What is your China strategy? This is a question that website owners, webmasters and web-based start-ups have been hearing again and again. With the Chinese-language expected to overtake English as the number one language on the internet, and China being the country with the most internet users, it makes sense to at least consider having your website translated into Chinese. And if you are considering it, one of the questions on your mind is likely “Which type of Chinese should I use for my website?” There’s a few simple things about Chinese that you should learn before you can fully understand the answer.

First of all, Chinese is a language with many spoken dialects. There are so many dialects that people joke there is a dialect for every city and town and China. Indeed, some cities have more than one dialect. Some of these dialects are similar enough that speakers of two dialects could communicate with each other almost without a hitch. Others are so different that they could be considered separate languages. Luckily for your case, Mandarin was made the standard language of China. It is spoken in school, in politics and in business meetings. It is used on TV, in magazines and on billboards. So, when it comes to translating a website into Chinese, if you are targeting China or the global base of Chinese readers, it is best to use Mandarin on the Chinese version of your website.

Next, Chinese isn’t written with letters, but instead is written with “characters.” Most Chinese words consist of one or two characters and there are thousands and thousands of different characters. There are few technical issues to deal with to be able to use Chinese characters on a website. They can be typed with common English keyboards and viewed by anybody with Chinese fonts installed on their computer – and that’s everybody you would want to read your Chinese website. You would still have to consider which kind of Chinese characters to use though.

There are now two different styles of Chinese characters. Earlier last century, there was only one style, but then a “simplified” style was created, effectively splitting Chinese writing in two. Mainland China began to use the simplified characters, while Hong Kong, Taiwan and Chinese communities abroad continued to use the traditional characters. Nowadays, the simplified characters are used much more on the internet so, in most cases, you will want to use simplified characters for your Chinese website. The only time you would want to use traditional characters is if you are targeting Hong Kong, Taiwan or some other areas other than mainland China. If your website targets Chinese speakers living abroad, it would be best to check which style of Chinese they are most comfortable with.

So remember, for over ninety percent of the websites out there, the best form of Chinese to use is the Mandarin dialect written with simplified Chinese characters. However, if you are targeting a specific Chinese population not on Mainland China, you should consider having your website translated into a different Chinese dialect or written in traditional Chinese characters.