also tends to more readily adopt certain English words than Canadian French. If your product or service target markets are Quebec and France, it would be advisable to localize your product into the appropriate language for each market (Canadian French for Quebec and “standard” French for France). The similarity between the two variances of French lends itself to being a “make-from” language: once content has been translated into one or the other versions of French, it is feasible to edit the translation in order to be acceptable in the alternate geography (as opposed to translating from scratch).

Spanish needs additional consideration. Each Spanish-speaking country has its own variant and use of words. So Spain is different from Mexico is different from Peru is different from Argentina is different from … well you get the picture! However, especially at a business level, it is possible to translate into “Latin American Spanish”that will be generally accepted throughout Central and South America. European Spanish is your choice if your target is Spain.

One may also translate into a “Universal Spanish” that is generally acceptable worldwide. However, there will be some compromises the “higher” you go and if you are targeting just one or two countries, and have no plans in the near term to expand elsewhere, you would be generally advised to pick the Spanish that most closely matches your target audience.

Portuguese is a different story! Brazilian and European Portuguese have drifted far enough away from each other that you should translate for one or the other; there is no “Universal Portuguese�.” So if you are targeting Brazil and Europe, you require two separate Portuguese translations.

China has numerous spoken languages and dialects, Mandarin being the most universal and common. However, there are two modern written versions of Chinese: Traditional and Simplified. Traditional Chinese was the written Chinese prior to the formation of the People’s Republic of China (a.k.a. PRC or Mainland China) in 1949. Simplified Chinese was derived from Traditional Chinese by the PRC in order to simplify many of the ideographic characters and promote literacy.

Traditional Chinese is used in the Republic of China on Taiwan. Even though the dialect spoken in Hong Kong and Macau is Cantonese, Traditional Chinese is used for print media, but with a few differences as Cantonese requires a few characters that are not used in Mandarin. Singapore has adopted Simplified Chinese and although Hong Kong has seen more Simplified Chinese since its re-incorporation into PRC in 1997, Traditional Chinese still dominates.

Simplified and Traditional Chinese have many similarities, and those accustomed to Traditional Chinese can read Simplified Chinese more easily than the other way around. However, for the People’s Republic of China, translations should be done into Simplified Chinese. Although a PRC native may be able to read Traditional Chinese, they most likely would not be able to write it as well. Thus, the traditional axiom of using a native translator of the target language still applies.

Somewhat strangely you may think, it is easier to translate English into both Simplified and Traditional Chinese than it is translating one into the other. There is a character set issue (Simplified and Traditional Chinese characters do not co-exist in most computer codepages) and translators generally find it easier using English as the source.

So, if your target is PRC (Mainland China) or Singapore, Simplified Chinese is your language of choice. Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau require Traditional Chinese (with a few differences for Hong Kong and Macau).

I apologize that I have over-generalized to some extent and oversimplified some cultural issues. I am not suggesting that language variants (Belgian French and Dutch) and less common languages (Welsh, Gaelic) are unimportant or insignificant. I have tried to take a practical approach to the localization effort required to take products internationally, and while the Belgian French might prefer their French, they would prefer standard French to English!

About the Author
John Greenwood is Vice President of Business Development for Lombard, Ill.-based InterPro Translation Solutions, which provides translation, software localization, multilingual desktop publishing and project management solutions. He can be reached at (858)486-1848 or jgreenwood@interproinc.com.

The question of whether the globalization of PR is a myth or reality is easily answered: it is definitely a reality. The key question is what kind of reality is it? And two further questions: what does it mean for us? And where is it headed?

Any concept of globalization that attempts to airbrush out the importance of local, national, or regional dynamics is not going to take us very far. It is no longer acceptable to rely on the watchwords, “Think Global, Act Local.” Perhaps closer to the mark is a line by Tip O’Neill, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, who once said, “All politics is local.” In some important senses, all PR is local, too.

I will return to this theme later, but first let me discuss the idea of globalization itself. Just as the Depression, the Cold War, the Space Age, or the Roaring 20’s are used to describe different historical periods, the Era of Globalization encapsulates the political, economic and cultural atmosphere of today.

Yet, as one or two academics have pointed out, globalization is not a new concept. While the term, “globalization,” was coined only in the1980’s, the concept originated much earlier than that.

Consider for a moment that the Roman Empire once extended from Scotland in the north to Tunisia and Egypt in the south and from Portugal in the west to Turkey in the east. Within that vast region, there was one currency, one banking system, one legal system, one trading system, and one official language for matters of state and commerce. No wonder, then, that there were revolts and street riots protesting the imposition of Roman rule on local life. This isn’t much different from a meeting of the World Trade Organization today.

In considering the reality of global PR, we should remember that it is complex, not simple. The tension and balance between the power of international and the power of local is an old theme. One lesson is clear: global and local always coexist and have always been intertwined. History shows that one does not necessarily lead to the demise of the other. Globalization is complex and multilayered and it is perilous to forget that.

If the 19th and the first half of the 20th century were dominated — sometimes tragically — by nation states, the last 50 years have seen the emergence of a new global player: the multinational organization, or as some experts prefer to say more accurately and neutrally: “the transnational organization.”

Transnationals may be based within a particular country and carry strong cultural associations from that home country. Coca-Cola, for example, has long been regarded as American as apple pie. The historic brand essence of Mercedes or Peugeot was quintessentially German or French. But increasingly, the country of origin is becoming less central to the DNA of these organizations. They think and act internationally; they have intellectual property and operations around the world; and their culture becomes global, not national or local.

People often assume that transnationals are only multinational businesses, such as Coca-Cola, Microsoft, IBM, Nokia, or Sony. However, one of the key points about understanding the globalization of PR is that we aren’t just referring to businesses, but to many other types of global players, as well.

Transnationals may be political, such as the European Commission, UNICEF or the World Health Organization. They may be NGOs, such as Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth. They may be economic, such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, and they may be cultural, such as CNN, BBC World and Al Jazeera. These disparate organizations all demonstrate the willingness and ability to think and act on a global or regional basis, rather than on just a national basis.

The first step in understanding the reality of the globalization of PR is that some of the key players now are no longer capable of being understood within the confines of traditional national boundaries. It’s not just that they act internationally; they act supranationally. Their psychology, their thinking and even their cultures are becoming truly global.

The term globalization most simply refers to the growing interdependence and interconnectedness of the world — politically, militarily, economically, or technologically. Whether people view globalization as a liberating force for economic prosperity and world peace, or whether they fear it as a catastrophic form of tyranny and the nemesis of advanced capitalism, both supporters and opponents agree that globalization rests on our interconnectedness and interdependence. That’s true whether the issue is trade barriers, pornography on the Internet, climate change, or the spread of avian flu. Like it or not, we have never understood so keenly as now that we all inhabit the same planet.

Yet, there is a second idea that is often mistakenly linked to interconnectedness — an idea that is far more problematic for those of us facing the challenges of the globalization of PR.

It is the idea that globalization means not just international connectedness, but, also international homogenization. This notion holds that globalization inevitably moves toward uniformity in consumer behaviors, tastes, cultures and personalities. According to this view, whether we live in Malaysia or New York, Belgium or Bolivia, we all will eventually act in the same way, consume the same products, and have the same cultural reference points. Local differences will diminish over time as an inevitable result of globalization.

Understandably, this argument worries many people. Take the night skyline of many a major world city on any continent and see the familiar neon signs for Kodak, Panasonic or Foster’s. It does seem to indicate a world that looks increasingly alike.

It is also true that nearly the world over people can be seen drinking a Coke, taking their kids to McDonald’s, using Microsoft Windows, or clutching a Siemens cellphone. Does that mean that people around the world are all becoming the same? Does it mean that national, regional and local differences are slowly melding into a uniform, global consumer marketplace? Far from it.

The strongest evidence that globalization does not mean bland uniformity comes from the many corporations whose products and services penetrate scores of countries. These companies need to make their brands relevant in ways that are faithful to the core attributes of the brand, yet flexible enough to accommodate diverse trading patterns, differing consumer tastes and behavior, and a variety of businesses, media and political cultures. Take the work that we do for Siemens and MasterCard, representing both businesses in dozens of diverse markets. Of course, we help these clients drive a central global plan, based on core brand values. But the effectiveness of these programs comes from the huge creativity and intellectual property residing around the world.

The real challenge for PR is to help organizations bridge that which is global and that which is local. Unfortunately, there is no magic template for doing this. What there is, instead, is a steadily growing body of wisdom that comes from doing it, day in and day out, in numerous markets around the world.

I mentioned at the start of this article that old watchwords like ‘”Think Global, Act Local” are no longer relevant. With very few exceptions global campaigns that are designed, executed and controlled centrally have little place in today’s global PR market. “Think Global, Act Local” was an attempt to get beyond complete centralization by suggesting that execution, at least, needed to take place locally. But it still implied that corporate headquarters could establish a strategy that would resonate around the world as long as it had a little local interpretation in the execution phase.

Today, global campaigns do not come from some NASA-like Mission Control center. Instead they originate from any corner of the world. And once originated, they have to find differing expressions to be effective in different markets.

Our business is more and more about the quality of our ideas — strategic and creative ideas. By their nature, ideas can come from anywhere — especially if we are to avoid the charge of cultural imperialism. A model that has strategy and creativity at the center and execution at the local end is no longer adequate. Free-traveling, free-thinking ideas are the new lifeblood of global PR.

This brings me to my final point. We simplify people at our own risk. As a consumer, myself, I only have to look inside my own head to know that I have interests and allegiances that are global, national, and local. I am influenced by the ethnic and religious origins of my ancestors, by my family, and by people who share my intellectual interests. Much as I would love to believe I am especially complex, I think most of you would be the same. If we can hold different notions of “global” and “local” in our heads and live life anyway, then it is incumbent upon global PR programs to do the same. It may not be as simple, but it’s much more interesting.

And that’s great news for PR.

About the Author
Harris Diamond is Chief Executive Officer of Weber Shandwick, one of the world’s leading public relations firm. Weber Shandwick offers a full spectrum of communications services – corporate consulting, public relations, investor/financial relations, marketing communications, public affairs, government relations, attitudinal research and advocacy advertising. PRWeek has selected Mr. Diamond as “PR Professional of the Year, 2000″ and one of the “100 most influential PR people in the 20th century.”

From time to time translation agencies receive requests for a “literal”translation. This seemingly inoffensive adjective is much like the term “obscene.” No one is quite sure how to define it, but we all know it when we see it. When a literal translation is explicitly specified, an agency specializing in intellectual property (IP) translation reacts somewhat like a minister who is asked to preach a religious sermon: “that’s the only kind I know.”�

So what do clients mean when they ask for a literal translation?

Clearly one thing that “literal”� means is “don’t embellish, don’t summarize,” a fundamental principle for IP translators. Translating everything in the source text, even at the risk of redundancy, is part of our standard instructions for translators. Before a translation reaches our client, we further check translations twice for completeness as part of our standard quality assurance process.

Sometimes “translating everything”� provides too much information, however. A conscientious translator may feel bound to translate every word, no matter how peripheral to the basic subject matter. Did the requester really want the phone numbers and addresses of all 14 fourteen branch offices of that foreign patent office? The translator or editor may decide to eliminate those details and provide the reader with a parenthetical indication of the content: [phone numbers and addresses of branch offices].

Our translators and our editing staff seek a balance: provide our clients all the information necessary to understand the subject matter, but not so much that the reader gets lost in irrelevant detail.

Translators and editors also have to keep constantly in mind that “literal” does not mean “Give the reader a lesson in the structure of the original language.” To take a simple example, what is a literal translation of the French sentence “Je m’appelle Fran�ois.” If one just transfers each of the words to English, one gets “I call myself Fran�ois.” This captures the form but not the content. I can call myself Fran�ois too, but my name is still Mark. What is “needed�and what our clients “need�is an exact translation.

An exact translation conveys all the meaning: “Je m’appelle” and “Fran�ois” (in real texts, of course, units of meaning are often more than one word). If I render the French sentence as “My name is “Fran�ois”� I again have only three units of meaning, each corresponding to one of the units in French. The result means exactly what the French means and it is not ambiguous. This translation is as literal as anyone could wish.

Now, let’s consider a more realistic example. Here is a typical German sentence structure common in technical writing:

“Die Verbindung der zwei St�cke erfolgt vorzugsweise durch Schwei�en.”

A slavishly literal rendering would read: “The joining of the two pieces is preferably done by welding.”� If one eliminates words that only serve to hold the sentence together, there are only four units of meaning in the German, corresponding to “join,” “two pieces,” “preferably,” and “welding.”� Therefore, no meaning is lost if we recast the sentence as “The two pieces are preferably joined by welding.” It’s really not important to anyone, and certainly not to our clients, that the German had a different sentence structure. This is what is meant when a statute, a regulation or a certification calls for a “true and complete translation.”

Can we simplify further and still have an exact translation? Since welding is a kind of joining, we could say “The two pieces are preferably welded,”� which is only slightly narrower in its meaning. That would certainly be adequate for nontechnical translation, but in a patent it might be construed as limiting, so we generally would not delete “joined.” We certainly could not delete “preferably”� without unduly restricting meaning. When in doubt, we opt for completeness rather than pithiness in our IP, legal and clinical work. This is what our clients want when they ask for a literal translation and what we do everything we can to make sure they receive.

About the Author
Since earning his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin, Mark Ritter has been a teacher and translator of German for over 20 years. He joined McElroy Translation Company, Austin, Texas in February 1999 as Chief Editor, supervising a staff of 11 technical editors and proofreaders. He has been a member of the German language certification section of the American Translators Association since 1998. Spring 2007 will be the fifth straight year he has taught “Machine Translation and Translation Memory” in the Localization Certification program at Austin Community College.

I’ve been sharing my morning coffee for the past year or two with the “yee-ha”s of corporate wagons circling and the “forward-ho”cries of entrepreneurial cowboys heading out to the great frontiers. Yes siree, rarely a day goes by without the newspaper reminding me that there’s a gold rush going on and those who hesitate will surely be lost.

The wild west is now the wild east and China and India promise fame and riches for brands that are fleet-of-foot. Or do they?

I don’t want to chat in this paper about the (many and varied) strategic issues involved in moving a brand into a new and linguistically different market. That could be the subject of a major brick of a book. But, I thought it might be interesting to look at just a microcosm, the logo or brandmark, and see what lessons can be learned from the brave pioneers who’ve established themselves in the China Market.

There are really two ways of rendering a foreign mark in another language. Transliteration, or phonetic translation is one. So, for example Louis Vuitton is branded in China as “lu yi wei deng.” Nokia is “nuo ji ya” and Harley-Davidson is “ha li.”

The other method is conceptual, where local characters are chosen to express a similar image. For example, in China, Shell Oil is known as “bei ke” (shell), Nestle is “que chao” (swallow’s nest) and Wrigley is “jian pai” (arrow brand).It sounds simple enough, but actually it’s a process so full of complexities that only the foolhardy would risk doing it without the expert support of an experienced globalisation team behind them. I say this with insider knowledge, because the staff of elionetwork, one of Singapore’s leading linguistic companies, share my office and fall under the same management as Spark Media Lab, the communications company I work for. Their ears are constantly to the ground, and they know some disaster stories that would curl your toes.

Globalisation is littered with “in hindsight it wasn’t such a great idea”� stories, and often it’s from savvy multi-national companies who should know better. Funny to us as outsiders but not necessarily amusing to the companies at the time. KFC’s “finger-lickin’ good” slogan entered the China market as “eat your fingers off�.” Pepsi’s “Come alive with the Pepsi Generation”� spent a short time in Taiwan as “Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead” before the F&B giant went into damage control.

Logotypes can be equally tricky. Quaker Oats was lucky to be affectionately adopted by the Chinese market as “lao ren pai” (old man brand), but Polo Ralph Lauren’s polo player, signifying classic affluence in the West, was nicknamed “san jiao ma” (three-legged horse), carrying none of the prestige the company hoped it would.

May Chiang, elionetwork’s Business Manager, puts it this way: “You need to ask a lot of questions in localisation of brands for the China market. It’s an art and a science. Should they be read left to right or right to left? Should they be in simplified characters common in China and Singapore or traditional characters used in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Does it work for all dialect groups? Are the meanings or emotions that are carried in the words and symbols aligned to the brand image?”

One of the most common misconceptions we deal with is that localisation is literal translation and that it can be judged by price per word like a commodity. That’s really not the case. A good localisation provider using expert native-speaking translators will understand the nuances of your communication and make sure that the meaning and emotion crosses cultures. They’ll safeguard your brand and get you to market faster and in exactly the way you’re intending. It’s an expert service, and getting the girl in accounting who speaks Chinese to do it might save you a little money, but the consequences could be serious damage to your brand.

The story of Coca-Cola’s entry into the market comes in a couple of different flavours, depending on who is doing the telling. Some tell of how the company paid heavily for being ill-prepared by having to quickly withdraw marketing material they’d distributed for their launch. The official Coca-Cola story is more flattering to their cross-cultural prowess.

According to Coca-Cola, they found prior to the launch of their localised brand identity that shopkeepers had made their own signage, approximating the phonetics of the name as best they could. Unfortunately, some signs translated to “female horse fastened with wax” while others invited customers to “bite the wax tadpole.”

The company’s own localisation team cleverly fused the transliteration and conceptual methods to come up with “ke kou ke le,”which translates in Mandarin to “permitting the mouth to rejoice.”

Other companies have not managed to find exact phonetic equivalents, but have encapsulated the feeling of positivity. Pepsi (undoubtedly much wiser after their initial Taiwan experience) is branded “bai shi ke le” (everything makes you happy), Kellogg is “jia le s” (family happiness), Heineken is “xi li” (the power of joy) and Xerox is “shi le” (offering happiness).

I think everyone who has travelled will have come across ads in English proudly exclaiming “It will become a fortunate feeling” or billboards for prestige products for “Ones who are on top of the others.”� Imagine the re-branding gymnastics you’d have to perform if something that clumsy applied to your entire identity.

So maverick cowboy, by all means strike out into the wild frontier.

Just have a good posse by your side.

About the Author
Marc Garnaut is Creative Director of Spark Media Lab, Singapore. He is author of many published articles on a broad range of marketing and popular culture topics. Creative and strategic, eclectic and passionate, Marc describes himself as a person with 2 degrees and a passion for street photography, jazz and Takeshi Kitano films. He hopes that makes him an interesting and effective person to work with.

About Spark Media Lab
Spark Media Lab strives to move design beyond beautiful lay-out. We help identify the specific needs of our clients and develop creative strategies to achieve these goals. In this manner creative + tactical work together, giving our clients the most relevant and innovative solutions possible for effectively communicating with their audience.

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Marc Garnaut retains the rights to this article. Please contact him for more information.

As a non-Asian student in the 1980’s who graduated with a B.A. in Chinese language and history from Cornell, and an M.A. in East Asian Studies from Yale focused on classical Chinese literature, I became somewhat of a “curiosity”for family and friends. Back then, China was only just starting to emerge from its isolation in the international community, and my own interest in studying Chinese raised many eyebrows – as if I was pursuing a subject which was way out on the fringe, and had little practical career applications.

When I subsequently began my career in business after completing an M.B.A at Columbia in the early 1990s, China was already starting to flex its commercial and political muscles on the international scene. However, even at that time, many of my acquaintances and business colleagues in the United States still viewed my fluency in Chinese as not much more than an unusual topic for social conversation, and an ability that would enable me to order the best, and most authentic food in Chinese restaurants.

That was then, this is now.

In 2006, China’s central and growing role in international political and business affairs is both universally recognized, and constantly making headlines across the world. As a result, the United States has now, finally, been bitten with Chinese language fever. In cities across our country, Chinese language programs are rapidly emerging to address the needs of busy business professionals who are looking to fast-track a working competency in Chinese.

At the same time, the recently enacted National Security Education Program’s Chinese K-16 Pipeline Project has injected new urgency to the development of Chinese language education at the primary and secondary school levels, and our media has already begun to broadcast images of elementary school students engaged in Chinese dialogues, and forming their first written Chinese characters.

According to Claudia Ross, my first Chinese teacher at Cornell, who is now Professor of Chinese at Holy Cross College and a twice past-president of the Chinese Language Teacher’s Association, the 2005 academic year witnessed an unprecedented spike in Chinese language enrollments at colleges and universities across the country. Our institutions of higher learning are now scrambling to keep up with this emerging demand, and Fall 2006 enrollments in Chinese courses are expected to reach record levels.

Against this backdrop, my own Chinese language fluency has suddenly placed me in the position of “trusted advisor”for colleagues and students who are increasingly seeking me out for advice on how to best learn this language. So, from one long-term student of Chinese, to all those who aspire to achieve a working knowledge of this fascinating language, here are my top five insights:

1. Understand that Chinese, while difficult, can also be very easy to learn.

Most people believe that Chinese is one of the most difficult languages in the world. In some senses, this is true. The Chinese writing system is non-alphabetic, comprising thousands of pictographs called “characters,” which need to be studied and internalized through rote memorization and constant reading and writing over a long period of time. Additionally, Chinese is a tonal language, meaning that changing the shape of one’s voice over a single syllable can actually generate multiple words with multiple meanings. The most famous example in Mandarin Chinese is the syllable “ma” which, depending on how it is pronounced, might mean “mother,” “hemp,” “horse,” or the verb “to scold.”� This is a feature of the spoken language which does not exist in the same form in Western languages, and therefore can pose great challenges to many non-Asian students.

However, what most non-Chinese do not realize is that the language boasts one of the easiest grammars in the world. Sentence structure largely mirrors that of English (subject + verb + object). Verbs exist in a single form, with no conjugations whatsoever.

There is no gender, no plural nouns, and while mechanisms do exist to express tense (e.g. past/present/future), they are much simpler than those of any Western language. American students who are much more familiar with both Spanish and French would instantly find Chinese grammar refreshingly basic, and much more accessible than those languages.

2. Learn Mandarin, not Cantonese.

There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of regional and local spoken Chinese dialects which have developed over the long period of China’s classical history when transportation was rudimentary, broadcast media non-existent, and most people lived and died within a small radius of their birth places. Although speakers of all Chinese dialects share the same, non-phonetic written language, many of the dialects are mutually unintelligible when spoken, giving rise to the unique ability of Chinese speakers from different regions to write to each other, even when they cannot speak with each other. Among Chinese who have emigrated, the two most common spoken dialects are Mandarin and Cantonese. For example, within the largest Chinese communities in the United States, each of these dialects accounts for roughly half of all speakers.

For non-Chinese seeking to learn the language, though, Mandarin is the clear choice. Mandarin, the predominant dialect in Northern China, is the official language of politics, education, and media in both Mainland China and Taiwan, and it is one of the four official languages of Singapore. Even in Hong Kong, which historically has been a Cantonese-speaking area, Mandarin use is on the rise since the return of China’s sovereignty in 1997. In Mainland China, the Chinese word for “Mandarin” translates as the “common language,” and outside of the Mainland it is most often referred to as the “national language” both these terms are indicative of the broad reach which a competency in Mandarin can afford a speaker. Fortunately, for students of Chinese, Mandarin is also arguably the easiest of all the Chinese dialects to learn, owing to a tonal structure which is much simpler than that of Cantonese and most other dialects.

3. Speak first, then decide if you need to read and write.

Given the complexity of the Chinese written language, contrasted to the comparative simplicity of the grammar, prospective students of Chinese would do well to focus on learning to speak first, and only then tackle the written language if their studies or business require them to do so. While the tonal character of the spoken language is a challenge, this can be mastered fairly quickly, in contrast to the many years needed to achieve a working familiarity with the several thousand written characters that most educated Chinese adults have learned. Of course, most Chinese language programs simultaneously teach both the spoken and written language. It is up to the individual student to decide where to emphasize his or her needs.

4. If you do decide to write Chinese, consider learning “simplified” characters.

There are two major Chinese writing systems currently in use in the world — “traditional” or “complicated” Chinese characters, and “simplified” Chinese characters. Traditional characters are the characters which evolved from ancient Chinese pictographs, and which have been used throughout most of Chinese history to modern times. Many of these characters are, at the same time, both beautiful and complex, requiring students of Chinese to spend many hours and nights practicing intricate “stroke orders” to properly form words. Beginning in the middle of last century, the government in Mainland China began to promulgate an alternate system of Chinese writing called “simplified” characters in an effort to dramatically increase written literacy throughout the country. For many characters, this system significantly reduces the number of brush or pen strokes required to form specific words, thereby enabling students to more quickly commit the characters to memory.

Today, simplified characters are the official script of both Mainland China and Singapore, while traditional characters are still the norm in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and within most Chinese immigrant communities throughout the world. While I would still encourage students of Chinese who intend to spend many years developing and refining their abilities to begin by learning traditional characters (and only then overlay a knowledge of simplified characters), anyone seeking to accelerate his acquisition of the written language would do well to begin with the simplified script.

5. Take your studies seriously.

Unlike many Western languages which share some common linguistic roots with English and which can often be learned fairly quickly with a large amount of self-study, acquiring a basic competency in a language as different from English as Chinese requires a high level of commitment and perseverance. Practically speaking, this means that:

• Unless you have an unusual aptitude for learning foreign languages, you probably won’t learn Chinese in a once-a-week, one-hour private session. Rather, start by looking for an established Chinese language program or workshop. Universities and established language schools are a good place to start. Some colleges even offer intensive courses that cram a full year of basic Chinese into 4-8 weeks. Do your homework to find the best program.
• If you still seek a tutorial, merely looking for a native speaker of Chinese to study with does not always mean you will obtain the best instruction. Chinese immigrants constitute the single largest Asian American population, representing 3+ million people nationwide, many of whom would be happy to teach new students of Chinese. However, teaching Western students to overcome the unique hurdles of the language is a skill. If you decide on private lessons, look for a native-speaker with proven professional or private teaching credentials, as well as a roster of former student references.
• Finally, practice, practice, practice. The good news is that those 3+ million Chinese Americans are our neighbors. Once you have developed basic conversational skills, go into the top Chinese communities of our country and speak. Order a lunch, buy a book, chit-chat about the weather, or ask for directions — even if you don’t need any! Westerners who have mastered Chinese will also unanimously confirm that real fluency comes only when one has spent some time in a Chinese-speaking region of Asia. So, get ready for your next business trip, take advantage of the many short-term or long-term Chinese language courses available in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Singapore, or just plan a personal or family adventure to Asia.

One of those very famous Chinese sayings says, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”Well, it definitely does not need to take a “thousand miles” to learn Chinese, but the time is certainly now ripe for more Americans to take that first step.

About the Author:
Saul Gitlin is the Executive Vice President of Strategic Marketing Services and New Business for Kang & Lee Advertising, ranked as the #1 Asian multicultural agency by Advertising Age in May 2005. Prior to joining Kang & Lee in 1997, Saul worked for 9 years overseas, including 7 years in senior operations and marketing positions for multinational corporations in the People’s Republic of China. He is completely fluent in Mandarin Chinese, Hebrew, and French. Saul may be contacted at saul_gitlin@kanglee.com or 212-375-8130.