Archive for February, 2010

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Cheated in China?

Saturday, February 27th, 2010

Here in Japan, I am constantly being told stories of how people went to China on business, either to buy or sell something, or to establish a company, and ended up being cheated.

While I won’t say that nobody is ever cheated in China—people are cheated every day in all countries—I can say that almost all of the stories I have heard can be explained by greed on the part of the person going to China, or a total misunderstanding and/or lack or even wanting to understand the Chinese people, language, or how business is done in China. Basically, they went there with their own set of preconceptions and common sense, and either just expected them to hold true in China or tried to enforce them there. A recipe for disaster!

All countries and cultures are different, but China is very different. Before going you need to know a little about these differences, or at the very least accept that they exist and be prepared to work with them.

And don’t trust the first person you meet who just happens to speak your language. But more about that later . . .

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Spelling

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

Alouthgh tehre are mnay eaxpmles of tihs on the Itnenret aｌerday, it siltl suisrrpes me wehn I fnid taht terhe are sipmle sｐleling mitsaeks in soehtming I hvae raed sereval temis. Tehn aigan, sicne tihs can be raed wtih litlte plorbem, the ocaiocnsal spelnlig mitsake siplinpg thgrouh shdouln’t be a sruripse, but sholud be sonehtmig to concetnrate on avodiing.

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Chinese myths 101

Friday, February 12th, 2010

People tell you a lot about China: the country, the people, the politics, the language, the culture . . .

But, how many of these people have come any closer to China than their local Chinese take-away restaurant?

Since first visiting China in 2005 and then establishing my company in China in 2006, I have come to realize that much of the information about China is somewhere between misinformation and disinformation. Deliberate or otherwise, people are getting the wrong impression about a lot of things.

While I don’t promise to give you the 100% truth about China, I’ll try and dispel some of the common knowledge that is more fiction than fact. Then again, China is a big place and I don’t believe there is anything 100% true that can be said about the entire country.

I’ll also try and explain how some of the preconceptions I had about China before I visited and after I had only been there a short time have changed over the last five years.

Again, I don’t promise for it to be an absolute explanation. My opinions about China change with the amount of time I spend there. Then again, China is changing as well, and quickly!

Either way, it has to be better to know more than less about a country that is having a great affect on the global economy: an affect that is only going to increase with time.



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When not to translate

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Translation is a service provided to convey the information in a document to somebody not able to understand it in its original language. Translation of each word often leads to a mish-mash of incomprehensible text that conveys nothing at all or, even worse, gives the wrong impression. This is becoming more common as machine translation is being used increasingly, and as more and more inexperienced amateurs enter the translation profession. Translation should be of the meaning, not the words; but, that is a story for another day . . .

Recently I have come across more and more places where somebody has “translated” an address into another language. For example, an address in Germany is rendered in Japanese characters (katakana). I can’t imagine any reason for anybody doing this. It doesn’t really help anyone to be able to correctly pronounce the address and, even if it did, what use would that be? It can’t be used to send a letter as the German Post Office is unlikely to be able to decipher the Japanese characters and rebuild the correct German address. It can’t even be shown to a taxi driver in Germany, unless of course he can read Japanese, and even then it would be difficult to reconstruct the original German spelling.

So, what about other combinations or directions? A Japanese address translated into English: this isn’t really translation as such, as the best that can be done is to transliterate the address into English letters (romaji). This is understandable by the average Japanese person, and the Japanese Post Office has no problem with it. There are going to be problems reversing the process, however, as any name in romaji has several possible kanji combinations (Japanese characters) that might correspond to it. Still, it is sufficient for sending a letter or for showing a taxi driver, and that’s about as much as I can imagine an address being used for.

So, while I always advocate translating the meaning of a sentence or paragraph as opposed to translating each word into its counterpart in another language, addresses would be a definite exception. The general rule hasn’t changed though: think about why you are translating the text, and then provide the most useful translation.

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Chinese New Year’s holiday

Monday, February 8th, 2010

As the New Year parties are winding down in Japan, China is getting ready for its New Year celebrations next week. China still uses the lunar calendar for many of its customs and events. The New Year according to the lunar calendar is celebrated throughout China and is a national holiday.

Partly due to the expanse of the county, China is well-known for having seven days for its New Year’s holiday. A main reason for this is that it can take more than two days for somebody to travel from where they work and live to their family home in another province of the country.

However, while it is often said that the Chinese enjoy a seven-day vacation period for the New Year, the truth is that there are only three national holiday days. In fact, what happens is that the Central Government (Beijing) announces the annual calendar and this is then adopted as standard by a majority of companies across the country.

According to this calendar, either the weekend before or after the lunar calendar’s 1st of January is set as working days, and these two days are converted to two vacation days to be used consecutively to the three national holiday days. Adding this to the weekend gives you the seven-day holiday that is often spoken about. This year, it is the weekend after the New Year (20th and 21st of February) that has been designated as working days, making the seven-day holiday from the 13th to 19th of February.

I haven’t heard of any other country specifying that its citizens work on a weekend and take weekdays off instead, but this is common practice in China. It’s not better or worse, just different.

Since my Chinese company’s clients are mainly companies in Japan and Japanese subsidiaries in China, our staff have cooperated to allow us to stay open for almost the entire week so that we are available when Japanese companies are open.

This is the official holiday calendar for February 2010.

This is the HCI holiday calendar for February 2010.

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