We have developed a medium-sized ASP.NET / SQL Server application that uses resource files to provide English and Spanish user interface variants. Unicode data types are used throughout the databases. Now we are being asked to add Mandarin to the mix. I have no experience with localising into Asian languages, so I really cannot imagine what kind of job this would be.
My questions are:
- How complex would this job be, as compared to localising into another Western language such as French or German?
- What additional issues, other than (obviously) translating strings in resource files, should I deal with for Mandarin localisation? Anything related to the different alphabet, perhaps?
Reports of previous experiences or pointers to best practices are most welcome. Thanks.
As far as translating text in the user interface goes, the localization effort for Chinese is probably comparable to that of Western languages. Like English and Spanish, Chinese is read left to right, so you won’t need to mirror the page layout as you would if you had to support Arabic or Hebrew. Here are a couple more points to consider:
Font size: Chinese characters are more intricate than Latin characters, so you may need to use a larger font size. English and Spanish are readable at 8pt; for Chinese, you’ll want a minimum of 10pt.
Font style: In English, bold and italics are often used for emphasis. In Chinese, emphasis is usually achieved with a different typeface, font size, or color. Use bold with caution, and avoid italics.
However, if you’re targeting an Asian market, more significant changes may be required. Here are a few examples:
Personal names: A typical Chinese name is 孫中山: the first character (孫) is the family name, and the second and third characters (中山) constitute the given name. This of course is the opposite of the common Western convention of “given name” + space + “family name”. If you’re storing and displaying names, you may want to use a single “Name” field instead of separate “First Name” and “Last Name” fields.
Colors: In the U.S., it’s common to use green for “good” and red for “bad”. However, in China and Taiwan, red is “good”. For instance, compare the stock prices on Yahoo! versus Yahoo! Taiwan.
Lack of an alphabet: Chinese characters are not based on an alphabet. Thus, for example, it wouldn’t make sense to offer the ability to filter a list by the first letter of each entry, as in a directory of names.