The Chinese interest in these markets is particularly apparent around record breaking sales dates such as Singles Day (the Chinese singles holiday) on November 11, Black Friday on November 27, Cyber Monday on November 30 and leading up to Christmas on December 25, according to a research study issued by One Hour Translation, the largest online translation agency in the world, which analysed more than 10,000 translation projects performed over 2014 for ecommerce websites around the world.
This increased effort is demonstrated, among other things, by funneling more resources toward localisation and the translation of Chinese websites to foreign languages. Between 2014 and 2015, requests from online Chinese merchants and ecommerce websites for translations from Mandarin to English rose by approximately 116%, while requests for translation from Chinese to Russian rose approximately 81% and requests for translation from Chinese to Arabic rose approximately 52%.
English-language websites have also increased their efforts in Russian, Arabic and Mandarin-Chinese speaking markets, albeit at a lower rate. Between 2014 and 2015, requests from online English-language merchants for translations to Russian rose by approximately 39%, while requests for translation from English to Arabic rose approximately 21% and requests for translation from English to Mandarin-Chinese rose approximately 17%.
Conversely, requests for translations from English to Korean rose only by approximately 5%, while English to German increased only approximately 2%. Over the past few years we have witnessed a revolution in the world of ecommerce and have experienced cross-continent phenomena such as the successful penetration of Alibaba into the US market, said Ofer Shoshan, CEO and co-founder of One Hour Translation.
These market changes affect the languages and audiences targeted by the ecommerce companies. The heads of the ecommerce corporations in China have noticed that Russian and US customers are rushing to make purchases on the Chinese websites as they become aware of the vast selection of Chinese products sold at a fraction of the price compared to their local markets. This is a primary reason why Chinese websites are translated so comprehensively to English and Russian, and over the past year even into Arabic.
Another phenomenon that we have noticed in our research is that ecommerce corporations are encouraging their online merchants to appeal to global audiences by translating the thousands of product descriptions in their online stores into foreign languages. The demand for translations is not created only by the ecommerce corporations, but also by the smaller merchants who sell their wares on large websites such as eBay and Taobao. said Shoshan.
One Hour Translation is the worlds largest online translation agency, offering professional translation services to thousands of business customers worldwide, 24/7/365 - thanks to a community of over 15,000 certified translators. One Hour Translation provides translation services for 75 languages - supported by technology. One Hour Translation also offers MyTeam – a dedicated team of translators.
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