What Kind of Chinese Should Be Used for Websites?

With over 300 million Chinese internet users, it’s understandable that website owners and entrepreneurs alike keep hearing the question "What is your China strategy?" A good question, but how many people have an answer? How many even know where to start?

You’ve probably heard that there are several different ‘kinds’ of Chinese. So, if you have a successful English website and now want to expand to the next biggest source of potential clients online by having your website translated into Chinese, the first question you will probably have is "What kind of Chinese should I use?"

In short: use Mandarin Chinese written in simplified Chinese characters.

Now for the details. First of all, there are two forms of written Chinese called "traditional" and "simplified." The simplified form is used on mainland China, making it the global standard. The only time you would want to use traditional is if you were trying to reach a specific subset of Chinese clients, such as those from Taiwan or Hong Kong. Luckily, readers of one style of Chinese writing can often understand the other style. So, if you’re website is translated into simplified Chinese, readers of traditional Chinese will also likely be able to understand it.

The next thing you should know is that there are many different dialects of spoken Chinese. There are so many dialects that even an individual Chinese city can have more than one dialect! However, Mandarin Chinese is the standard on the Chinese mainland. Mandarin is taught in schools, used in government, spoken on TV and used for doing business. The vast majority of the Chinese population understands Mandarin and most of them speak it as well. So make sure your website is written in Mandarin!