Recent research from East Midlands Tourism shows that the economic impact of the tourism sector in the region has risen from around £5.9 billion in 2008 to £6.05 billion in 2009. Some of this growth can be attributed to the trend within the UK for holidaying at home but, as we’ve seen recently, the UK government is keen to increase overseas tourism into the country.

As a Nottingham-based translation company, we’d like to see local businesses benefitting from any UK-wide strategy that will help boost the regional economy so we’re also interested in helping tourist attractions, leisure and sporting facilities, hotels, restaurants, transport providers – in fact, any business or organisation that benefits from the tourist trade – to communicate to their overseas visitors in their chosen language. Even simple translation of essential information can make a visitor feel more welcome, and more likely to recommend your business as part of a visit to the UK on their return home.

The different written forms of Chinese – Traditional and Simplified – are both attractive languages for creative typesetting and SanTranslate works with both. Here are some of our observations and tips.

Our experience is that Simplified Chinese lends itself more easily to small sized fonts (10pt) than the more complex characters of Traditional Chinese.

We prefer to set the text as outlined EPS as this is the best way to prevent any problems that might arise from using different fonts. We know that clients are often concerned about whether their typeset Chinese will turn out OK so we always provide a free final quality check with their printing team to ensure that there are no problems.

We work in both Quark and the Adobe family although we find the latter more accommodating of Chinese fonts and so less prone to difficulties.

Check our typesetting guide and formatting capabilities for more information.

Many clients who are new to communicating in the Chinese language are surprised to find that there are two types of written Chinese. What is the difference and which will you need when you need Chinese translation?

In Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau, Traditional Chinese is used, and this form of the language uses a more complex character set.

Simplified Chinese is used in the People’s Republic of China, having been introduced in the 1950s to stimulate greater levels of literacy. As the name suggests, the written form of the languages uses more simple versions of the characters with fewer strokes.

Simplified Chinese is also used in Singapore and Malaysia where it is taught in schools. In these countries there may be some local differences due to early immigrants from China primarily speaking in Hakka, Hokkien & Min (Teochew) dialects. Many Malay-Chinese also read some Traditional Chinese, being familiar with the language from the Hong Kong Television Broadcast Channel.

SanTranslate will always make sure that we translate into the correct form of Chinese, checking your needs thoroughly, before we start work. Contact us to find out more.

An interesting recent trend has been an increase in enquiries for translation from and into Romanian.  Romanian is the official language of Romania, Ukraine and of Moldova where, for political reasons, it is known as Moldovan.  It is also, we were surprised to read, spoken by 5% of the population of Israel.  It is spoken by about 24 million people.

While there are differences in dialect in spoken Romanian, the written language is standard throughout the areas it is spoken.

We’re happy to say that SanTranslate is able to provide translation into and from Romanian for any business who needs to communicate with these countries.

When you’re doing business overseas, it’s important to remember that not every country has the same web habits as yours.  In the UK, for example, Google predominates as the search engine of choice and it’s easy to assume that the rest of the world does too.  But do our habits translate to other countries?  Not necessarily.

Did you know that in Hong Kong, Yahoo is the preferred web portal?  71% of Hong Kong web users use Yahoo! HK as their default browser homepage.  And Yahoo! And Yahoo! HK combined reach 57% of the population, far out-stripping Google’s 22% (Google and Google HK combined).  In fact, Yahoo! HK gets 54,000 page views every minute.

When you’re planning your international web strategy, these are the kinds of things it’s well worth bearing in mind, especially if you’re planning to use web advertising as part of that strategy – you need to know which web sites your customers are using.

SanTranslate can help you with all your translation and web site localisation needs and can give you guidance on where you money might be best spent.