April 20th is Chinese Language Day! To celebrate this international observance, we’ve compiled a list of 5 facts to help you learn a bit about the event, the language, and the country!

1. The holiday was established by the UN.

The United Nations established Language Days to celebrate “multilingualism and cultural diversity” and to promote the equal use of the UN’s six official languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.

2. April 20th was chosen as the date because of traditional significance.

April 20th is called Guyu in traditional East Asian calendars, and is a day honoring Cangjie, an important ancient Chinese historian. According to the legend, Cangjie was the inventor of the Chinese characters.

3. China’s economy is the second largest in the world.

China’s economy is booming! Its steady growth rate of approximately 10% for the last twenty years doesn’t seem to be slowing down! Its market holds amazing opportunity for savvy companies to grow their businesses. Yet, filling the urgent and growing demand for market research is proving difficult for Western-owned companies without clear and effective localization and internationalization strategies and understanding of the Chinese market. It’s important to have a solid localization plan for all your Chinese business communications!

4. Two of Chinese businesses’ top preferred forms of communication involve clear writing.

The top three preferred forms of communication for Chinese businesses are conferences and exhibitions, emails, and websites. Inadequate communication quality negatively affects marketing in China, so make sure your localized portfolio is top notch!

5. Chinese language translation mistakes are more common than you think.

While machine translation may seem like an attractive option at first, using services like Google Translate and other machine translation engines is strongly discouraged, as it could lead to potentially awkward or confusing situations due to faulty English-Chinese translations. Even experienced translators can make common mistakes in translation because many words in Chinese have multiple meanings in English, depending on context. For example:

• OPEN and TURN ON. The word kāi (开 / 開) is used for both in Chinese. Additional meanings are DRIVE, START and OPERATE, therefore it’s no wonder it gets mixed up so often!
• WATCH, LOOK and READ. The same word kān (看) is used for all three.
• HAVE and IS. There are many situations in Chinese where the word yǒu (有), meaning HAVE, is used where we would use IS in English.

These are just some of the reasons why it’s a smart idea to use high-quality translation and localization quality assurance services for all your Chinese business needs. If you are interested in learning more, please reach out to us: getstarted@ptiglobal.com

Reference:
1. http://www.un.org/zh/events/chineselanguageday/english.shtml
2. https://tradingeconomics.com/china/gdp-growth-annual
3. https://www.b2binternational.com/publications/chinese-marketing-selling
4. https://www.chinatranslations.com/risks-of-machine-translation-in-Chinese-to-English-and-English-to-Chinese-translation.html
5. https://www.chineselearnonline.com/blog/common-errors-that-chinese-speakers-make-in-english/